Bookish Thoughts

This is my second Agatha Christie book, and I definitely understand why she was such a popular author. She was really a master of her craft, and surprisingly prolific to boot. And Then There Were None  was expertly constructed and very thrilling. I actually have to pat myself on the back for guessing the murderer correctly fairly early on. But then I fell for a masterful red herring, so by the end of the book I was doubting myself. Right up until all was revealed and I was kicking myself for falling for it. Still, Christie always manages to zig where I expect her to zag and ends up thoroughly surprising me with the end of the book. While I'm not as big a fan of mysteries as I am other genres, Christie's books are so short and exciting that I may have to seek out more of them. At the very least I should read a Miss Marple book.

I haven't embraced mysteries with quite the fervor that I did romance earlier this year. I've been dabbling with the genre for years, but I'm picky. I need something that will entertain me and keep me engaged. I need the ending to be neither obvious nor out of nowhere. I want to be on pace with the detective. If I figure things out too quickly I get mad at the book. If I can't figure anything out, I get frustrated and the book isn't any fun. It's a delicate balance. But recently, I've found a few authors I really like (Tana French, Gillian Flynn), and that's helped me start to embrace more mysteries and thrillers. I'm coming to appreciate the craft of the genre and how these stories are constructed. Between that and the recent movie version of Murder on the Orient Express , I finally had the push I needed to try out one of the classics. I ended up liking this book a lot more than I expected to. Sure, Poirot is pompous and Christie withholds infor...