Reading Roundup: Wimsey & Poirot

David Suchet as Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile (2004)

I’ve availed myself of Little Free Library serendipity a lot over the past 2+ years, which I feel has caused me to read more broadly than I do when buying books from bookstores or even checking them out from the public library. Still, it’s also interesting to see what kinds of patterns are emerging in my Free Library picks. I already knew that I’ll nearly always pick up and reread childhood favorites. And, it seems, I also have a lot of time for Golden Age British detective fiction. Here are reviews of two such books I got from the Little Free Library in 2022: my first-ever Peter Wimsey book and my second-ever Hercule Poirot novel (after reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in a high school class — yes, really!)

Lord Peter: The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories by Dorothy L. Sayers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve heard really good things about Dorothy L. Sayers’ detective novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, but maybe it wasn’t the best idea for me to start things off with this short story collection instead? (What can I say, it was in the Little Free Library and I thought I’d take a chance.) These are well-written, literate mystery stories, yet overall I found them kind of weird and bewildering. Even though all of the mysteries have rational solutions, Wimsey’s world feels bizarre and uncanny. It’s a world where people have prophetic dreams, secret societies abound, and Britain is full of eccentric old men who leave baffling last wills and testaments.

Sayers seems to take the short story form as an opportunity to experiment with different sub-genres and approaches to detective fiction. Sometimes, Lord Peter is there from the start; sometimes, he doesn’t show up till halfway through the story. Sometimes, he solves the type of crimes you’d expect an aristocratic detective in inter-war England to solve, like murders and thefts at country-house parties. Sometimes, Peter’s dentist or an old friend or a random stranger on the train will tell him about a bizarre occurrence, which he is then compelled to investigate. He solves most of his cases in a matter of days, but occasionally he engages in elaborate months-long schemes involving disguises and false identities, in order to save the innocent or convict the wicked. We are told that he has a reputation as one of the most brilliant detectives in England, but we also see that other people constantly underestimate him, taking him at face value as a foolish, lazy aristocrat. It all makes for a wide-ranging story collection, but I can’t say I really have a handle on Lord Peter’s whole deal!

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A splendid sense of impending doom hangs over the first part of Death on the Nile. The murder doesn’t happen until quite late in the book, but Agatha Christie keeps cranking up the tension nonetheless. A boat full of passengers who get on each other’s nerves in various ways; the hot Egyptian sun and the implacable desert landscape; a love triangle that seems certain to end in tragedy.

Then the murder takes place and the gloomy atmosphere dissipates, to be replaced by some urgent, fast-paced sleuthing. Poirot has about 24 hours to solve the mystery, and things keep getting stranger as he interviews the various passengers and searches the boat for evidence. (I always love how in these types of books, the murder investigation leads to the revelation of half-a-dozen other lesser crimes and scandals.) It definitely kept me turning the pages, but I did wish that the Egyptian setting was used to better effect in the second half.

I know Agatha Christie got sick of writing Poirot stories, but I really love him as a character, especially the way he reacts to that overpowering sense of doom at the start of the story. He knows the dark side of human nature and can sense that murder is in the air. With surprising patience and empathy, he urges a would-be criminal to turn back, to resist the seductive impulse of violence. All the same, he probably can tell that this is futile, and we know that despite his best efforts, he’ll be investigating a dead body sooner rather than later…