After writing my review of Agatha Christie's Dead Man's Folly, I found this review on the novel's Wikipedia page:
Miss Agatha Christie's new Poirot story comes first in this review because of this author's reputation and not on its own merits, which are disappointingly slight.... The solution is of the colossal ingenuity we have been conditioned to expect but a number of the necessary red herrings are either unexplained or a little too grossly ad hoc. People are never candid about their vices so there is no need to take seriously the protestations of detective addicts about their concern with the sheer logic of their favourite reading. What should be the real appeal of Dead Man's Folly, however, is not much better than its logic. The scene is really excessively commonplace, there are too many characters and they are very, very flat.
I'm not sure whether to be encouraged that my amateur opinion was in sync with a professional reviewer's contemporary analysis, or to be disheartened that my opinion is not unique or new in any way!
Miss Agatha Christie's new Poirot story comes first in this review because of this author's reputation and not on its own merits, which are disappointingly slight.... The solution is of the colossal ingenuity we have been conditioned to expect but a number of the necessary red herrings are either unexplained or a little too grossly ad hoc. People are never candid about their vices so there is no need to take seriously the protestations of detective addicts about their concern with the sheer logic of their favourite reading. What should be the real appeal of Dead Man's Folly, however, is not much better than its logic. The scene is really excessively commonplace, there are too many characters and they are very, very flat.
~ Anthony Quinton
Times Literary Supplement
December 21 1956 (pg 761)
I'm not sure whether to be encouraged that my amateur opinion was in sync with a professional reviewer's contemporary analysis, or to be disheartened that my opinion is not unique or new in any way!
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