Customer Reviews

Hickory Dickory Dock

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I absolutely loved this book! It was great! The only thing I didn't understand, and still don't understand is just WHY it's called Hickory Dickory Dock? The ending was so chilling I had to sleep with the light on! Poirot, as always, handled the case with the same patience and arrogance we have come to expect and love him for. This, along with Five Little Pigs, is Christie's best work as far as I'm concerned!

Every now and then, even a fantastic author like Agatha Christie will produce a virtually unreadable book. This, in my opinion, is one of those books. Despite an intriguing premise, the story (which concerns a fairly uninteresting group of young college students) deteriorates somewhere in the middle and the reason for the random thefts takes an unusual and boring direction. The solution, which is arrived at with little of the skillful detection that Poirot is known for, is one of those types that you forget almost immediately after finishing. For first readers of Christie, please don't let this book influence your opinion of her quality. I STRONGLY recommend AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD, DEATH ON THE NILE, THE ABC MURDERS, and FIVE LITTLE PIGS, which rank among her very best.

I'm only 19 years old, but yet a veteran at reading A.C novells. I have read about 30-32, of all the 55-full lenght novells,. I have to admit the I prefer Hercule Poirot, over Mrs Marple. Still this book features Poirot, and it is still one of the weakest of A.C:s books. I can only think of one that disliked moore, and that's "at bertrams hotell" (Mrs Marple). Anyway this book, is about a private studenthome, there things are not what they should be...Of course this leads 2 murder, after a while... What I didn't like about this book was the poor ending, and the ridiculos side plot,,,with a lillte taste of "organized crime", and call me old fashioned, but I just don't think it belongs in a detective novell.... But remember that this is only my humble opinion...read it and judge for yourself!

HICKORY DICKORY DOCK is unique in that it involves Hercule Poirot's confidential secretary Miss Lemon. Christie is ruthless in her general description of Miss Lemon, often referring to her has being little more than a highly intelligent, unemotional calculating machine. In addition to effciently running Poirot's front office, Miss Lemon is concerned primarily with inventing her own filing system. The poor thing is also described as "hideous" in appearance.

I found it very interesting how BBC's Mystery! altered the character of Miss Lemon for TV. There's nothing at all "hideous" in actress Pauline Moran's characterization. She is much more outgoing & has a strictly platonic--but hurmorous--relationship with Poirot's sidekick, Captain Hastings. Many times they exasperate the fastidous Belgian detective. This makes for a good script. Pauline Moran is perfect in this role. The one thing that keeps Miss Lemon at least a little aligned with Christie's original character is a very tight roll of large curls crossing her forehead as a fringe--this hairdo is, indeed, deliberately hideous.

I like both Christie's Miss Lemon & BBC's version.

Well, back to HICKORY DICKORY DOCK.

In this story Miss Lemon's sister is introduced (for the first & only time.) Poirot is bowled over by the fact that Miss Lemon even HAS a sister--or any family at all. He seems to think that she was created by a purely technological union of two typewriters. As it turns out, the sister manages a youth hostel of full-time students. Thefts begin occuring & other strange incidents. Miss Lemon & her sister ask Poirot to look into things.

The resulting story has more than a few highly implausible sub-plots, including the existence of a drug smuggling ring. This raises the question, is Christie's mystery world meant to be realistic or fanciful? I don't think it was necessarily meant to be realistic, but even at that Christie often goes wide of the mark. For example, in HICKORY DICKORY DOCK the drug smuggling motif goes like this: The drug cartel has come up with the perfect plan to get drugs into Englad--they hide them in a secret compartment in--get this--STUDENT BACKPACKS! After all, no one would suspect (albeit unwitting) foreign students going throughg British customs with their backpacks...oh, Agatha, Agatha.

On the plus side, there's plenty of humor in HICKORY DICKORY DOCK that makes it worthwhile reading. I also think that Christie demonstrates a certain degree of tolerance for racial & political differences. One of the few students who ISN'T hiding something is a female MD student from Africa named Elizabeth. Not only is she above suspicion, but she is studying primarily in order to eventually improve things back home. She's also a Communist & Christie sort of takes it all in stride (after all, Christie's the one who made her up in the first place.) Unfortunately the other students have nicknamed Elizabeth "Black Bess." I honestly don't think AC was showing prejudice--I think it was to favorably comapare this stdent's superior, achieving attitude to Queen Elizabeth I, but I can also see why it should have been left out--and WASN'T mentioned in the film version at all.

I really enjoyed this Poirot mystery. He has to solve a mystery that starts as petty thefts at a student boarding house and ends with murders. There are some unique characters, such as the proprietor of the school. It's a little dated, but still gripping, and there are some great plot twists. Poirot is not featured as much as I expected either, giving us time to get to know new characters.

It was a great book! But, why *was* it named "Hickory, Dickory, Death"? (USA Title). I suppose, at one point, when Nigel said his arrangement of the poem - he said "Hickory, Dickory, Death" but that's all! But, I enjoyed the book all the same. I would recommend to age 13 and above. I am 13, and it was hard to understand at some parts. Such as the vocabulary and the plot.

After reading about 2 - 3 Poirot books, I've noticed a pattern forming in them: a murder occurs, Hercule Poirot, with his distinctive personality and habits is called on the scene, another murder (or maybe 2) happen, and then Poirot manages to superbly solve the mystery. Then, he calls up everyone, tries to put the blame on each person (and make the innocents squirm...), and finally revealing the case against the criminal. This book lacked this pattern: Poirot was assisting the police (a very rare occurance in more modern mysteries, where the "good" detective has to work against them) to solve a crime, and the blame was put on a certain character after being framed by another one.

Even though this was an original book in that respect, I found the story as a whole very predictable, old fashioned (which is to be expected since it was written quite a while ago) and full of places where I figured out how useless the police or Poirot were acting, and came up with a better way of doing things myself... Also, the description of the foreign students seemed a little prejusticed to me, even though the different era could account for that, too.

I think that this book was very good! It's the only Agatha Christie book I have read so far, but from reading that book I want to read more of Agatha Christie's books. It had kind of a slow plot but all in all the ending is good! You have to be Poirot to figure this murder mystery out! It was a fun, yet slow book to read. Not the best book I've read but totally not the worst! I suggest you read it, you'll never forget it!

A good novel, a good plot, well written. Even though it isn't anything to remember for the rest of your life.