First Impressions: Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

I am currently reading my first ever Agatha Christie novel and I couldn’t be more excited about that! I normally struggle a lot when it comes to classics, and since Agatha Christie is practically the Queen of old-fashioned crime, I am very pleased with my ability to enjoy this book! Here are my first thoughts!

I came across this book because I have the intention to broaden my horizen a bit this summer and maybe read something else and not just YA fantasy and some contemporary, like the rest of the year. And because I always struggle with classics because of the old-fashioned writing style and the eldery characters, I thought diving in and exploring mystery/crime would be a good way to start. And when you think about old crime literature, Agatha Christie is the author that comes to your mind first – to mine anyways. And so my dad picked out his favorite novel of hers – and that is how I ended up reading this.

I am currently on page 129 of almost 300 and here I am with my first good thought: the book isn’t too long. After reading several Harry Potter books over the last couple of weeks, I am enjoying myself immensly reading a shorter book once in a while now. And that is also great for mystery/crime because when it drags on and on for houndreds of pages, it loses its suspense – my point of view, that is.

The first pages were something I had to get used to because each chapter was from a different point of view, each a stranger and everything was kept very suspicious and secretive. And I loved that. I had read the synopsis beforehand – a family reunites after several years and the old father is murdered on Christmas day and everyone could have done it as no one was fond of him, but only one hated him enough to kill him – and therefore, when intentions were mentioned, I got curious.

The characters were all different, yet totally intransparent which is perfect for a criminal novel. They all could have had the intentions to kill their father/father-in-law/grandfather/boss and so it’s killing me not to know who did it yet. Furthermore, I am really fond of the inspector’s character, Hercule Poirot, who thinks outside the box and adds a special twist to the murder.

The writing is not the factor that makes the book special, Agatha Christie has a talent of filling her books only with conversations, I can tell by now, but she is not the most amazing writer, in my point of view. Her writing is great, but nothing too extraordinary. What makes the book special is the fact that it only contains conversations. Nothing – except the murder, however only briskly mentioned – happens, they only talk and then later the police investigates, interrogates – talking again. And that is brilliant. I love how she is able to create suspense only with dialogues, that’s simply brilliant!

From what I can tell, the book seems to be great and not hyped without reason! I’m not sure, however, if I could read multiple of those crime novels after one another because that would be TOO much – but between other genre, it’s a great alternation!