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shahrazedez 's review for:
Evil Under the Sun
by Agatha Christie
3.95 but it's really 4 stars
Honestly I just took off 0.5 stars for that ending where Kenneth so audaciously tells Rosamund to give up her dressmaking business and come with him to the country. But tbh she did say that's all she ever wanted to do, but he didn't know that at the time he said it so -0.5 for the man's audacity to try to get in between her and her money.
The rest of the book was excellently done. My favourite Christie books are where the dynamics and perceptions everyone have of the victim and the murderer/s are wrong, either because their imbued with the cast's own prejudices and/or the murderer/s put on an act. Think the Mysterious affair at styles or Death on the Nile. The classic pretending to be in love with Alina and the forgotten wife/partner dynamic is one that was done in Death on the Nile, and Miss Christie really does seem to enjoy writing a character that everyone thinks is a young simple minded fool in love with a calculative woman, only for his simple mind to be focused on more base desires like money and violence.
I've seen the TV episode for this about 233482 times growing up, it's the one Poirot episode they repeated every other week on TV. And still the story was compelling and well crafted. In particular, the stage the murderers set up, how they created false alibis and of course Christine pretending to be the dead body of Alina was excellent. only shaky thing that prevented me from giving this 4.5 stars was the fact that it would have been much smarter for the culprits to be swindlers that just left and disappeared after extorting money from their victims. Instead they murdered because Patrick wanted to but it didn't seem like someone as calculating and calm as Christine would just allow that to happen when they could just disappear. For the previous murder it made sense since the victim had taken out life insurance but Alina did no such thing here. Once Kenneth, her husband, had caught on to what had happened they could be long gone, and probably untraceable considering that Redford isn't even their real name and that disappearing like that was much easier during that time period.
I did like the cast of characters. The Gardeners were the American comic relief I suppose, but I did really vibe with the whole yapper x silent adoring listener dynamic they had, and I did like Mr Gardener. Mr Black and his whole drug plotline was very obvious and made to be so, so I'm glad it didn't take too much page time, it was more to lead us astray as to the 'why' question of the murder. The usual strongset scruffy middle aged woman and retired army whatever appeared in this story, but they were distinctive characters in their own right.
What I really came to appreciate by the end of the book were the themes and messages of the book. Firstly with Alina, we didn't really get to see her interact with anyone up close and she didn't have any interaction with Poirot other than her saying not to tell anyone where she was going. At first I was disappointed since not getting a feel for the personality of the victim kind of made me think the story might fall flat. But I believe seeing her up close and on page often was deliberately withheld from us as we would have instantly known she was not the conniving maneater everyone believed her to be. We would have sensed her naivety and that would have made readers suspect Redford from the beginning. But it was interesting to read how everyone so quickly disparaged Alina, saying 'she was a bad lot through and through' or that they felt sorry for Ms Redford and that Mr Redford was the naive fool. It speaks volumes as to how people are much quicker to disparage the reputation of a woman, to assume they know her, to make her out to be conniving and morally bankrupt. How much more people want to blame women, men and women alike as all the characters bar Mr Gardener and Poirot kept alluding to her being a seductress and a gold digger. It really showed the internalised misogyny of all the characters, and even after Poirot reveals the truth Ms Gardener still thinks poorly of Alina. There was also a lot of discussion around brains and good sense being a more praise worthy feature for women to have which was interesting to read.
All in all this was good and I understand why it's considered one of Christie's top 10.
Honestly I just took off 0.5 stars for that ending where Kenneth so audaciously tells Rosamund to give up her dressmaking business and come with him to the country. But tbh she did say that's all she ever wanted to do, but he didn't know that at the time he said it so -0.5 for the man's audacity to try to get in between her and her money.
The rest of the book was excellently done. My favourite Christie books are where the dynamics and perceptions everyone have of the victim and the murderer/s are wrong, either because their imbued with the cast's own prejudices and/or the murderer/s put on an act. Think the Mysterious affair at styles or Death on the Nile. The classic pretending to be in love with Alina and the forgotten wife/partner dynamic is one that was done in Death on the Nile, and Miss Christie really does seem to enjoy writing a character that everyone thinks is a young simple minded fool in love with a calculative woman, only for his simple mind to be focused on more base desires like money and violence.
I've seen the TV episode for this about 233482 times growing up, it's the one Poirot episode they repeated every other week on TV. And still the story was compelling and well crafted. In particular, the stage the murderers set up, how they created false alibis and of course Christine pretending to be the dead body of Alina was excellent. only shaky thing that prevented me from giving this 4.5 stars was the fact that it would have been much smarter for the culprits to be swindlers that just left and disappeared after extorting money from their victims. Instead they murdered because Patrick wanted to but it didn't seem like someone as calculating and calm as Christine would just allow that to happen when they could just disappear. For the previous murder it made sense since the victim had taken out life insurance but Alina did no such thing here. Once Kenneth, her husband, had caught on to what had happened they could be long gone, and probably untraceable considering that Redford isn't even their real name and that disappearing like that was much easier during that time period.
I did like the cast of characters. The Gardeners were the American comic relief I suppose, but I did really vibe with the whole yapper x silent adoring listener dynamic they had, and I did like Mr Gardener. Mr Black and his whole drug plotline was very obvious and made to be so, so I'm glad it didn't take too much page time, it was more to lead us astray as to the 'why' question of the murder. The usual strongset scruffy middle aged woman and retired army whatever appeared in this story, but they were distinctive characters in their own right.
What I really came to appreciate by the end of the book were the themes and messages of the book. Firstly with Alina, we didn't really get to see her interact with anyone up close and she didn't have any interaction with Poirot other than her saying not to tell anyone where she was going. At first I was disappointed since not getting a feel for the personality of the victim kind of made me think the story might fall flat. But I believe seeing her up close and on page often was deliberately withheld from us as we would have instantly known she was not the conniving maneater everyone believed her to be. We would have sensed her naivety and that would have made readers suspect Redford from the beginning. But it was interesting to read how everyone so quickly disparaged Alina, saying 'she was a bad lot through and through' or that they felt sorry for Ms Redford and that Mr Redford was the naive fool. It speaks volumes as to how people are much quicker to disparage the reputation of a woman, to assume they know her, to make her out to be conniving and morally bankrupt. How much more people want to blame women, men and women alike as all the characters bar Mr Gardener and Poirot kept alluding to her being a seductress and a gold digger. It really showed the internalised misogyny of all the characters, and even after Poirot reveals the truth Ms Gardener still thinks poorly of Alina. There was also a lot of discussion around brains and good sense being a more praise worthy feature for women to have which was interesting to read.
All in all this was good and I understand why it's considered one of Christie's top 10.