Scan barcode
A review by thaurisil
The Hound of Death by Agatha Christie
2.0
This is a rather strange set of stories. Unexpectedly for Agatha Christie, most of the stories are not mysteries, bur rather paranormal stories that deal with ghosts, seances, mind-reading and future-telling, the subconscious and other such spiritual, mystic themes. Most of the stories involve a psychiatrist or some sort of doctor or specialist who deals with the mind.
These are not particularly well-written stories, and if they weren't written by Agatha Christie, I doubt they'd have survived till today. I much preferred The Mysterious Mr. Quin, which is also a book of short stories each with a hint of magic, but each having a mystery and a solution that is very much based in the real, practical world.
To give Agatha Christie the benefit of the doubt, I think she knew that these weren't good stories. Most of them were written and published in magazines in the 1920s when she was still a budding writer. The actual book, when published in 1933, was published not by one of her regular publishers but instead of Odhams Press, and you could only get it by buying a magazine from Odhams, in which there was a coupon that you could exchange for one of six books. In short, this was a marketing gimmick by the publishers, and was hardly meant to be a serious book in the Christie collection.
Several people have stated in their reviews that The Witness for the Prosecution was their favourite story. I'm guessing it's because this is the only mystery story that resembles a regular Agatha Christie story. It's actually not a particularly good mystery story. My favourite is The Mystery of the Blue Jar, which seems to be about a ghost, but the twist at the end reveals that this is more of a mystery and that there is actually nothing paranormal about the story at all.
These are not particularly well-written stories, and if they weren't written by Agatha Christie, I doubt they'd have survived till today. I much preferred The Mysterious Mr. Quin, which is also a book of short stories each with a hint of magic, but each having a mystery and a solution that is very much based in the real, practical world.
To give Agatha Christie the benefit of the doubt, I think she knew that these weren't good stories. Most of them were written and published in magazines in the 1920s when she was still a budding writer. The actual book, when published in 1933, was published not by one of her regular publishers but instead of Odhams Press, and you could only get it by buying a magazine from Odhams, in which there was a coupon that you could exchange for one of six books. In short, this was a marketing gimmick by the publishers, and was hardly meant to be a serious book in the Christie collection.
Several people have stated in their reviews that The Witness for the Prosecution was their favourite story. I'm guessing it's because this is the only mystery story that resembles a regular Agatha Christie story. It's actually not a particularly good mystery story. My favourite is The Mystery of the Blue Jar, which seems to be about a ghost, but the twist at the end reveals that this is more of a mystery and that there is actually nothing paranormal about the story at all.