WHICH BOOK WAS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE??

glalonzo0408

Am interested to see which AC book you read is your least favorite......

Leopoldo

I think Passenger to Frankfurt.

P_Lombard

I have not read all of Agatha Christie's mysteries yet (I have 13 novels left to read), but so far my least favorite book is Elephants Can Remember. While the book raises some interesting ideas about how memory, familial relationships, love, and guilt operate in daily life, especially the lives of the elderly, the surplus of poorly defined characters and a rambling plot prevent these themes from moving the reader to the same extent as some of Christie's other novels. Most of Christie's novels contain a good deal of humor and while Elephants Can Remember occasionally amused me, it more often left me bored by its repetition of the same facts. In consequence of this repetition, the novel failed to build any suspense. Christie's writing as a whole also seems at an all time low in Elephants Can Remember. The constant repetition by every speaker of the phrase "you know" was particularly tiresome. Hopefully Suchet's recent adaptation will fix the novel's weaknesses just like the recent adaptations of Hallowe'en Party, The Clocks, and Three Act Tragedy capitalized on the strengths of these flawed novels to provide stellar adaptations.

glalonzo0408

Leopoldo said:

I think Passenger to Frankfurt.

I agree....It took me forever to finish that book and I did not like it at all...

Tommy_A_Jones

With Poirot it is Murder In Mesopotamia with Non-series books it is a 3-way tie withPassenger To Frankfirt, Endless Night and Death Comes As The End but probablyPassenger To Frankfurt as I can't explain that one, with Miss Marple it is They Do It With Mirrors but last time I read it I disliked it a bit less and I do like bits.

Tommy_A_Jones

I likedThe Clocks but I agree with you about the other 2 P_Lombard

MissQuin

Passagner to Frankfurt, because there was a ghost of an idea but it never fully materialized. The story is so thin, the end was so open it was unbearable! There was some odd sue of words and phrases sued too. "she was a big cheesey woman"- odd? It could be an archaic  phrase but still.

The other book is Postern Of Fate. O don't want to repeat myself, I simply said all I needed in an other post

http://community-archive.agathachristie.com/discussion/70/postern-of-fate#latest

My least fave Marple is Pocket Full Of Rye, but only because the family were so obnoxious. The adaptations of it are v good. Poirot0 I didn't like Dead Man's Folly Much.

mary.fitzgerald.560

Passenger to Frankfurt. I read it twice, about 10 years apart to see if my opinion would change. It didn't.

Tommy_A_Jones

Can you tell me what the Ghost of an idea was please Miss Quin, I read it and it is the only AC Novel I couldn't explain if asked, I thought it would be lovely as it started with a man on an aeroplane I assumed it would be in the vane of Destination Unknown, The Man In The Brown Suitor even They Came To Baghdad but no

MissQuin

The idea proposed in Passenger To Frankfurt was spoilers that Hitler didn't really die in 1945, but escaped, which I thought was quite a good idea. There was some more details about how he faked his death, but it would be more spoilers. Sadly the idea never really got off the ground, it was debunked in the novel shortly after, thus ruining the only mildly intriguing plot line! The rest was dreary and at times fairly incoherent. 

Tommy_A_Jones

Thank you Miss Quin, I have always wondered what it was about and now I know, Sadly some of Agatha Christie's Ideas were what I would call damps squids and she didn't make the best of them, the first in my view is in Murder On The Links SPOILER ALERT with Hastings marrying as she never appears in other books and the only point of the marriage in my view ids for Hastings Child to appear in a later book, the other one involves somebody and it would give it away for people who haven't read the book and I am not to sure which book the person appears in. 

glalonzo0408

I have to say...I am so glad to hear that others did not like Passenger to Frankfurt....I thought I was missing something.......

Leopoldo

I think by far it' s her worst book.It's not consistent. There are a lot of things that get lost over the book and in the end it seems that nothing makes sense.

MissQuin

Tommy- Hastings is said to have married so that AC colud write him out, as she wanted to use other narrators. 

I think PTF is the most disliked then. But I thought Postern of Fate was nearly as a bad.

tudes

I think Postern of Fate would be a nice book if was not a detective story. It doesn't give any chance to the reader guess the murder. It seems that was two differents stories (or almost) that were put together in one single story.

MissQuin

Tudes- It's true it doesn't give any clues for the reader to guess. I think that perhaps Postern could have worked as a short story. After all 20% of the book is about the plot, the other 40% is repeating what's already happened and the other 40% is conversations about workmen, the past etc. So maybe that 20% could have made a good story.

Tommy_A_Jones

I like the Conversation about the past, The ending is very weak but at least it has sleuths who you end up wanting more of.

Surely wanting to stop writing about Hastings isn't a good enough reason to introduce a marriage which goes nowhere, Japp and Spence weren't disposed of with a needless event 

MissQuin

Could Roger Ackroyd  have worked with Hastings as a narrator? I don't think so.  I'm glad Hastings married, it would be unfair to spend the rest of his life admire auburn haired ladies and never marry!

It is said in many biography's on Agatha Christie that Hastings was married off, because she tired of comparisons to Captain Hastings with Dr. Watson.

:-O

towardszero

Postern Of Fate. It could no doubt have been battered into shape by a good editor, but as it stands it's undoubtedly Christie's worst book as there's so little of substance.

Sad_Cypress

I haven't read "Passenger To Frankfurt" yet... I was kinda waiting forward to it but now I'm feeling a little scared... All the comments above don't promise any good parts in the book...

MissQuin

I think you should read PTF, I've read some reviews where people enjoyed it. If you didn't read it, you may go on wondering what it's like! 

TourayaLombard

Crooked house

TourayaLombard

TourayaPoirot said:

I really appreciate "Crooked house" . I was shocked when I knew the murderer ! It was the strangest agatha's novel that I've ever read . English isn't my mother tongue.This is why all the Christie's novels that I read were in French .

TourayaLombard

I shouldn't have written this comment right here , it is a mistake .

TourayaLombard

In fact , Crooked house is one of the best Agatha's novel !

roamingrover86

CAT AMONG PIGEONS for me.  Although I'm yet to read  PTF & Postern of Fate.

I was looking fwd to PTF, thought it would be similar to Death in the Clouds (one of my favs, weak end but excellent plot.) 

Christery

I haven't read a Christie book that I haven't liked - but that's because I've purposely avoided the last 3 or 4 books that she wrote since it has always seemed like the general consensus that her literary gifts were failing due to advanced age. Therefore I probably will never read Passenger to Frankfurt, Elephants Can Remember, and Postern of Fate. I think that Christie's last really great book written was Endless Night.

MissQuin

I think that Elephants Can remember does have some good points. It;s good to see Mrs Oliver and Poirot working as a team. 

alexandra.albu.507

”The Big Four” . 

jennifer

The Big Four - I cannot get through it.

youngmrquin

Besides Postern of Fate being an obvious choice, I didn't enjoy very much Ordeal by Innocence.

I know it was one of AC favourite novels and the choice for many people to be one of theirs, but I just found it repetitive and and superficial. We read the same description of characters over and over again, and while the narrative tries to sell the idea of showing characters from multiple perspectives, I think it is precisely here where it fails. All the characterization seems to be from just one point of view, and it's always the same.

The whole dysfunctional family setting has been much better developed elsewhere, like in 4.50 from Paddington, After the Funeral or the brilliant Crooked House.