A Holiday for Murder

This is such a delightful and fun book. It is my first Agatha Christie mystery, and it did not disappoint. It was all the things I imagined such a book would be in its psychology, humor, whimsy, and mid 20th-century sense of propriety and scandal.

This feels like the most direct inspiration for Riann Johnson's original “Knives Out” film. So if you enjoyed the quirky nature of that film–sitting with a mystery that slowly pulls on various threads and clues, and spending time with a properly dysfunctional English family–then this is your book. To wit: the original title was “Murder for Christmas”, so you know Christie had a good time writing this.

This book explores the Lee family, which is full of all the characters you would imagine: the dutiful son, the romantic mother's boy, the prodigal rogue, and their various wives and relations. They've all arrived for Christmas at their family home led by the Scroogely, spiteful, and curmudgeonly family patriarch, Simeon Lee. And it is in this setting that the mystery in question unfolds. It is Agatha Christie's only “locked room” mystery, in which the crime takes place in a room where it does not seem that the culprit could have entered or exited without being noticed.

Nevertheless, Christie's most famous detective character, Hercule Poirot, is there as a consultant for the police and family, and I found him to be a delight.

Poirot seems much more of a quiet observer than a Sherlock Holmes-style show-off who explains his every step and thought process. But still, he is funny and jovial and personable throughout, and the inevitable final gathering of all the suspects where Poirot explains all his reasoning and revelations does not disappoint.

So does Christie stick the landing? Almost entirely yes. A couple of the turns seem a little overly clever, but overall they work; all the pieces stick together, and you see the bread crumbs that led to that end, as in any good mystery. You are left with a smile on your face and an “of course!” on your lips.

I'm genuinely sad to be leaving this family I feel I've gotten to know so well through the course of this book. But the good news is that Poirot has many more pages wherein I can spend with him–and I'm sure I will. And if you've never read a Christie mystery, this us a great place to start. Merry Christmas!

Me ha tenido entretenida y lo he leído en nada! Tenía muchas ganas de saber qué pasaba. Pero la verdad es que el final me ha parecido algo flojillo.
Me gusta cómo se desarrolla, y la forma en la que todos son sospechosos y tienen un posible móvil por el que haber cometido el crimen.

También me ha gustado como se van introduciendo datos y “pistas” camufladas para que, al saber quién es el asesino, te pares a pensar en todas esas miguitas de pan que había ido dejando Poirot durante los días de interrogatorios.

Incluso me parece bien el móvil que nos presentan para el asesino, es factible.

Lo que no me ha gustado es cómo se supone que se ha cometido el asesinato y cómo el asesino prepara la escena del crimen y escapa de la habitación. Me parece forzado y muy cogido con pinzas.Esperaba un final más feliz, porque durante todo el libro tenía la esperanza de que el abuelo hubiera simulado su muerte xD

Ah, this was so well set up and executed!
The unfolding of the plot was masterful and I wasn't able to guess the murderer, while all the clues were actually well laid out, which recently is more and more rare.
Great book to read around Christmas, if you don't mind a murder or two with your eggnog and such.

~Full review on The Bent Bookworm!~All the Hercule Poirot novels can, in my opinion, be read as standalones. That said, this is considered (at least by GoodReads) to be the 20th Hercule Poirot novel. As such it definitely will appeal MORE to those who have already become attached to the little Belgian detective. To my knowledge he is the only repeat character in this book.As the title would lead you to expect, the plot centers around Christmas. A crotchety but very rich old man “invites” all of his children to attend him during the holiday, and as so often does during family gatherings, tempers flair. As Hercule Poirot observes,“Families who have been separated throughout the year assemble once more together. Now under these conditions, my friend, you must admit that there will occur a great amount of strain. People who do not feel amiable are putting great pressure on themselves to appear amiable! There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honorable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c'est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy!”So it is, and in typical Christie fashion from the very beginning of the writing we are unsure who we can trust and therefore suspect everyone except Hercule Poirot himself. In the very beginning, the hairs start to raise on the back of the reader's neck as various characters make very suspect statements. Everyone seems to incriminate themselves somehow. Add to that certain people start quoting Lady Macbeth and suddenly it's not just the reader who doesn't trust anyone!Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him? – MacbethFor such a short book, the characters are remarkably drawn out. None of them are flat, though some are recognizable as types from Christie's other books. Even the side characters and ones that we suspect, have a vulnerable side that makes the reader second-guess any suspicions.He said, “I see.”She said sharply: “What do you see?”He answered: “I see that you have had to be a mother to your husband when you would have preferred to be a wife.”The hair-raising feeling does die down about two-thirds of the way through the book. I'm guessing perhaps Christie didn't want to make a holiday book TOO terribly bloody and creepy, perhaps? Really though I was just SO CONFUSED I didn't know what to think, right up until the end. And then of course once the reveal happened, everything had been staring me right in the face.Overall, 4/5 stars. I would have liked a bit more of the skin-crawling, hair-raising bit, but it was still a fantastic book!Blog Twitter Bloglovin Instagram

I have been reading all of Agatha Christie's mysteries chronologically and therefore read this in April...I was afraid it would be too sentimental because it took place at Christmas but I found it would have been just as well that it didn't. The only thing about it that was “Christmasy” was the fact that a family who would ordinarily never see each other comes together for the holiday.

I found this book refreshing. Another reviewer likened it to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and I could see that–but it was different in a lot of ways. I have started to find trends in Agatha Christie's writing–how she reveals clues, who she chooses for the murderer, the ways she leads you astray–and I have been able to guess several of them because of that. This time I didn't even try to guess because I knew I wouldn't get it.

Some other reviewers have noted that she broke some “rules” in this one. But, like in any art form, an artist who truly knows and has mastered the rules can choose to break them. She's done it plenty of times before with great success.

Someone also commented that it wasn't very realistic–something like it would never happen. To that I would like to say–of course not. Like all of her other books, no, this would probably never happen in real life. And I prefer that.