Monday, January 1, 2018

Christie's Little Pigs

Five Little PigsFive Little Pigs by Agatha Christie
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another fun whodunnit!

This time around Hercule Poirot is tasked with digging up a 16 year old murder cold case. Everyone is satisfied with the previous resolution, except for one person. And that person asks Poirot to look into it. Of course, once he gets those little grey cells working, he finds something amiss.

In play form, this quicky still manages a modicum of depth within the story and characters, not a trait mysteries are always well-known for! And the plot is just as slippery as many of Christie's novels. The woman-scorned premise is a trifle basic, but only so much as the characters themselves falsely believe. It actually has a nice twist to it.

I could do without the usual and ad nauseam admission-by-the-perp ending. It's a laughable tool of expedience, which I should be thankful for (because nobody really wants to read a boring trial with an inevitable ending, do they?) and yet it never ceases to inadvertently assume me.

A very strong 3.5 stars!

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A Short Review of Chandler Short Stories

Red Wind: A Collection of Short StoriesRed Wind: A Collection of Short Stories by Raymond Chandler
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A dame loses her pearls. Said dame saves a detective. Said detective tries to recover those pearls for her.

Then a little dude ends up dead. A slightly odd couple from West LA gets roped in. An investigating copper gets duped and then gets sore about it. And that's not all! I mean, geez louise, there's a lot going on for such a short story.

Red Wind is a fast talkin', fast movin' street-level crime thriller from Raymond Chandler that only comes up short due to it being so dang short. Seriously, this story could use a few more pages to breathe a bit more.


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