Hercule Poirot and romance appear in most of the Poirot mysteries, and The Clocks follows that formula. The reader will need to read The Clocks to discover the romance. A good friend of Poirot’s, Colin Lamb, narrates the majority of the novel. Colin also does most of the investigating while helping Inspector Dick Hardcastle with the murder of an elderly, unknown man. As usual, more deaths occur before the case unravels. The mystery presents a secret from the past and the maternal yearnings of the most hardened woman. Poirot claims that he can solve the case from the comfort of his armchair, but Colin must do all the legwork to present Poirot with all the interesting and vital clues. Who is the better detective: Marple or Poirot? Each follows a specific pattern, but each technique leads to a result. ( )

*3.5 ( )

This is nominally a Poirot novel, but he only makes cameo appearances. The main action is told from the viewpoint of a young secret service agent who is investigating a case where an enemy agent has been arrested but his handlers have not yet been identified. The investigation takes him to Wilbraham Crescent, just in time to run into a young woman, Sheila Webb, who runs from a house in a state of panic because she has just found a man's body inside.

Sheila had been sent to the house ostensibly to do some shorthand and subsequent typing for its owner, Miss Pebmarsh, a blind woman who teaches at an institute for disabled children, but Miss Pebmarsh subsequently denies having phoned the agency where Sheila works. Nor does she own to having four additional clocks in the room where the dead man was found.

Most of the subsequent police investigation is carried out by an Inspector Hardcastle who is a friend of the secret agent's and allows him to participate, in the guise of a detective constable, when he interviews the various residents of the crescent and the staff at the typing agency. Unfortunately quite a few of these residents are insufficiently distinguished, and I did get lost when one later finds another body as to which person had made the discovery. The secret agent is a friend of Poirot's and consults him, but this doesn't occur until about a third through the book, from memory, and then Poirot only appears now and again later on, though he does manage to solve the mystery from his armchair. He is elderly now and doesn't want to go gadding about.

I do recall the TV adaptation with David Suchet sufficiently to know that things were reworked to make the story more engaging: for example, Poirot definitely goes to the crescent and speaks to the residents. Also, the denoument in the adaptation is the classic one of him getting everyone together in a room, pointing out how each of them may have "done it" and finally making the disclosure. That was sadly missing from the book. There are also one or two things that may not be quite clear, given the investigation being done by proxy, as to how/when certain people knew certain details. Altogether, an OK read so 3 stars from me but I prefered the TV adaptation. ( )

This is an almost perfect example of a late Christie: brilliant initial premise; fun, often comic human observation; and a lingering sense that she gave up on the most interesting possibilities about halfway through. It's never not readable, but there's a point midway where you realize she's probably never going to follow through, and she doesn't - although she gets a lot closer than the mid-book lull suggests.

There are hints, as in so many later Christies, that she really wanted to be writing a different kind of book. Hercule Poirot only shows up for four extended scenes, one of which largely involves him casting judgment on the various authors of detective fiction: a long, languorous interlude that feels like Christie's two-fingered salute to a publishing contract. (You want officious little Monsieur Poirot with his quirks? You got it.) He shows up at the climax to smirkily reveal that he knows it all, infuriating the book's actual protagonist - but to what end? Some of the most interesting aspects of Christie's setup are revealed as red herrings, and at least one of Poirot's revelations is veering toward an admonishment to both character and reader to pay better attention. It feels like a lot of trouble and misdirection just so we can all have a bit of a lecture.

The best sequences of the book are darkly comic vignettes of everyday human bloodthirstiness: the woman who keeps too many cats and forces visitors to cope; the little girl who watches her neighbors from the window, gives them pretend names, and glories in the speculation of a murderer; the neighborhood boys who sheepishly admit to raiding a crime scene for trinkets. These could all be in a Hitchcock film, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn Christie had seen pictures like "Shadow of a Doubt" or "Strangers on a Train." That's the sort of thing I think she'd clearly like to be writing: a darkly humorous thriller, well shy of Poirot or any of his ilk.

(As usual, Hugh Fraser proves a highly enjoyable narrator of the unabridged audiobook. He made the story putter along even at points where I think the physical book would have frustrated me, and I'm guessing he's responsible for a half-star, if not a full one, of my rating.) ( )

Often I find a Christie novel slow to start but this one took off immediately with a murder in the prologue. Then the plot thicken to the point Detective Inspector Hardcastle was stymied. His friend and colleague Colin Lamb was also having difficulty with the clues and interviewing the various witnesses and suspects.

Enter Hercule Poirot after he is approached by Lamb for help in solving the case. His lengthy and complicated solution takes up the last chapter.

This was an interesting read. ( )