After the Funeral

The master of a Victorian mansion dies suddenly – and his sister is convinced it was murder…. When Cora is savagely murdered with a hatchet, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother Richard’s funeral suddenly takes on a chilling significance. At the reading of Richard’s will, Cora was clearly heard to say: ‘It’s been hushed up very nicely, hasn’t it…But he was murdered, wasn’t he?’ In desperation, the family solicitor turns to Hercule Poirot to unravel the mystery.

This was my pick for March Read Christie 2022, the theme was a book that Agatha wrote abroad. Google tells me that this book was written in the US but it is set in the UK. According to Goodreads I read this book back in 2018 but as that was hundreds of books ago. I’d forgotten what happened which was good because I got to enjoy the book without knowing the twist. This was a very fun and rather short Murder mystery and I gave it 3 stars, like a 3.5.

I do love a murder mystery that takes place in a grand home. This book took place both in a Victorian manor house, in another grand home, a quaint village, and also in London. The majority of the story took place in the grand houses but I don’t think that they played an integral part of the plot.

There were a lot of characters in this book and some had quite similar names. At one point I got a bit confused between one of the suspects and Poirot’s valet (Georges and George). Of the multiple characters, only about half of them played key roles in the book with the rest being more background characters that were pretty one dimensional.

My favourite character was, of course, Hercule Poirot. I absolutely love Poirot as a character l, he’s just so interesting and intelligent with just the right amount of sneakiness. Poirot didn’t feature in the book anywhere near as much as I’d have liked despite him playing a key role in the solving of the mystery. I think that the lack of Poirot may be the reason that I gave this book three stars as opposed to four.

I enjoyed the mystery of this book. My favourite part of a murder mystery is the mystery and I was kept guessing right up until the end. The book was so much more than the initial murder so it was really enjoyable having extra crimes and events show up. I liked trying to work out whether they were all related or if there were red herrings. As I’d forgotten the twist, I was surprised as I was convinced that it was somebody else. Perhaps I was getting my Agatha Christie plots confused. I do think that the twist in this book was excellent as I found it to be so I expected.

I did like this book, it’s not one of my favourite Agatha Christie books but it is still a very enjoyable read. I’m very much enjoying reading an Agatha Christie book every month and while I’ve no idea what the next pick is, I’m already excited about reading it.