A Holiday for Murder

This is such a delightful and fun book. It is my first Agatha Christie mystery, and it did not disappoint. It was all the things I imagined such a book would be in its psychology, humor, whimsy, and mid 20th-century sense of propriety and scandal.

This feels like the most direct inspiration for Riann Johnson's original “Knives Out” film. So if you enjoyed the quirky nature of that film–sitting with a mystery that slowly pulls on various threads and clues, and spending time with a properly dysfunctional English family–then this is your book. To wit: the original title was “Murder for Christmas”, so you know Christie had a good time writing this.

This book explores the Lee family, which is full of all the characters you would imagine: the dutiful son, the romantic mother's boy, the prodigal rogue, and their various wives and relations. They've all arrived for Christmas at their family home led by the Scroogely, spiteful, and curmudgeonly family patriarch, Simeon Lee. And it is in this setting that the mystery in question unfolds. It is Agatha Christie's only “locked room” mystery, in which the crime takes place in a room where it does not seem that the culprit could have entered or exited without being noticed.

Nevertheless, Christie's most famous detective character, Hercule Poirot, is there as a consultant for the police and family, and I found him to be a delight.

Poirot seems much more of a quiet observer than a Sherlock Holmes-style show-off who explains his every step and thought process. But still, he is funny and jovial and personable throughout, and the inevitable final gathering of all the suspects where Poirot explains all his reasoning and revelations does not disappoint.

So does Christie stick the landing? Almost entirely yes. A couple of the turns seem a little overly clever, but overall they work; all the pieces stick together, and you see the bread crumbs that led to that end, as in any good mystery. You are left with a smile on your face and an “of course!” on your lips.

I'm genuinely sad to be leaving this family I feel I've gotten to know so well through the course of this book. But the good news is that Poirot has many more pages wherein I can spend with him–and I'm sure I will. And if you've never read a Christie mystery, this us a great place to start. Merry Christmas!