The gothic mystery Poirot knockoff
30 Oct 2021 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimorene...ended ignominiously. I don't think it really was a shocking ending or anything, but I was hoping for better.
As I indicated in my earlier entry about the book, it didn't really have a gothic ethos, just a lot of gothic trappings, and as a result none of the melodramatic and horrofic beats that should have existed at the end landed with the right emotional pitch.
The book was originally sold with a seal around the last couple of chapters and a money back guarantee for any readers who returned the book with the seal unbroken because you were supposed to have been given enough clues by that point to have solved the mystery yourself, which is an amusing gimmick.
However, much like a lot of Christie's Poirot novels, it wasn't really designed to be solved by the reader, and it was definitely a case of having to 'solve the author' instead of solve the mystery (thinking ahead through their plausible use of red herrings and other strategems, like Vizzini in the poison-drinking scene from The Princess Bride). In fact, the sealed pages contained multiple twists. Faux-Poirot's German rival-friend Great Detective holds an Agatha Christie scene first, at dinner, and explains the leadup to the murder and the twists and turns, including the 17-years-prior disappearance of Faux-Harry-Houdini, and declares his solution of the case. Then he goes off smugly and there's a new chapter where Faux-Poirot reveals to the narrator that he was wrong about the actual murderer, but with the murderer's full confession they both conclude everything was fully justified and agree not to tell anybody. In the course of the confession, though, we find out that part of the reason the German rival and the narrator (and hence the reader) didn't have all the clues for the solution of the case was because Faux-Poirot got there before the narrator, deduced what happened and covered them up to protect the murderer! Uhhhhhhh okay.
Anyway, the setup is a prime candidate for reworking into a new mystery with a different solution, because of the general unsatisfactoriness of this one. Still, I stayed curious and more or less entertained, so in the most important sense this mystery was a success.
As I indicated in my earlier entry about the book, it didn't really have a gothic ethos, just a lot of gothic trappings, and as a result none of the melodramatic and horrofic beats that should have existed at the end landed with the right emotional pitch.
The book was originally sold with a seal around the last couple of chapters and a money back guarantee for any readers who returned the book with the seal unbroken because you were supposed to have been given enough clues by that point to have solved the mystery yourself, which is an amusing gimmick.
However, much like a lot of Christie's Poirot novels, it wasn't really designed to be solved by the reader, and it was definitely a case of having to 'solve the author' instead of solve the mystery (thinking ahead through their plausible use of red herrings and other strategems, like Vizzini in the poison-drinking scene from The Princess Bride). In fact, the sealed pages contained multiple twists. Faux-Poirot's German rival-friend Great Detective holds an Agatha Christie scene first, at dinner, and explains the leadup to the murder and the twists and turns, including the 17-years-prior disappearance of Faux-Harry-Houdini, and declares his solution of the case. Then he goes off smugly and there's a new chapter where Faux-Poirot reveals to the narrator that he was wrong about the actual murderer, but with the murderer's full confession they both conclude everything was fully justified and agree not to tell anybody. In the course of the confession, though, we find out that part of the reason the German rival and the narrator (and hence the reader) didn't have all the clues for the solution of the case was because Faux-Poirot got there before the narrator, deduced what happened and covered them up to protect the murderer! Uhhhhhhh okay.
Anyway, the setup is a prime candidate for reworking into a new mystery with a different solution, because of the general unsatisfactoriness of this one. Still, I stayed curious and more or less entertained, so in the most important sense this mystery was a success.
