The Ragtag Daily Prompt today is QUEST.

I’ve read several of Agatha Christie’s novels in the past few weeks, including One Two, Buckle My Shoe and Five Little Pigs. Even though her tales involve crimes, I enjoy the old-fashioned flavor. Characters are relatively polite; the language is clean; usually immorality is alluded to discreetly. Her two famous detectives are rarely in any danger themselves so suspense is at a level I can tolerate. And the reveal is usually a surprise.

Her two famous sleuths, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, are presented with a mystery and begin their quest for the truth. In my latest read, The Peril at End House, Poirot has declared himself retired; he will no longer use his little gray cells in chasing down evildoers. But lo and behold! A crime lands in his lap in the seaside vacation town where he and Captain Hastings are spending some R&R time.

I have to hand it to Mrs Christie: she has an amazing talent for building her plot into a pyramid, adding clues and suspects here and there as she goes. Then when you think you’ve reached the pinnacle and have a fairly good idea whodunit, her detective flips the whole thing upside down! In this story I had very little idea who the culprit would be – maybe because there were several culprits revealed. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s well worth reading!

I’ve also read two stories involving her Scotland Yard Superintendent Battle: The Secret of Chimneys and The Seven Dials Mystery. These involve espionage & subversion type crimes. In both books the flip is barely believable. In both, when I got to the final reveal I was saying , “Wait a minute! If this is true then why did that person do such and such? If he’s who he claims to be, why didn’t he recognize her, when they surely would have known each other?”

I’m quite a stickler for all these things adding up and behavior making sense. However, I found these books just as interesting as her other tales, even if I did have to suspend my disbelief to accept some of the facts as revealed.