Page 28 - Seniorstoday July 2022 Issue
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and patent leather shoes, an egg-shaped influence on the character) so effective, is
head, often tilted to one side, and eyes that her ability to blend into the background,
shine green when he’s excited. And his an unsentimental understanding of human
“little grey cells” that he uses to solve the nature and her shrewd intelligence,
most puzzling cases. Often accompanied all hidden behind her love of knitting,
by Captain Arthur Hastings, Watson to his gardening and gossip; unassuming and
Holmes, he loves to gather all the suspects often overlooked, she has the freedom to
and slowly explain how he’s solved the case. pursue the truth unhindered. Criminals
While some detectives scrabble around on and murderers fail to realise “that with
the floor searching for clues, Poirot uses every stitch she is not only making a
psychology and his extensive knowledge cardigan, but solving a crime.”
of human nature to weed out criminals. Although suspense is the first thing to
He will of course take physical evidence die on a reread, the reader familiar with
into account, but more often than not his the story, the plot on rails, can relax,
combination of order, method and his little look around. Even when I remembered
grey cells does the trick. Blood and brains! ‘whodunit’, it is amazing how many other
Poirot’s cases are invariably finished with details I find the second or third time,
a typical, dramatic denouement, in a grand indeed, sometimes the fifth or sixth time.
study of a stately manor house, confirming Reading books again and again, feels like
to all that he is truly “the greatest mind in returning to an old friend and like our
Europe.” best human friends they promise great
“There is a great deal of wickedness in conversation, comfort and loads of fun
village life.” sprinkled with nostalgia. Why wouldn’t
Wrapped in a pink fuzzy woollen shawl, you go back to something good? I return to
Miss Marple is the most unexpected of these novels for the same reason I spend
detectives in crime fiction. What makes time with old friends.
this busybody and everybody’s favourite Some stories become better and sweeter
grandmother ( Christie acknowledged over time and these books of yesteryears are
that her grandmother had been a huge keepers on my library shelves.
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