Kathryn's Reviews > Murder Is Easy

** spoiler alert ** I hate to be so harsh with an Agatha Christie novel. They are usually so good. So tightly plotted.

In fact, I would argue that the setup for this mystery is Christie's most brilliant and engaging. An encounter with a seemingly crazy old lady on a train becomes much more significant when it turns out her suspicions may be founded. I was really disappointed, however.

The first disappointment came with the characters. Unlike a lot of Christie's more well-crafted works (Death on the Nile springs to mind), none of the characters in this novel were particularly engaging. I found that I didn't really care about any of them.
-Dr. Thomas, Mr. Abbot and Mr. Ellsworthy all bled into one very uninteresting person. Except for Ellsworthy's rather tacked-on occult connections, they were indistinguishable.
-Though Wayneflete is kind of a confidante to Luke (and ultimately the murderer), I found her to be a very dull character.
-Lord Whitfield was so pompous that he became a caricature instead of an actual character.
-Rose Humbleby could have been a very interesting character. I enjoyed what little we were given of her. Unfortunately, she was used as a plot device, relaying information.

If I'm missing other secondary characters, it's because I didn't find them memorable and forgot about them.

Adding to this, I didn't even like Luke or Bridget. Luke was about as sharp as a volleyball. I was constantly frustrated with his inability to see what was right under his nose as well as his determination to blame people just because he wasn't fond of them. Prime examples of this are his judging both Whitfield and Ellsworthy.

I didn't like Bridget for the most part because I felt that she was a bit of a Mary Sue. Christie tried too hard to make her look cool and smart.

I found both to be incredibly rude and selfish to Lord Whitfield. I don't care if he's arrogant, it didn't excuse their behaviour or Luke's flippant attitude with him about it. The romance itself was unbelievably cheesy and unrealistic. It happened too fast and made me roll my eyes every time it was brought up.

On top of the lack of good characters, I also figured out who the murderer was long before anyone else did. Once Whitfield started bragging about Providence, you knew that it couldn't have been him. And the only other person it could have been was Miss Waynflete. The fact that Luke couldn't figure it out makes me question his abilities to perform as a police officer.

I give it two stars because I liked the setup and Agatha Christie is an excellent writer.