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Third Girl

Page history last edited by Jon 14 years, 2 months ago

Christie, Agatha - Third Girl (1966) 

 

Review by Nick Fuller

4/5

Although often attacked by the critics as a horribly unsuccessful attempt to "modernise" her books, this is Christie's last decent detective story. The plotting is rather diffuse, and the pace slow, but the situation and solution are her best since The Pale Horse, ingeniously playing on old themes (revisiting One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, Evil Under the Sun, "The Cretan Bull" and A Caribbean Mystery, and anticipating Elephants Can Remember and Sleeping Murder). Poirot (who has become more and more like Miss Marple, with his idiomatic English, whimsical 'my dear' attitude and long experience of life) and Mrs. Oliver are somewhat out of their depth among the drug-crazed students, but it is telling that the murder is committed by the most respectable person for the most conventional motive, while the females of the younger generation are treated with sympathy and understanding.

 

Comments (1)

Jon said

at 9:03 am on Jan 27, 2010

Blurb: ‘Then what do you mean by saying she is the third girl?’

Mrs. Ariadne Oliver snatched up The Times and brought it to Poirot.

‘Here you are—look. “THIRD GIRL for comfortable second floor flat, own room, central heating, Earl’s Court.” “Third Girl wanted to share flat. 5 gns. own room.” “4th girl wanted. Regent’s Park. Own room.” It’s the way girls like living now. Better than P.G.s or a hostel.’

It is the ‘third girl’, Norma Restarick, who is the subject of the new and complex mystery that here engages Hercule Poirot. What is wrong with Norma? She walks in on Poirot at the breakfast table and announces that she ‘may have committed a murder’ and then walks out again, leaving Poirot to battle his way to the truth.

Has there been a murder? It would seem not. But Poirot repeats patiently and with increasing pressure: ‘I want a murder’. In time the pattern fits together; many random and intriguing events become logical once the underlying design has been understood. Though the clues are there, it will be a very perceptive reader who detects the truth before Poirot reveals it.

Agatha Christie stands alone among crime novelists; millions of readers from every age and country are addicts to the work of this most absorbing and distinguished of story-tellers. Not one of those addicts will care to miss this brilliant new story, in which Hercule Poirot plays a full and dazzling role in the ‘swinging London’ of young people today.

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