Evil under the sun by Agatha Christie – book review

This post could get tagged under, yet another murder mystery and yet another review. But the author that she was, Agatha can never ever be tagged as just a murder mystery writer alone. This novel, starts with a resort as a setup. It takes a while to establish the characters, the setup and in fact after a while, the spotlight slowly settles on the victim and when the murder eventually happens, by that time, the readers are fully set into the premise. You can visualize the beach, the coves, the resort setup, people playing tennis. Slowly the spotlight moves across all the characters and when the controversial lady decides to take a solo ride, you know that something bad is going to happen to her. When her dead body is found on the shore it definitely does increases the tempo. The template comes alive – one location, multiple characters, murderer amidst. Of the couple of books that I had read, this one was very interesting for the fact that, all along, I was suspecting it was the wrong pair who did the crime. Even after 100 years and having read her books in succession, the cleverness with which she threw off casual readers like me off the target is the testament to her brilliance and evidence for the numb nut that I am. How can one be so devious and cunning and shrewd as an author, who can keep her audience guessing even after a century of the book being published!!? How can that lady be so clever in coming up with such premises and setup? Whenever and wherever she visits, was her mind envisaging a murder scene and content or “how Poirot explains” chapter? As much as I was surprised by the twist on the “who” this book is a letdown from the “why” perspective. The motive was wafer thin at its best. Probably, considering the nature of crime and for the fact that it does gets explained casually in the course of the reveal, I did felt that, with a stronger motive, this could’ve been an awesome classic.