Peril at End House

All the clues were there, and I really should have noticed the most important one. Agatha Christie didn't cheat, she just made it look like she did. Peril at End House starts with Nick Buckley stumbling across Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings just as (another) attempt is made on her life. She's brushed them all off, but Poirot is anxious that someone is trying to kill her to inherit the ramshackle End House, illogical as that seems. He asks her to invite her cousin Maggie to visit for a few days and when Maggie dies, was it a case of mistaken identity? And who killed her - a potential inheritor or one of Nick's questionable friends? I'd somehow skipped Peril at End House in favor of an nth reading of one of my favorites, and I'm glad. Nearly 40 years after first reading Christie, she can still surprise me.

Appointment With Death

 You do see, don't you, that she has to be killed?

Those words drift though Hercule Poirot's window as he's traveling in the Middle East. We (and he) don't know this, but the words were part of a conversation between Raymond and Carol Boynton and aimed at their stepmother. Mrs. Boynton the second wife of a rich man, and has completely cowed her three stepchildren and made her daughter Genevra appear to be mentally unstable. The only person who appears able to stand up to her is daughter-in-law, Lennox's wife Nadine. We first see Mrs. Boynton through the eyes of two doctors, newly qualified Sarah King and prominent psychologist Dr. Gerard, and as they analyze the family we know Mrs. Boynton will not live past page 75 and that everyone around her will have a different motive for killing her. This is Agatha Christie, though, and she's got some surprises up her sleeve. The murderer is *not* one of the obvious subjects, but there are just enough clues scattered across the narrative so that the solution doesn't come across as a cheat. Christie even supplies us with a happy ending.

Crooked House

Published in 1949, Crooked House is Agatha Christie's first fully post-war mystery. Charles Hayward met Sophia Leonides during the war and decided to marry her. Once home, he invites her to dinner and when she appears, she tells him that she, and her entire family, are under surveillance because someone killed her grandfather. Aristide Leonides was a wealthy man, the founder of a food supply and restaurant empire, and his crooked, three-sectioned house, overflowed with suspects. The son who took over the business and his scientist wife, the other son (Sophia's father) who writes books no one reads and his actress wife, Sophia, her younger brother and sister, the children's schoolmaster, Aristide's much younger second wife, and his first wife's sister all had the opportunity to put ersinine in his insulin vial, and all have motives. It's classic Christie, with a twist ending that is shocking in 2019 and must have been scandalous in 1949.

Hallowe'en Party

Never kill a child or a pet

That's standard advice from the plotting panels at mystery conventions, but if you're Agatha Christie, you can violate that twice in a single novel.  The first victim, Joyce Reynolds, is an unpleasant tween, the sort of girl who borrows adventures she hears and embellishes then when they become her own. Naturally, when she's drowned in the apple-bobbing basin during a community Halloween party, the investigation centers on Joyce's earlier claim of having seen a murder once.  

The problem is, no one can remember a murder. Well, there was that au pair who disappeared a year or so earlier, but she wasn't murdered, was she? Luckily, Ariadne Oliver happened to be at the party (she was visiting a friend, the mother of one of the other tweens at the party), and she calls Hercule Poirot who solves the mystery just in time to save a third child from death. Written in the mid-60s, Hallowe'en Party feels a little more comfortable with the era than Third Girl, largely because "mod" influences are made in passing rather than being a central part of the story. It's a good late Christie, but because it's missing the broad near-misses that evoke the years shortly before I was born, it's not one of my frequent re-reads.

The Hollow

Agatha Christie wrote The Hollow shortly after WWII. That was her most productive period, and she generally receive good reviews.  She was also tiring of Hercule Poirot and began to experiment with ways of including him without highlighting him. He bores me a bit too, but the problem here is one I've complained about with other authors - too many poorly integrated subplots.

The Hollow takes place in a stereotypical Christie setting, a country house party given by Lady Angkatell, and the party includes the property's heir, a doctor and his wife, the doctor's lover Henrietta, an impoverished relative, and another young man with ties to several guests.  One evening, a new neighbor stops by to borrow matches. She's a movie star who the doctor was in love with before she left for Hollywood. The next morning, when no member of the party has an alibi, the doctor's wife Gerda shoots him to death by the pool.

Or did she?  This, after all, is a Christie novel and things are not necessarily as they seem. Garda may have been framed, and the inquest is inconclusive.  Since Hercule Poirot was on the scene (he's taken a nearby cottage as a country retreat and had been invited to lunch on the day of the murder), Henrietta asks him to investigate. He reluctantly takes on the case, and the result isn't totally satisfying for anyone involved. Christie constructed a good puzzle, but the book is weak, with unrequited loves, conflicting careers, and an unexpected and not quite believable breakdown.

The Moving Finger

The Moving Finger is technically a Miss Marple mystery, but Jane doesn't show up until the last third of the novel. The main character (and incompetent detective) is Jerry Burton, a pilot who's convalescing after a severe accident. He and his sister have taken a house in a village which is being plagued by poison pen letters. It's the usual Marple-style set-up, only without Aunt Jane. Until, that is, the local solicitor's wife dies suspiciously and suspicion falls upon, well, several people.  Mrs. Dane Calthrop, the vicar's wife, calls her friend Jane who visits, solves the mystery, and leaves with justice served and two couples paired off.  In other words, classic Christie.

The ABC Murders

I looked back at some of my earlier Agatha Christie reviews, and several mention books that have stayed on my shelf for 30 years. It's now closer to 40 for some of them, like The ABC Murders. It's got a stamp from The Book Swap, which closed before I graduated from high school, and above the stamp there's the name of the original owner and "November 1st, 1977." I wonder what I would have thought of it as a teenager? Although written only about 20 years into Hercule Poirot's 50 year career, he's showing his age, admitting to Hastings that he dyes his hair and being dismissed by the young policeman assigned to help him.

Someone killed Mrs. Asher in her Andover candy shop and left an ABC guide on the counter. Poirot got involved because someone sent him a letter announcing the murder. Soon, another announced murder happens, of Betty Bernard in Bexhill-on-Sea. Eventually Sir Carmichael Clarke's body is found in Churston, and the murder taunts Poirot with the threat of another death soon, in Dorchester. It's a classic Christie, with red herrings and obvious suspects, but there's also a slightly melancholy hint. Poirot was never a young character, but both he and Hastings are aging and there's a sense of the world changing. 35 years ago, I would have only seen the well crafted puzzle.  Now, I see the emotional shades.

Cat Among the Pigeons

By 1959, Agatha Christie had gotten tired of Hercule Poirot, but her fans hadn't.  One way she balanced her desires against that of her readers was to restrict Poirot to the last few chapters of "his" novels.  Cat Among the Pigeons starts with Ali Yusef, an English-educated Middle Eastern prince trying to escape from a revolution along with his pilot and school friend, Bob Rawlinson.  They die in a sabotage-induced crash, but not before Bob manages to hide Ali's jewels *somewhere* in Bob's sister's luggage.

A few months later, Rawlinson's niece Jennifer enrolls in a girl's school and distinguishes herself in nothing but tennis.  She does, however make friends with Julia, whose mother was in British Intelligence during the war, and it's Julia who contacts Hercule Poirot after a student disappears and a teacher is found murdered. Poirot gets the credit for solving the mystery, but it's really Julia and her mother who figure it out.  I think Cat Among the Pigeons would have been better without Poirot, and would have liked to have seen a bit more of the workings of the school.

Ordeal by Innocence

Agatha Christie considered Ordeal by Innocence one of her best books, and I agree.  Two years after  Jocko Argyle died of pneumonia while serving a life sentence for killing his mother, Arthur Calgary appears to confirm Argyle's alibi.  It's a tribute to Christie's puzzle-making skills that this isn't as contrived as it sounds - Carlyle is an archaeologist who suffered a concussion in an accident shortly after dropping Jocko (who'd been hitchhiking) off at his destination, and left on a two year expedition of Antartica immediately after being released from the hospital.  He only learned of the high-profile murder case while wrapping items for storage in old newspapers after his return.  Determined to right the wrong, he contacts the Argyle family and finds out (as is usual in Christie's novels, particularly the murder in retrospect ones) that everyone either has a motive or no alibi for Mrs. Argyle's murder. The solution is one of Christie's most clever, simultaneously well supported and surprising. The only problem is that I now want to see the absolutely horrible 1985 version starring Donald Sutherland.  It's deservedly obscure and while I could probably buy a DVD of it somewhere, I don't want to waste the money. Wasting two hours to determine how good of a book could have produced one of the worst A-list movies of the 1980s would be enough.

They Came to Baghdad

In her autobiography, Agatha Christie said how easy it was for her to write.  All she needed was a table for her typewriter and she could produce a novel or two and some short stories every year.  She also talked about going on archaeological expeditions with her husband, Max Mallowan.  Because everyone on the expedition needed to contribute, she became one of the staff photographers, taking pictures of labeled pottery shards every morning and then, when the heat made most work impossible, retiring to her room and her typewriter after lunch.

This is how I imagine she wrote They Came to Baghdad.  It's a caper novel, along the lines of her Tommy and Tuppence series.  The book starts with the run-up to a major international conference where the east/west balance of power may be at stake.  That's just the framework for a young, barely competent typist's adventures.  Victoria Jones has been fired (again) and on her way to her employment agency, she meets a young man, Edward, about to leave for Baghdad as part of an NGO (or something like that - the details are fuzzy, both both to him and to Victoria).  On a whim, she decides to follow him and, shockingly, she manages to get a position as a companion to a traveller who's broken her arm.  Once in Baghdad, Victoria starts working for Edward's NGO - at least until she's kidnapped and drugged, waking up to find her hair has been bleached and she's far from town.  She ends up being mistaken for an anthropologist sent out to work on an archaeological dig, where she not only finds she has a talent for reconstructing ancient pottery from shards but also manages to solve her kidnapping and foil an international plot.  There's more (a dead body in the night, an attempted murder on a bus, a dashing spy, and a mysterious woman named Anna Scheele), which Christie ties everything together neatly and with proper support.  It's probably not one of her classics, but a highly amusing mystery novel that's definitely worth reading.

The Secret of Chimneys

Shortly after my dad died, I went on a Christie kick, re-reading several of my favorites.  Around the same time, my mom decided that she wanted to read the books in publication order, and I realized that I had lost several books over the years.  Some may have been loaned out and never returned, but I think most of my lost books were soaked when I had them stacked under a wall AC unit which had a towel under it to block warm air.  A thunderstorm soaked the towel and I came home to several irreparably soggy paperbacks.  Naturally, I went to my favorite used book sources to start filling in the gaps.

One of those new/old books is The Secret of Chimneys.  I know I read it in high school, and I'm pretty sure I read it about the same time I read The Seven Dials Mystery.  I didn't remember anything else, other than it was enjoyable.  More than 30 years later, it's a lightweight wannabe spy novel with engaging characters and plenty of banter.  Anthony Cade, an impoverished and somewhat rakish aristocrat, is shepherding a tour group through archaeological sites when an old friend asks him to deliver the memoirs of a deposed and deceased Hertzoslovakian diplomat to a London publisher.  Murders, theft, a beautiful widow, and an Earl's plucky daughter ensue, with the solution coming through maybe a little more coincidence than the average reader should expect.  It's a natural successor to The Secret Adversary, with plenty of action and slightly more believable characters.  It's her fifth novel, and Christie hadn't quite hit her stride yet, enjoyable but not overly memorable.

Nemesis

I reread Elephants Can Remember shortly after an academic analysis showed that Agatha Christie may have been in the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease when she wrote that memory-dependant novel.  When I reread Nemesis a few weeks ago, I looked for signs that this novel, written a year earlier, showed signs of Dame Agatha's decline.  I'm not an expert, but I don't think it does; Nemesis is much more coherent than its successor.  I don't however,  have a program to analyze the complexity of the language so I may have passed more subtle signs.

Nemesis begins in the comfortable confines of St. Mary Mead where Jane Marple is perusing the obituaries while drinking her morning tea.  As usual, she sees a familiar name, but it's not an old school friend.  The name she sees is Rafiel - the same Mr. Rafiel she'd met on a Caribbean vacation a few years earlier.  A few days later, Mr. Rafiel's attorneys tell Miss Marple that she's been given a bequest by the estate.  It's not money, exactly, but a tour of famous gardens.  Oh, and while she's on tour, can she also solve the murder for which Mr. Rafiel's son was unjustly convicted?  Of course Miss Marple's basic understanding of human nature (along with a few convent coincidences) frees young Mr. Rafiel from Dartmoor and brings the real murder to justice.  There's a reason why Christie's books are considered "cozy" - they're the literary equivalent of a good cup of tea.  Warm, comforting, and often a bit more complex than they're given credit for being.

A Holiday for Murder

This is a bit of an anomaly among my Agatha Christie paperbacks - I bought it new sometime in the early 80s, but didn't open it for at least 30 years.  It's a pretty standard Christie - a rich, unpleasant man invites his family (including a never-met granddaughter, the offspring of his late, estranged daughter) to his remote estate for Christmas and dies violently in a locked room.  Everyone had a motive, everyone had opportunity, everyone had an alibi, and Hercule Poirot just happened to be visiting the local constabulary.  Throw in two impostors and a romance, and you've got an average Christie.  More diverting than engrossing, I'd put this in the beach read or commute book category.  You'll enjoy it, but it's not going to take up too much of your brain.

Murder at Hazelmoor

I bought most of my Agatha Christies in the early 80s, some of them new and some used.  Murder at Hazelmoor fooled me - the spine is uncracked and it has early-80s cover art, but there's a stamp from The Book Swap on the inside cover.  It's also spent over 30 years on my shelf, unread - maybe I was more likely to file away the books I bought used.  In this case, I didn't miss much.  Murder at Hazelmoor is a middling locked-room Christie - a seance proclaims Captain Trevelyan's death and a few hours later, when Major Burnaby checks on is friend, Captain Trevelyan is dead.  The police settle on Trevelyan's nephew as the most likely culprit, and the young man's fiancée sets out to prove them wrong.  Cleverly plotted and diverting, but not particularly engrossing, it's a casual Christie - worth reading, but maybe not worth hunting for.

The Mirror Crack'd

After reading The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, I decided to watch the movie.  Released in 1980, The Mirror Crack'd appeared between two Poirot adaptations (and two of my favorite movies), Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun.  The Mirror Crack'd isn't quite in the same league.  It's entertaining, but plays a bit like an episode of Colombo.  We see a murder, a roster of suspects, familiar faces in typecast roles, and the underestimated detective solves the crime in under two hours with a slightly intrusive soundtrack which brings smooth jazz to a mid-20th Century English village.  It's no a bad movie, just a bit forgettable.

There are a few highlights.  I particularly liked Angela Lansbury's performance, which was pricklier than how Miss Marple usually appears on screen, and she mostly compensated for the fact that she was at least 20 years too young for the part.  The movie also added some back-stage scenes to Marina's movie, and some sniping between Marina and co-star/rival Lola Brewster.  Kim Novak, as Lola, and Tony Curtis, as producer Marty Fenn, chewed just enough scenery to be entertaining, and Elizabeth Taylor played Marina as a desperate woman who still knows how to manipulate an audience.  I also like Edward Fox's movie-fan Inspector Craddock, and the script is surprisingly faithful to the book.  Still, it's a bit too neat, even for a comfortable Christie.  Fun, but forgettable.

If you do watch, take a close look at the young man playing Lord Darnley to Marina Gregg's Mary Stuart.  Under that unfortunate hairstyle and costume is a future James Bond - Pierce Brosnan in one of his earliest roles.

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

Warning - spoilers

It's been a rough few weeks, so I pulled another frequently read Christie off the shelf.  I don't read The Mirror' Crack'd from Side to Side as often as, say Sparkling Cyanide, but I've read it often enough to nod familiarly at several passages.

The 1960s have come to St. Mary Mead, bringing a suburban development and a supermarket to the edge of the quiet village.  They've also brought frailty to Jane Marple, and the indignity of a paid companion who believes that mental decline accompanies (or precedes) physical decline.  Needless to say, Miss Marple is much sharper mentally than the clucking Miss Knight, and manages to slip away from the younger woman's smothering attention for a brisk walk through The Development.  She's busy confirming her view that human nature doesn't change - those tough-looking boys are posing and will grow up to be steady young men; that young woman cannot trust her fiancé - when she trips over a rough piece of pavement and is "rescued" by Heather Badcock.  We've all known a Mrs. Badcock - she's always the first to volunteer for a committee, works tirelessly, and annoys the world with her generosity.  Kind-hearted but so single-minded that she cannot see whether her help is needed (or wanted), she "comforts" Miss Marple with a cup of over-sweetened tea and the somewhat rambling story of how she left her sickbed, slathered on makeup, and met her favorite star (and current resident of Gossington Hall), Marina Gregg.

A few weeks later, Heather meets Marina again, launches into the story of their prior meeting, and then dies after drinking a daiquiri meant for Marina.  Luckily, the detective sent by Scotland Yard knows Miss Marple and keeps her appraised of the investigation.  No one can see either motive or opportunity for the attempt on Marina's life, or a source for the threatening letters which follow.  And yet, there must be a plot because two murders (of the butler and of Jason Rudd's secretary) follow. Miss Marple puts together Heather's illness, Marina's frozen look, and an indeterminate pronoun and realizes that Heather was the intended victim.  When they'd met a dozen or so years earlier, Marina had been pregnant and Heather ill with rubella.  Marina had contracted the illness, and the subsequent damage to her child had led to a breakdown from which he had never fully recovered.  Since the debut of Sherlock, I've looked at Christie's novels with an eye towards modern-day adaptations.  Sadly, with the rise of the anti-vaccination movement, I can see The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side fitting into the 21st Century quite well.

Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (The Boomerang Clue)

In her Autobiography, Agatha Christie said that her adventure novels, such as The Secret Adversary were easy and fun to write.  Why Didn't They Ask Evans fits this model - it's a quick, lighthearted novel and a week after finishing it, I'd forgotten much of the plot.  Bobby Jones (not that one) and the local doctor hear a scream during a round of golf.  They find a man lying unconscious, having apparently fallen off a cliff.  Dr. Thomas goes for help while Bobby stays with the man who gains consciousness only long enough to say, "Why didn't they ask Evans?"  At the inquest, a Mrs. Cayman identifies the body as that of her brother, but Bobby can't believe that this coarse woman is the girl whose photograph the victim kept in his pocket.  He discusses this with his childhood friend Lady Frances (a/k/a Frankie) and she hatches a plot to discover who the man really is - and, perhaps discover Evans's identity as well.  As I said above, I've already forgotten the identities of both the killer and the victim, but Bobby and Frankie are lively characters and Evans's identity is an amusing twist.

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography is more of a rambling memoir than a traditional autobiography, and more enjoyable because of that.  A more serious autobiography would probably focus on Christie's career, but the less directed format allowed her to focus on her personal life, and particularly her childhood.  Agatha Miller was born into the last days of a world Jane Austen would recognize, where gentlemen did not earn a living despite their declining investments and a girl might be raised entirely by a nanny and never have a day of formal education and a charming ne'er do well of an older brother might find an acceptable place in the officer corps on his connections.  She looks nostalgically on those times, but as a 21st Century great-granddaughter of a woman "in service," her comments on servants (on one hand, they were professionals; on the other they knew their place and were happier because of it) strike me as a bit odd.  It was an idyllic life, until her father's death left the family in financial straights.  Even then, Agatha seems to have had a "proper" adolescence and debut, traveling to lower-cost resorts where it was possible to live on less than the income from renting out one's home.  She had a few romances before meeting Archie Christie, married and worked in a hospital dispensary during WWI, had a daughter, and began her writing career.

I wonder how hard it was for Christie to discuss her first marriage.  It felt like she was trying to be fair to Archie, but he comes across as a bit self-centered and unreliable.  They were in love, and they went on a year-long trip around the world, but there's a nagging idea that he's going to let her down.  We know that happened - he left her for Nancy Neale while Agatha was mourning her mother's death and single-handedly clearing out her family home, and that led to Agatha's famous disappearance (which she doesn't mention).  Still, I question how reliable of a narrator she is for this part of her life.

Or for any part of her life, really.  Is any memoirist, particularly one who is so vivid of a writer, giving a truly unbiased view of her life?  Another example involves her second marriage to Max Mallowan.  They met when she was invited to visit an archaeological dig; Max was expedition leader Leonard Wooley's protege.  She chronicled their friendship and then romance through a series of trips, but with a fuzzy timeline and leaves the impression that he fell in love immediately and she had no clue.  Once married to Max, she accompanied him on his archaeological digs until WWII when he entered the Army and she once again worked in a hospital dispensary.

Christie wrote her memoir between 1955 an 1965, but it essentially ends before she began writing it, and only casually discusses her career.  Except for the year following the breakup of her first marriage, she apparently found writing easy.  All she needed was a typewriter, a good table, and a few hours of privacy to produce her yearly novels, and when she wanted money for a home improvement or a new car, she'd just sit down and write a short story and send it to a magazine for publication.  She almost dismisses her prolific WWII output by saying that there wasn't much else to do - Max was overseas, her daughter was in Wales, her friends were scattered, and there wasn't much nightlife - and that she wrote two books simultaneously so if she became blocked on one, she could work on the other.  I'd like to read a straight biography of Agatha Christie, particularly one that analyzed her professional life  I don't think, though, that such a book, no matter how informative, would be quite as much fun as her own memoir.

The Murder at the Vicarage

I first read The Murder at the Vicarage 30 or so years ago, but I don't think I've read it since.  It's been 28 years since I saw a high school production of the play.  As with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I remembered only bits of the story but the memories that came back were more personal than plot related.  I remember the pink blood on the "victim's" white shirt and joking with my friends Michelle and Vicky (the stage managers for the show) afterwards, even what I was wearing.  I don't remember the plot.

Maybe it's because the plot is more mechanical than distinctive.  Someone calls vicar Leonard Clement away on a fake call for last rites; he returns home to find Colonel Protheroe dead in the vicarage study.  There are half a dozen or so likely suspects (including the vicar who'd tactlessly expressed how little his overbearing parishioner would be missed after death), and of course those with the strongest motives have the strongest alibis.  Those alibis are no match for Miss Marple's logic, though.  She's actually a minor character (the book is written from the vicar's POV), the most self-aware of a Greek chorus of gossipy old ladies who annoy the vicar's much younger wife.  In her first outing, she's not quite the sweet natured old lady who sees parallels between every crime, big or small, and a long-ago event in St. Mary Mead.  She's a bit cattier, and rather than solving the mystery on her own, she directs the vicar towards the solution.  I recently read Christie's autobiography and she claims that The Murder at the Vicarage had "too much plot."  She's right, but it's still a worthy introduction for the iconic character.

After the Funeral

Agatha Christie can still get me.  I've read most of her books now, and even when I read a "new" one, I can guess the murderer, or at least narrow it down to a small group that includes the culprit.  Not this time - I'd identified three suspects and completely missed the murderer.

After the Funeral begins after Richard Abernathie's funeral.  A widowed septuagenarian mourning the death of his only son, his own death was not unexpected.  After his solicitor, Mr. Entwhistle, reads the will to the heirs, Abernathie's surviving sister says, "But he was murdered, wasn't he?"  No one takes her seriously - Cora had always been, well, a bit off, and she'd been estranged from the family since her marriage to an artist decades before.  Then (because this is an Agatha Christie novel), someone murders Cora, hacks her to death with a hatchet while she slept.  Does this mean that Cora was right?

Mr. Entwhistle isn't sure, so he calls on his old friend, Hercule Poirot.  Disguising himself as the representative of a refugee organization, Poirot invites the survivors - two grand-nieces and their 'unsuitable' husbands, a grand-nephew involved in questionable financial deals (doesn't every Christie novel have a young man cooking the books?), Richard Abernathie's "invalid" brother and his wife, Richard's favorite sister-in-law Helen, and Cora's paid companion - to Abernathie's home which he says his organization is buying..  A somewhat estranged family, visiting the about-to-be-sold family estate and bickering over the inheritance…so of course someone is attacked.  With one suspect hospitalized with a concussion, Poirot again gathers the family and accuses…the last person I would ever suspect.  And yet, once revealed, the murder's identity is completely obvious.

Christie tired of her most popular detective long before the public did.  She couldn't retire Poirot, but his appearances became less frequent as time went by.  It may not just have been weariness with the Belgian detective, though.  I've always though of Poirot as belonging to the era between World Wars (and Miss Marple, in her sleepy village where electricity and cars may replace candles and horses but nothing else changes, belongs to the post-war era).  Seeing Poirot in the 1950s and talking about death duties and societal changes, well, it just doesn't fit.  He was always more of a caricature than a character, but so were the Bright Young Things and the characters which populated screwball comedies.  The 1950s were more subdued, and Poirot was just a bit too unreal.