Crabtree Male, 35. Italy

I have to remark this book, absolutely... the first and only time in which I recognized a clue disguised in the book by aunt Agatha!
Clue that allowed me to understand who were the murderer; then, naturally, I couldn't either clearly reconstruct the motive nor the correct modality of the murder!!!

Seriously candidate to be my favourite by the author (upon some thirty books read). It is not a simple detective story, which a murder happens in and Poirot investigates. It is a collection of characters who, in my opinion, represent various sides of our personality.

In strict order of apparition:
Lucy Angkatell: probably my favourite. Marvellous, brilliant, clever, absent-minded, charming, irresistible.
Midge: little Midge, oppressed by a fate that is not tho one of her dreams and surrounded by people that she judges happier than her.
John Christow: an established professional, intolerant of others’s ignorance or stupidity but, at the same time, full of life, of energy and of desire to realize something useful for the neighbour; finally, also conscious of some debt left with his past.
Gerda Christow: a slow-minded person, not particularly brilliant; but devoted and scrupulous.
Henrietta Savernake: strong, first of all. And alone, with her art. Well conscious of her qualities and of her limits. Together with John, probably the most in-depth character.
Poirot: the same old Poirot but less protagonist than usual (“To you it is unbearable that anyone should be hurt. But to some minds there is something more unbearable still: not to know. To the scientific mind, truth comes first. Truth, however bitter, can be accepted and woven into a design for living.”).
Edward: shy, boring, insignificant. Until the day something lights up in him too.
And, in the end, that little old woman taken to the hospital. A trait-d-union between the living and the dead, between the beginning and the epilogue of the novel. Probably the most living one; rather the most.

Unforgettable every scene with Lucy, the dialogues between Henrietta and John, the sketches with the servants, the final dialogue between Henrietta and the old woman in the hospital, Edward’s oven scene.
Certainly, a lot of sentences could seem trivial and the scenes stereotyped, but I found in them as well the power of the novel: trivial and conventional but, at the same time, real and effective. There are love stories, regrets, struggles for survival, tiredness and jealousy.
And the impression – clear – to be really at the Angkatell’s house, surrounded by people extremely intelligent and brilliant.
And, hovering about everyone and everything, that aunt Agatha’s sense of ineluctability of one’s fate.

One of the latest Christie’s novels, placed after World War Two.
The main characters are Tommy and Tuppence, that investigate upon facts happened at the beginning of the century (some sixty years before, then). The inquiry develops through dialogues and talks with people that remember, believe to remember, forget and get mixed up. The reading was pleasant and, after two books, I can definitely affirm that I like this couple.
But, to be fully honest, I didn’t understand everything in this novel: a lot of names, objects, places and puns which made the book fascinating to me but, on the contrary, I also found some confusion; the doubt (strictly personal) that the text contain some mistakes (as if it were just a proof) and a resolution of the story that didn’t satisfy me completely.
For this reason I’d like to compare my opinion with somebody else who read this novel!

I read this book more than once, in Italian and in English.
It is unnecessary to recall the plot, since everybody knows it by now. It belongs to the group of Agatha Christie's books in which - in my opinion - a very good plot goes along with a valid psychological characters' analysis: Vera Claythorne, Mr. Justice Wargrave and Dr. Armstrong, particularly, are the three most deeply described.
In other commentaries I read the expression "Crime and Punishment" referred to this book and I find it adequate: the punishment, as well as in Dostoevskij's novel, is not only the material one inflicted by other people; on the contrary, in both the novels, the worst punishment is the one caused by one's own conscience...
Vera's inner thoughts and monologues, mixed with the memories that come to surface and that she tries to drown (they too...) are very effective; as well as general Macarthur's attitude, sitting on the terrace and looking to the sea, waiting for the end; finally, as well as that impossible rebellion, by each of them, against the guilts of their past.