Customer Reviews

Easy to Kill

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

EASY TO KILL (1939; originally published in Great Britain as MURDER IS EASY) is a very cleverly written fair-play puzzle story with a couple of bonuses: a fairly good love story and quite a bit of humor (most of it at the expense of a newspaper publisher, Lord Gordon Easterfield).

The detective in this book is neither Poirot nor Miss Marple. Instead, it is Luke Fitzwilliam, a retired colonial policeman who has returned to England and chances to converse on a train with a woman who reminds him of a favorite aunt. She informs him that she is reporting three murders to Scotland Yard and is hoping to prevent a fourth, that of a village doctor. Before she can do so, she is killed by a car, and a short time later the doctor she mentioned is killed. Fitzwilliam decides to investigate these five deaths.

There is a large array of plausible suspects, but readers with their eyes open ought to be able to solve the mystery before Luke Fitzwilliam does. (This novel has 24 chapters, and my own correct solution was arrived at in the middle of Chapter 19.)

I have rated this mystery four-stars (for a letter grade of "B+") and would have rated it higher if its concluding scenes had not depended so very heavily on a series of implausible and lucky coincidences. To say more than this would involve writing a "spoiler."

Interesting. And a bit disturbing. Christie is really a master at getting into a person's head. I couldn't put the book down. I changed my opinion three times as to who the murderer was, but the 3rd time I was correct. (Another thing that entertains me is how quickly people fall in love in these novels!)

This book was excellent. It was definately surprising at the end, and had a real twist to it. This was an excellent Agatha Christie book, and I recommend it to everyone.

This book was great! And I am proud to say that I solved it! It wasn't easy to crack though, and I mearly guessed it, and amazingly I was right! I highly recommend this book to anyone. It's definately a must read.

Why don't you read this book? Feel once again the spirith of the english country-it seems to happen nothing and to be completely boaring. But sometimes...