Hate oughtn't to be stronger than love - but her hate was.
Five Little Pigs
by Agatha Christie
Genre: Murder Mystery
About: Sixteen years ago, a cut and dry case: wife poisons cheating husband. Or so it seemed at the time. Now the daughter of the tragic couple hires Hercule Poirot to find the truth, no matter the cost. She believes her mother was innocent which would mean one of the five witnesses was lying and, possibly, the true murderer.
The Good
Agatha Christie was so good at writing characters. Here, there are five key witnesses to pick apart. Each one comes with their own intrigue and are so easy to picture. You'd think that going over the same event so many times would be dull but it really isn't. First, we go over the details with the lawyers and police getting three or four accounts there, and then we have Poirot interviewing the five witnesses, followed by yet another retelling from the witnesses own written account. We get this pivotal moment in the characters lives told to us perhaps a dozen or more times, and yet still the setting and the characters are engaging. The reader has to pick up on the small details that are slightly changed as well as try to detect what information is being withheld and why, and this is a strong hook throughout the story. In fact we become so familiar with those two days that by the end of the novel you feel you're in a loop that you almost don't want to leave.
The Bad
Although the case is interesting, there is a lack of tension due to it being so far back in the past and we don't really have any present action to balance this out. What the characters are getting up to now has no bearing on the events and thus the resolution also can't matter too much. Getting to the truth is more for the reader's sake than really being impactful on any of the characters.
The Somewhat Iffy
The characters often repeat themes, for instance the idea of Shakespeare's Juliet is brought up a number of times by separate characters. Or Hercule Poirot's Five Little Pigs rhyme feels a little forced as it comes to him before he's even met the five witnesses.
Overall
Thoroughly enjoyable mystery. For once I guess the murderer correctly, though of course the true satisfaction is in reading Christie weave all the puzzle pieces together in ways you can't fully appreciate until the final pages.
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