After the Funeral

I finished After the Funeral by Agatha Christie late last night after starting it earlier this week.

Wow, really good. I think one of her best written novels, up there with And Then There Were None or also called Ten Little Indians.

This one was written in 1956 and again Christie slips in her opinions of post-war England and the beginnings of the artsy, bougie generation that is growing up with little or no memory of World War II. Surprisingly, Poirot plays only a small part in most of the novel but comes in the end to unveil the murderer.

I know I say this a lot about her novels but I really didn't see this one coming. She's soooo good at laying down false clues. And the full diverse fascinating cast of characters made the plot so interesting. How she writes the characters, ordinary people, yet so right on the money as matching people we all know. It would be a great movie but could never be because the producers would cast a well-known person in the murderer role and the audience would be able to tell from the beginning who did it. Ideally A+ actors and actresses would vie for all the roles and make it a confusing wonderful mess with the murderer kept very secret until the end. As After the Funeral involves a multi-generational family meeting over several large scenes, it would be a very interesting movie.