Agatha CHRISTIE : The man in the brown suit

When plucky young Anne Beddingfeld comes to London, looking for adventure, she doesn't have to search for long. While waiting on the platform at Hyde Park Corner tube station, she watches in horror as a man loses his balance and tumbles to his death. The Scotland Yard investigation deems it an accident, but Anne is not convinced. Who was the man in the brown suit who examined the lifeless body? And why did he hurry off, leaving a note with the cryptic message "17.122 Kilmorden Castle"?
Anne's zeal to follow the clue leads her aboard a South Africa–bound ocean liner, where she is plunged into a world of diamond thieves and political intrigue. The vessel's lively nightlife ranges from a torrid romance on the foredeck to the sudden appearance in her cabin of a bleeding man, to outright attempts on her life. Now she is confronted with a ship's roster of suspects and no way of knowing who she can trust. Praised by The Observer as "written with spirit and humour," this sprightly tale from early in Agatha Christie's career offers a gripping blend of murder mystery and international crime thriller.

I remember reading this novel as a teenager and even if I'd forgotten everything about the story, the "I didn't like it" memory remained until now. As I've decided to re-read all of Agatha Christie's works, I decided to give it another chance, who knew if I might change my mind ? And the cover of this edition is simply gorgeous.

Well, the beginning was really good, funny, lively, witty and sparkling like champagne. I do appreciate Agatha Christie's sense of humour very much. Since I've been reading a lot of classics these days, I even found a little parallel with Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, when Anne told us how everybody in her village came to her help when she was left penniless after her father's death. It was all so good that I thought I might have been a stupid teenager after all.

And I loved the first part so much that I was thoroughly disappointed when the second part arrived : Anne's romance (ludicrous), the twists and turns of the plot (a bit boring and unseemly). It all started to look like the series by episodes that Anne mentionned at the start, when she goes to the cinema, "The perils of Pamela" :
"Pamela was a magnificent young woman. Nothing daunted her. She fell out of aeroplanes, adventured in submarines, climbed skyscrapers and crept about in the Underworld without turning a hair. She was not really clever, The Master Criminal of the Underworld caught her each time, but as he seemed loath to knock her on the head in a simple way, and always doomed her to death in a sewer gas chamber or by some new and marvellous means, the hero was always able to rescue her at the beginning of the following week's episode."

And the more the story began to look like those adventures, the less I enjoyed it... I gave it 3 stars because the good parts were really good - I especially enjoyed those including Sir Eustace Pedler. And now, on to the next Agatha Christie !

Quote :
I gave the inspector up as hopeless.
"Nothing more you can tell us about him ?" he demanded, as I rose to depart.
"Yes," I said. I seized my opportunity to fire a parting shot. "His head was markedly brachycephalic. He will not find it so easy to alter that."
I observed with pleasure that Inspector Meadows's pen wavered. It was clear that he did not know how to spell brachycephalic.