I’m still reeling. I ‘m not the only person who is. The deep anger is bubbling, and I’m not sure what to do with it.
Tangentially, I’ve had the longest writing drought (except for blog posts) that I’ve had in my life since I started writing–which was when I was seven. Back then, it was poetry. A bit later, I wrote a short story for school that was a murder mystery (I found my love for it at a young age). It was about a young girl, Birdie, who was ostracized by her peers (yes, I was drawing on real life. Which is still what I do). There was a teacher found murdered, I think? There were red herrings galore, but it turned out that Birdie killed her. I drew the illustrations to accompany the story as well (they were shitty). For some reason, playing cards played a part in it as well? I can’t remember why Birdie committed the murder, but that was very Agatha Christie of me–writing from the point of view of the killer. And, no, I hadn’t read Agatha Christie at that time.
By the way, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the book to which I’m referencing, is one of my favorite Poirot novels. If I remember correctly (and I’m not going to Google it, so I’m right in my own head), it was controversial at the time because while some people thought it was brilliant, others thought it was cheating. The reason why? Because the narrator was the murderer. Yes, I’m spoiling a book that came out nearly a century ago. Deal with it.
It was different to begin with because Captain Hastings isn’t in it. I have to admit that I prefer to have him there because he anchors the stories. Plus, he’s a good stand-in for the reader while simultaneously making me feel smart (because he’s not the brightest bulb in the garden). He has a good heart and an impetuous nature. He is credulous and susceptible to women who have hair that was a certain shade of auburn.
In this book, Dr. Sheppard is the narrator. Poirot has retired and moved to the countryside. He has dedicated himself to growing the perfect marrow, which I never knew what that was. It’s a courgette, which is zucchini in American English. The book opened with Poirot gardening and being angry because the marrows weren’t doing what he wanted. He was throwing them around, and one landed in Dr. Sheppard’s yard.
They struck up a friendship and when a murder happened, Poirot leaned on Dr. Sheppard to do the legwork. The book is written from Dr. Sheppard’s point of view as a journal of sorts. At the end, after Poirot denounced him as the murderer, Dr. Sheppard revealed that he had intended the journal to be his magnum opus after he got away with it. I have some quibbles about how Christie wrote the book because she did have the tendency to dance on the line of being not fair.