The Peril at End House by Agatha Christie – A Book Review

Blurb:

Nick Buckley was an unusual name for a pretty young woman. But then she had led an unusual life. First, on a treacherous Cornish hillside, the brakes on her car failed. Then, on a coastal path, a falling boulder missed her by inches. Later, an oil painting fell and almost crushed her in bed.

Upon discovering a bullet-hole in Nick’s sun hat, Hercule Poirot decides the girl needs his protection. At the same time, he begins to unravel the mystery of a murder that hasn’t been committed. Yet.

Author: Agatha Christie

Publisher: Harper Collins

Kindle Publication Date: 14th October 2010

Genre: Thriller/Murder Mystery/Classics

Pages: 254

My Rating of ‘The Peril at End House’: 4 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon, Audible

Review:

I’d recently entered somewhat of a reading slump and decided that Poirot was what was needed to claw myself out of it. Bit odd to start at the eighth novel but I remembered most of the ones before it far too well. So this is going to be my starting point for the series.

Peril at End House features Agatha Christie’s Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot, and his good friend Captain Hastings, as he attempts to not only solve a crime, but prevent it from happening in the first place. All whilst on his holidays.

As with her previous, and no doubt following works with this pairing of characters, Poirot is the Sherlock Holmes to Hasting’s Doctor Watson. Poirot is entering the twilight of his life and, despite still having a keen mind and both the ego and pride of ten men, he feels retirement is most certainly what he needs. Not that it takes much to get the little man out of his retirement and back onto the trail of England’s criminals.

At End House, his heart is touched and his curiosity peaked when a young girl seems at risk of being the victim of a murder. Seeing a soul in need of rescuing, Poirot leaps into action, doing all that he can to ferret out who amongst her friends and acquaintances have reason to wish the young woman harm.

From the start, Christie weaves a fine tale and one that goes along at a good pace. It features everything from possible love interests, jealous rivals, those after land or money, and one young girl smack bang in the middle of a maelstrom of danger. The writing is charmingly of the time and has left me using turns of phrase eighty-years out of date in every day conversation. I’m entirely ok with this 🙂

I normally grade a murder mystery on how quickly I see the pattern unravelling and whether or not my early conclusions were right for the right reasons. With that in mind, I’m ashamed to say it took a fair amount of time for me to catch on to who the evil-doer was. There were just enough extra parts going on on the periphery to make the waters a bit muddy.

I enjoyed the cast of characters more so in this one than I have in other Poirot books and thoroughly enjoyed the setting. Poirot’s energy and Hasting’s stoic Victorianism has me wanting to dive back into the series ASAP.

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