Customer Reviews

Evil Under the Sun (G. K. Hall's Agatha Christie Series)

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2 star:		(1)
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In this novel, Agatha Christie does what she does best: assembles a group of diverse characters on holiday, has one of them murdered, and provides the rest with plenty of opportunity and motive to have committed the crime.

Arlena Marshall is a beautiful woman known for her affairs with men, both before and during her marriage. While on holiday at the Jolly Roger Hotel on England's South Coast, she openly cavorts with Patrick Redfern while her husband and his wife watch helplessly. Tragedy is inevitable and few are surprised when Arlena is murdered.

What sets Christie apart from other mystery writers is the wonderful skill she exhibits with characterizations. This novel, one of her best in my opinion, is complete with many well-developed ones which make for a believable crime. Miss Rosamund Darnley, a talented dress designer, and Mr. and Mrs. Odell Gardener, the outspoken American woman and her long-suffering husband, are just a few of the many who fill this story. And of course, the famous detective Hercule Poirot also happens to be on holiday here at the time of the murder. Everybody is a suspect as voodoo practices, drug-smuggling, religious mania, and two murders from the past add intrigue.

The book was adapted to the big screen in 1982 with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot, Dianna Rigg as Arlena Marshall, and Maggie Smith, Roddy McDowall, James Mason, Colin Blakely, and Jane Birkin also starring. A new made-for-tv version will air in 2001 with David Suchet as Poirot and Hugh Fraser as Arthur Hastings.

This book is set in a lonely seaside resort in England with a very mixed cast of characters, from the rich clothing-designer Rosamund Darnley to the garrulous American Mrs. Gardner to the beautiful man-chaser Arlena Stuart and her husband Captain Kenneth Marshall. Arlena's reputation of beauty and ruining marriages precedes her and indeed she does have an affair with young Patrick Redfern at the resort, despite his marriage to Christine Redfern. Therefore, when Arlena is killed, there is a long list of suspects: Kenneth Marshall, Patrick Redfern, Christine Redfern, and Linda Marshall (Arlena's step-daughter). Hercule Poirot, the famous Belgian detective, is at the resort and discovers the murderer in a completely unexpected ending.
I love the suspense of this book and the way all of the little seemingly insignificant clues eventually come together, leaving me amazed at the brilliance of Agatha Christie. I read this book in about two days because I couldn't put it down. This is definitely one of the best Agatha Christie books that I have ever read and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes a great mystery.

The beautiful and flirtatious Arlena Stewart is holidaying in the South West Coast of England with her husband, Captain Marshall and her stepdaughter Linda, staying at the Jolly Roger Hotel on an exclusive island. There she carries out a not too discreet affair with the handsome Patrick Redfern, husband of poor quiet Christine Redfern. Amongst the hotel guests are an American couple, a retired priest, a longwinded army chap, a spinster, a female friend of Captain Marshall and Hercule Poirot.

One bright sunny morning, Arlena is found dead, strangled at Pixy Cove. Hercule Poirot and the local police are called in to investigate the matter. Could the jealous husband have murdered her or perhaps it was the long suffering wife. Could it be that Arlena was blackmailed by some unscrupulous cad? Could she have stumbled across a smuggling operation at the cove? Hercule Poirot fits the pieces of the puzzle together. Amongst the clues are a pair of scissors found at the scene of the crime, pieces of a green calendar and wax in the fire grate in one of the guests rooms, an empty bottle thrown out of a window, the sound of bath water draining from a tub at midday.

This is classic Agatha Christie at her best. The scene is set, the characters introduced, the clues planted. As always the reader wil be left wondering right up to the end of the book as to who comitted the crime. As with all Agatha Christie novels, there are as many twists and turn in the plot to keep you changing your mind as to the identity of the killer. Agatha Christie is always a joy to read and this is no exception.

Lea Ling Tsang

Agatha Christie's EVIL UNDER THE SUN was immensely respected when it debuted in the 1940s. Today it pales a bit alongside the truly great Christie novels of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s--but it is still a tremendously entertaining read that will appeal to both new and long-established fans.

The novel is cast in a "classic English mystery" mold: a group of vacationers at an exclusive resort with limited public access fall under suspicion when a beautiful femme fatale is found strangled to death on an isolated beach. Is the killer a jealous husband, a jealous wife, an unstable step-daughter--or is it connected with the occult, a possible serial killer, an unknown blackmailer, or a member of a drug distribution ring? The plot complications come tumbling one on top of another, but fortunately for the innocent the island resort is host to a private detective on vacation: the celebrated Hercule Poirot.

The novel is particularly memorable for the way in which Christie requires readers to interpret the personality of her characters... and in the process leads you completely astray. Long time fans may recognize the plot device on which the solution rests, for Christie used it earlier in a number of celebrated short stories and would repeat it in a number of later works as well--but to give the Queen of Crime her due, she so neatly works the story that even the most astute reader is unlikely to arrive at the full truth until Poirot deigns to expose it. Tremendous fun, and well recommended.

As an example of how ingeniously a whodunit might be plotted, and how expertly an audio book might be read, this package could hardly be bettered.

Agatha Christie wrote "Evil Under the Sun" in the early 1940s. It was a time when the second world war had brought widespread misery, pain and austerity. A welcome antidote, therefore was to devise a little budget-priced escapism, to depict a group of guests at a sea-side holiday resort relaxing and exchanging gossip and tittle-tattle as they overlook a beach and the bathers who are using it.

The inane gossip and the lack of suspense in the opening pages might wear your patience, but keep alert! Many significant clues are scattered here.

The subsequent murder and the possible motivation relate mainly to a context of human relationships. A drug smuggling racket is occasionally suggested. Hercule Poirot is present, of course, to lead police, readers, and everybody else to the solution of the mystery, even if he needs to ruin a good pair of shoes and risk seasickness during the hunt.

Addictive and ingenious as her books can be, Agatha Christie's prose and dialogue are not renowned for literary merit. All the more remarkable, therefore, is the contribution of David Suchet. Such is the reading of the great British actor that the banal is transformed into the brilliant, the commonplace into the courtly, and the mediocre into the memorable.

I loved this book. I had absoluty no idea who was the murderer. This book had many twists and turns. I had a new main suspect for each chapter. I think that Christie oudid heself in this book. I could not put this book down; it kept me on the edge of my seat through-out the whole story. I highly recommend this book.

Agatha Christie seems fascinated with the eternal love triangle plot (usually a husband, a wife, and a mistress); she uses it again and again in her books. Here we have a devoted couple; the husband is distracted by a grasping beauty, and murder ensues. Christie's handling of this theme is always sure-footed (possibly due to the breakup of her own first marriage due to a philandering husband); here she takes these commonplace elements and twists them to produce an end result that will lift the reader out of his chair. There are, perhaps, more exciting Christies, but this is quite satisfying and interesting. After all, the lady wrote a tremendous number of books and short stories; they can't all be her "best." See how many different variations on this theme Christie was capable of in "Five Little Pigs," "Death On the Nile," "Towards Zero," and "The Hollow," in which the triangle is more of a square, with four sides instead of three.

Once again, Agatha Christie has written a tale that challenges the reader to solve a murder mystery.

This time, the place is a hotel on an isolated island, and the victim a beautiful ex-actress that is a part of a relationship triangle.

Christie has written a bunch of interesting characters, and manages to convey the atmosphere of the era (1940) and the sunny island and even if the plot is very simple by Christie standards, she has done a good job in constructing the story and writing the character of Hercule Poirot, the most interesting detective in the history of criminal literature.

"Evil Under the Sun" is an entertaining and fun piece of mystery I recommend as a holiday reading.

This is one of the best works of Christie.This is definately a Poirot Classic.The Characters you'll fall in love with,I know I did.This is one of my all time favorites.The ending is a sheer shock.You wont find better than this.I was so hooked on this book that I read it within a few days.Read this and you'll want to read it again.

Classic Christie abounds in this Hercule Poirot mystery. Sex, violence, wealth and murder all hidden behind a veneer of civility at the tranquil English seaside getaway the Jolly Roger. The usual suspects abound; a beautiful, egocentric, enchanting woman, another woman's husband who's enamored with her, a frustrated, jealous wife, the adoring husband who seems oblivious to his wife's naughty behavior and the step daughter who loathes her. Throw this dangerous cocktail together with some eccentric secondary characters and the result is murder. Only Hercule Poirot can solve this one, because nothing is as it really seems. The "little gray cells" do not disappoint with a particularly unseen twist that satisfies and shocks readers once again proving that Agatha Christie is the queen of mystery.