Wow. This one was an absolute bitch to find. It's not in any collection that I could find so I had to download this Kobo app in order to buy a copy ofWow. This one was an absolute bitch to find. It's not in any collection that I could find so I had to download this Kobo app in order to buy a copy of it. WTF, Amazon?! I wanted to one-click this shit and not have to link a Walmart account to a Google account so I could buy a .99 short story that I was 98% sure was complete ass simply due to my obsessive need to read all things Agatha Christie! Admittedly, this is more of a me problem than an Amazon problem. What wasn't a me problem were all the errors in my digital copy. "I will dis turb you no longer." <--for example. It was ann oying.
[image]
Ok, so this was originally titled The Man who was Number Four: Further Adventures of M. Poirot in The Sketch magazine in 1924. This was retitled The Chess Problem, slightly reworked with the other short stories in that magazine series, and turned into the novel The Big Four. I gotta be honest, that is one of my least favorite Poirot stories. So. You can imagine that this thing (a less polished version of that story) didn't make my heart tingle.
[image]
The mystery itself is actually not bad. The gist is that a reclusive chess player was the possible target of a murder. His opponent in a chess match apparently dropped dead of a heart attack a few moves into their game but Inspector Japp suspects that it was possibly poison that killed the man. Poirot says `mon Dieu! as he realizes the twist, pulls the curtain back to reveal the killer, and Japp and Hastings are appropriately impressed by his foreign Belgian-man skills.
[image]
No, it wasn't the story. It's the writing that's kind of sucky in this one. Stilted and off.<--it pains me to say that. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone but people like myself who are absolute completionists. Not Recommended for the casual reader....more
Loading...
