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“Poirot closed his eyes. What he perceived mentally was a kaleidoscope, no more, no less. Pieces of cut-up scarves and rucksacks, cookery books, lipsticks, bath salts; names and thumbnail sketches of odd students. Nowhere was there cohesion or form. Unrelated incidents and people whirled round in space. But Poirot knew quite well that somehow and somewhere there must be a pattern . . . The question was where to start.. . . .” - Hickory Dickory Dock
The Sum of It:
It all begins when the ever-efficient and capable Miss Lemon, Poirot's secretary, makes three mistakes in one letter. Miss Lemon never, ever makes mistakes, so Poirot knows something is up. In explaining, she reveals that she has a sister (Poirot is shocked, apparently he thought of Miss Lemon as emerging from a pod or something) and that said sister, Mrs. Hubbard, is presiding over a boarding house occupied by a bunch of students and there has been a shady bit of thievery going on. Miss Lemon's sister is quite concerned, and the students are in a tizzy. Can Poirot help??
The list of missing items is quite troubling to Poirot's orderly mind -- they make no sense! A compact, a diamond ring, electric light bulbs, a stethoscope, boracic powder, and more. Two items have been stolen and destroyed, a silk scarf and a rucksack. The diamond ring has been returned, but other items are still at large. Poirot goes to dinner under the guise of making a little speech about crime solving so he can scope out the situation and get to know the possible culprits. After he has clearly narrowed it down, someone finally confesses -- but only to some of the stolen items. The rest are still a mystery! Everyone is ready to let it go and move on, only the confessor hints that she knows who might have committed some of the other acts #bigmistake #flyyoufools. Predictably, she is quickly found dead, presumably of suicide by morphia poisoning, but everyone soon realizes that it was totes #MURDER. NOW things are really getting interesting!
After two more murders, the discovery of a drug and jewel smuggling ring, at least two engagements, and a lot of pasta consumed, Poirot and Inspector Sharpe (his old pal) realize that more than one of the youths in the house are not what they seem.
The YOA Treatment:
Can't lie folks, this wasn't my favorite. For one thing, Agatha was getting on up in years at this point, and I think I'm offering that as one excuse for some of the rather unfortunate racial characterizations in the book. Many of the students staying in Mrs. Hubbard's boarding house are from India, Africa, and other non-European nations, and Agatha employed some rather unfortunate descriptive language in illustrating these folks, and allows some of the characters to make some pretty absurd statements about them (for example, when Inspector Sharpe asks one character why she suspects a Mr. Akibombo, she responds "Jealousy. All these coloured people are very jealous of each other and very hysterical." #YIKES #NOTOK) This is really pretty prevalent throughout the book, and put a bad taste in my mouth for the whole thing. While we've seen some of this in previous books, this is the most overt of the ones I've read so far.
Additionally, this is another book that has a TON of characters, and when that happens, unless she's really careful with it, it can get kind of muddled and confusing. There are so many different people here, and while you do get a little attached to some of them, it's hard to keep track when they're constantly being paired up and their descriptions are all over the place. There's also a lot of kind of side-plot crime that makes the overall plot a little hard to stick with, and I just never really got very engaged with it. SORRY AGATHA! I know I've got some good ones coming up.
- E.
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