Murder is Easy by Agatha Christie

After so long, I've finally read another Agatha Christie book. And even though this wasn't a Poirot or even a Miss Marple, I really enjoyed it.

Murder is Easy starts when Luke Fitzwilliam comes back to England. On his train, he meets Miss Pinkerton, who is on her way to Scotland Yard to report a serial killer. At first, he thinks that Miss Pinkerton is a dotty old lady who is seeing too much into things, but then, he reads about her death. One death is a coincidence, but when the doctor that Miss Pinkerton claimed would be killed next turns up dead, he decides that it's too much of a coincidence and decides to go down to the village to investigate.

Luke, and his friend's cousin Bridget are two very interesting characters, and I really enjoyed their verbal sparring. I'm not even surprised that they end up together (I actually think it's a lot more believable than most of Christie's romances), although it does sort of jump out of nowhere. But I've sort of gotten used to the fact that "constant quarreling" somehow means "flirting" in the books, so I realised what was going on before they made it clear.

By the way, how old is Luke? He's "honourably retired on a pension" but has a friend who has a cousin (Bridge) who is in her late twenties. So obviously he's not extremely old, but I doubt he's that young either, since people do tend to believe that he and Bridget are cousins rather than uncle and niece. Unless cousins had a much greater age gap back then. Christie never clears that up, and I think that is one of the unsolved mysteries of the book.

I must say, the mystery just sorts of get solved, which isn't very satisfying. But, it's fun to read the amateur detectives go about their business, so on the whole, I really enjoyed this book. I've a soft spot in my heart for Christie, so I might be giving her books more latitude than others, but I enjoyed it, and I think Christie fans will enjoy it too.