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Agatha Christie: Elephants Can Remember (Paperback, 1981, Fontana) 3 stars

E-book exclusive extras:1) Christie biographer Charles Osborne's essay on Elephants Can Remember;2) "The Poirots": the …

A Poirot that is too late

2 stars

This is my second read of this one and I had the loose concept of how the murder was done and the key points still in my head from last time I read it.

While it's great to see Adriana Oliver and essentially get some insight into how Agatha herself felt about her work near the end of her life, the writing here isn't as vibrant as her earlier work. What Elephants Can Remember appears to be is taking some of her notes on a story that she was working on and padding it out into a novel by having the various people monologue at either Poirot or Oliver (or each other).

I think even without having read it before, it's very likely that you'll get the jist of the murder about half way through. It's a shame that it's such a poorly written novel as the murder could have been quite clever if she had have gotten to it earlier. As it is though, it's a bit of a miss.