A murder is announced by Agatha christie – book review

What more can I say about this lady, whose every book makes me go WOW in amazement. So many different and more importantly original plot ideas, so many clues and event sequences conjured in that wickedly intelligent brain, so many villains with their devious ways of making a kill and every one of them equally or even better than the other. In this novel, as literally as the title goes, a murder is not just announced, but is advertised on a newspaper. Even though the premise and setup sounds ridiculously illogical, the master that she is, makes it as close to believable as possible. It is one of the slowest paced novel of her that I’ve read till now and really stretches your patience till Miss Marple makes an entry as late as 70 pages into the 250 pager. There are a curious bunch of villagers who gather at the house where the murder is supposed to happen, assuming it to be some public show. Dot on time as marked, the mystery guy does make an appearance and power goes out. Shots are heard alongside shouts for help and when the power comes back, the mystery guy is the one who is lying dead with the host of the house being injured. Who killed him and why forms the knot that gets unraveled at its own sweet pace. The killer goes on a mini rampage, making couple of more kills and is finally caught in the act. There are clues thrown all over the book and the list of evidences, in fact, makes an appearance almost as a preclude to the climax. Still, one can bet his top dollar that, no one would’ve guessed the ending and the motive. What keeps me glued to her books is not just the story or the way she goes about it, but her thought process. I always want to write a book based on mystery and thrills, which are my  favorite genre as well. Every book that I read, I am more curious on their thought process and the trigger behind the plot. More than the how, would be curious to know the what, that set the wheels of imagination in motion. Off late, with a spate of movies on OTT being made in this genre, gore and child abuse are often the theme being used in the name of twists. Making serial killers out of school children and under aged ones is a sickening plot of a psycho mind. Such shock value stories wouldn’t stand the test of time and have nothing original about them. That is where Agatha christie remains and will forever remain the queen of murder mysteries. Almost all her murder stories are set in a closed area, with a bunch of people fixated in that area. Even if they use brute force, one of them are bound to be the killer. How the investigation unravels motive and means that spread far and wide is real credit to her imagination and guile, for the simple reason that these were written on an era that predates google and computer. Up next – Elephants can Remember.