More Agatha Christie

I last wrote about an Agatha Christie novel two weeks ago, after I had finished reading Evil Under the Sun. In that two week, I've read seven additional Christie novels. This number is far below my usual quota since I've begun reading Ms. Christie's work.

One particular novel was especially tedious - Death Comes as the End.

Christie went off in a very strange and unusual direction with this book. The story takes place in Thebes in the year 2000 BC. Obviously, Christie had gained an appreciation for pre- Christian era Egypt due to her husband being an archaeologist, but unfortunately, this novel does not work for me. It's far and away my least favorite work by Agatha Christie.

Immediately upon finishing Death Comes as the End, I began reading Sparkling Cyanide. This one was more up my street, as the English say. I wasn't far into Sparkling Cyanide when it struck me that I had read this before. As it turns out, this novel was a reworking of one of her short stories, Yellow Iris. The plot takes a very different turn half-way through, and the endings are very different. Being more in line with Christie's usual work, this novel restored my faith in her after having read Death Comes as the End.