One Two Buckle Your Shoe - Book Review

One two buckle your shoe is that book that I took up this week to suffice the mental craving of a stale mind. A book written Agatha Christie, its one in a quite a few you would pick up, just as most of her books are. A very vivid and thoughtful crime and mystery writer, Agatha picks up really small things that form the environment of a crime scene and uses them to form a bigger plot that makes the book, many a times, un-put-donwable. It is most amusing of how she acquired these skills as she was born dyslexic. More about the author and her writing style can of course be found in most of catalogues of such kinds.

Coming down to the book, this is one with Hercule Poiriot, a French private detective residing in London, as its protagonist. The books starts with the murder of Poiriot's dentist the very day that he had been to the dentist for a regular check up. The story overall covers a lot of aspects of the crime. The order here being the most important. The book is dated back to 1940's and so forensic science was naturally not that well developed. Putting constraints of time upon its character's death AC deals around the plot with her protagonist moving around whole of London first trying to judge the exact time of the death by interviewing various patients who had an appointment that day. While this interplay is in course, there is a second murder of a foreigner who had been to the dentist that very morning. The reason of death being the overdose of a particular drug used to make the nerves around a particular region of the mouth numb. Following this, one of the prime witnesses of the murder goes missing right after the first chapter. Three murders and not a clue who did them all. One woman missing and the stage was set for Poiriot to profess his intelligence.

The books looks very deeply into the environment that Poiriot experiences every time he enters a new region or in proximity of a witness. This elaborate description gives AC a lot of room to explore possibilities of how the murder could've been committed. There is yet another murder down the line which of course I shall not disclose, just in order to keep you waiting.

The crux of the book lies in the way AC has dealt with the plot and placement of each and every character and the way that she has dealt with the ideology and work ethics of her protagonist. It gives us a far more realistic personality and the sense of being right over his shoulder as all the things happen. The book is filled with numerous different twists and turns each time Poiriot hits a new incident. It is commendable how AC manages to put so many aspects into the book and yet it all finally fits in by the climax.

A classical climax as expected, Poiriot directly confronts the murderer and explains how he came to conclude so. A very typical and every so liked format of a mystery. Its requires the reader to be at par with the author at all times. There are no places where you may skip an event. It all falls in line by the end of the story and everything that at first seems to be random compilation of events forms a line up for the almost perfect crime.

Though one thing that goes against the book is the fact the other than Poiriot himself, none of the character are so vivid that you may be able to imagine them as a very strong personality. Something that quite  few other authors pay great deal of attention to. Human emotions and behavior do not play a very significant role. Only to a certain extent. I would say the hasn’t been so very well simulated as it could have been. There are certain wild card characters that appear seldom in the book but have been cast with fine details. Mr Barnes of that matter has been put up interestingly.

The book can do far better of a general scale. Nevertheless, it certainly is a must read for every novice reader that wants a bit of thrill and some brain working in a relatively simplistic manner. The novel being British has a touch of typical British vocabulary that an Indian may find a tad more over the surface in the beginning, but a little make do does help making the process far more interesting.

There is as such no particular moral that one can derive out of the book as the most important piece of a crime story, the motive, has only been cleared in the ends and puts to question the fact of what is more important? The economic well being of a country or the lives of humans.

Not spilling any more beans, I end this review here by simply mentioning that if you're home for long and if time goes by hard, picking this one up will surely help you great deal. I shall be looking forward to reading more of her works.