Review by Xavier Lechard
Rating: B+
You can't stop progress, and in these industrial times murder is an industry as well, as Mark Easterbrook will soon discover. Though not one of Christie's most outrageous pieces of plotting, “The Pale Horse” is still a fun read, all the more interesting as it updates the mid - thriller formula she experienced in the twenties and thirties, with a sympathetic young couple braving mysterious (and merciless) conspirators. This throwback to a previous period has rejuvenating effects on Christie's writing, making “The Pale Horse” an astonishingly fresh book, even though subject is rather gloomy and the Duchess of Crime was over seventy at the time. Humor never loses its rights even in the darkest moments (thanks mostly to the matchless Ariadne Oliver) and Agatha delivers some tasty epigraphs and observations on Shakespeare, the modern world and other subjects. Recommended.
Review by Nick Fuller
5/5
At once stylish and sinister, this convincingly handled tale of murder-by-witchcraft-for-sale is Christie's last triumph. The story begins with the murder by the forces of evil of a man of God, returning from the death-bed confession of a murdered woman; the list of names found on his corpse lead to three witches who kill by operating on the death-wish; the play with morbid psychology is unusual, and the séance rivals that of Gladys Mitchell's The Worsted Viper (1943). Characters, including the vulpine cripple Venables (the use of the invalid in the wheel-chair is superb both as red herring and as double-edged clue), the oleaginous Mr. Bradley, and the insignificant chemist Zachariah Osborne, are vivid and unusual, and it will be an alert reader who spots the identity of the villain before the professional Lejeune; and the brilliant method (showing the author's medical training) before the amateur Mark Easterbrook.
Comments (1)
Jon said
at 9:01 am on Jan 27, 2010
Blurb: “As the priest ended his ministry, the dying woman spoke again.
“‘Stopped… It must be stopped… You will…’
“The priest spoke with reassuring authority.
“‘I will do what is necessary. You can trust me…’”
“A doctor and an ambulance arrived simultaneously a little later. Mrs. Coppins received them with gloomy triumph.
“‘Too late as usual!’ she said…”
Father Gorman did his best, but on the way home he was killed; on his body was discovered a list of names, mysterious in that the people listed had nothing in common; yet when Mark Easterbrook came to inquire into the circumstances of the people named, he began to descry a connection between them, and an ominous pattern…
Agatha Christie’s readers are legion and they await each new novel of hers with high expectations. No one is going to be disappointed by The Pale Horse, a crime story not one jot less convincing, ingenious, exciting and sinister than the best of its predecessors, which have made Mrs. Christie famous.
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