Christie, Agatha - Lord Edgware Dies / Thirteen at Dinner (1933)

Review by Nick Fuller

5/5

One of the best of the early books, with one of Christie's most ingenious alibis. The murder of the sadistic Lord Edgware, at first thought to have been committed by his actress wife, desperate for a divorce, until her cast-iron alibi was revealed, and of two others, including a gifted mimic, is ably detected by Poirot with the assistance of plentiful psychological clues (including a delightful one about the Fall of Troy), the identity of the murderer coming as a distinct surprise to the equally obtuse Captain Hastings and Chief Inspector Japp.

 Additional Note by Nick Hay

It is perhaps worth noting that Christie begins this book with a classic Sherlock Holmes spoof. Supposedly written, like several other early Christies, by Hastings the book opens 'The memory of the public is short. Already the intense interest and excitement aroused by the murder of George Alfred St Vincent Marsh, fourth Baron Edgware, is a thing past and forgotten. Newer sensations have taken its place'. We might compare Doyle's The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor which opens 'The Lord St Simon marriage and its curious termination, have long ceased to be a subject of interest in those exalted circles in which the unfortunate bridegroom moves. Fresh scandals have eclipsed it..'. Watson/Hastings go on to talk about how the truth has never been revealed and how Holmes'/Poirot's role was obscured.

 Christie inserts a further Doyle reference and in-joke later in the book. As is well known Doyle made frequent use of references to various cases in which Holmes was involved but which were never 'recorded'. In Lord Edgware Dies Christie has Poirot cease his investigations into the current case, much to Hastings' chagrin, and investigate 'the strange disappearance of an Ambassador's boot'. Poirot reveals to Hastings that he has solved the case 'It was a case of cocaine smuggling. Very ingenious. For the last hour I have been in a ladies' Beauty Parlour'. But Christie had previously written a stroy of a case exactly answering this description - however it involved not Poirot but Tommy and Tuppence and appears as the short story The Ambassador's Boots in the collection Partners in Crime  (published 4 years before Lord Edgware Dies; so the joke both continues the Doyle spoof and is also at Christie's own expense - Partners in Crime itself is partly a series of spoofs/pastiches. Early Christies are often, in addition to everything else, well laced with humour.