Summary: Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot Mysteries#37) by Agatha Christie
A classic Hercule Poirot investigation, Agatha
Christie’s Elephants Can Remember has the expert
detective delving into an unsolved crime from the past involving the strange
death of a husband and wife.
Hercule Poirot stood on the clifftop. Here, many years earlier, there
had been a fatal accident followed by the grisly discovery of two bodies—a
husband and wife who had been shot dead.
But who had killed whom? Was it a suicide pact? A crime of passion? Or
cold-blooded murder? Poirot delves into the past and discovers that “old sins
leave long shadows.”
Book Review: Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot Mysteries#37) by Agatha Christie
Hercule Poirot and his friend Ariadne
Oliver go on a quest to shake up the memories of people connected to the double
suicide of General and Lady Ravenscroft in 1960s English countryside. As Poirot
digs deeper, people contribute new information and this cold case changes
entirely.
Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot Mysteries#37) by @Agatha Christie is about the married couple who seemed to have shot each other with the husband’s revolver lying beside the bodies. The police were never able to establish who killed who, as motive seemed to be nonexistent at the time. Many years later Mrs Oliver dives into a truck load of old hearsay to get to the truth. She wants to protect the Ravenscrofts’ daughter.
Main character, Hercule Poirot, seems to be sharing his main character role in this story, helping his longtime friend Ariadne with her case. I enjoyed that the author describes Poirot as a man with an egg-shaped head, a small stature and a monstrous mustache. She interestingly portrays him as a comic and strange looking personality. He seems very different from David Suchet in the TV adaptations.
Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot Mysteries#37) by @Agatha Christie is about the married couple who seemed to have shot each other with the husband’s revolver lying beside the bodies. The police were never able to establish who killed who, as motive seemed to be nonexistent at the time. Many years later Mrs Oliver dives into a truck load of old hearsay to get to the truth. She wants to protect the Ravenscrofts’ daughter.
Main character, Hercule Poirot, seems to be sharing his main character role in this story, helping his longtime friend Ariadne with her case. I enjoyed that the author describes Poirot as a man with an egg-shaped head, a small stature and a monstrous mustache. She interestingly portrays him as a comic and strange looking personality. He seems very different from David Suchet in the TV adaptations.
Ariadne Oliver, is the narrator and supporting main character of this story. She comes at problem solving from unexpected and creative angles, like comparing people’s memories to those of elephants. I find it refreshing and different from Poirot’s strictly analytical approach. She seems a kind hearted person with an amusing habit of brushing her hands through her hair messing it all up, even if she is very focused on hair style.
The wonderfully descriptive writing takes me back to the 70s. In Agatha Christie’s universe every home seems to come with a set of servants for all domestic chores. I find it very entertaining to read her books as they give a glimpse into opulent environments and people’s interactions back in the day.
Hercule Poirot is the main
character in 38 of Christie’s stories. He is an absolute longtime favorite of
mine and I have followed him both in books and in TV series. Ariadne Oliver appears
in a smaller number of stories as a supporting character, being an interesting
and well crafted character I love to read about. In this story she is the one
who alerts Poirot to the case.
There were plenty of references
to old fashioned lifestyle of the 1970s, like keeping an address book for all
contacts, something we stopped doing decades ago. I find it fascinating
to be reminded how life worked before the digital age, and this is my favorite
part of the story.
Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot Mysteries#37) by Agatha Christie is the captivating and entertaining story of Hercule
Poirot and Ariadne Oliver solving a cold case from 1960, and is one of several works
I have read by Agatha Christie. References are made to other books
in the Hercule
Poirot Mysteries Series in a clever way which triggers my curiosity. As a longtime fan, I am reading most of them.
Fans of Agatha Christie will love Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot Mysteries#37), as will readers of crime fiction. Similar works to explore might be
the Sherlock Holmes Series by Arthur Conan Doyle. All opinions are completely
my own.
My rating 5 stars / 5
Book Details (from Amazon)
Series: Hercule Poirot Mysteries (Book 37)
Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reissue edition (October 25, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0062074032
ISBN-13: 978-0062074034
About The Author (from Amazon.com)
Agatha Christie was born in 1890 and created the detective Hercule Poirot in her debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). She achieved wide popularity with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) and produced a total of eighty novels and short-story collections over six decades.
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