Read as part of cbr13bingo: fauna. There’s a raven on the cover.
Endless Night is the rare Agatha Christie standalone and I’m finding that between this, A Pale Horse, and And Then There Were None, I’m finding that I may enjoy her standalone works more than those that feature her superstar heroes Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
(A Crooked House may be the exception to this rule. That’s one I liked a lot less than I thought I would.)
I think without the need to shoehorn the large personality and abrasive, inquisitive nature of both detectives respectively, Christie is allowed to do exposition through the eyes of unfamiliar characters, forcing the reader to be the inquisitor rather than a protagonist-type inspector. In this regard, we get quite a story that centers around a haunted house…
Or so we think.
This is one of those books where everything isn’t as it seems. To describe it would be to spoil it but I also can’t say why I like it without describing it. So I’ll just say this…
I don’t usually like books when I have the rug pulled out from under me. This is an exception to the rule. Though I’m not sure Christie seeds clues effectively for the payoff, it did make me question what I was reading. I may have to reread this some time as any aspiring mystery writer should read some of her work just for her technique alone.
It’s said that she never cheats the reader. I’m not sure I feel cheated. I just don’t know if I could go as far as Christie wants me to go. But I did enjoy getting there, thinking the story was going to go one way when it lurched another.