She leaned forward. “I’m going to tell you things, M. Poirot. You’re not the kind one can just string along. I’d rather tell you than have you snooping around finding out.

Christie, Agatha. One, Two, Buckle my Shoe: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot series Book 22) (p. 68). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Hercule Poirot is glad when his six month dentist appointment is over, but he's back there later that day when he finds out his dentist was shot dead and the police think it might have been an accident and the target was actually Mr Alistair Blunt - head of a bank and a man of vast influence and wealth.

This was an enjoyable read. The mystery was good and I loved how all the characters were busy hating on the dentist. It amused me that Poirot was so sad before his appointment, wishful during (he hoped the dentist doesn't notice his clearly decaying tooth) and elated afterwards. The ending was a surprise - as per usual - but it was fun to follow the path the investigation takes. I really did think Alistair Blunt's niece was involved.

I was happy that my two favourite characters - Inspector Japp and George the Valet both make appearances. And of course, they both gave some of my favourite lines;

When Poirot reached home, George said: “Chief Inspector Japp is here, sir.”
Japp grinned in a rueful way as Poirot came into the room. “Here I am, old boy. Come round to say: ‘Aren’t you a marvel? How do you do it? What makes you think of these things?’”
“All this meaning—? But pardon, you will have some refreshment? A sirop? Or perhaps the whisky?” “The whisky is good enough for me.”
A few minutes later he raised his glass, observing: “Here’s to Hercule Poirot who is always right!” “No, no, mon ami.”
“Here we had a lovely case of suicide. H.P. says it’s murder—wants it to be murder—and dash it all, it is murder!”
“Ah? So you agree at last?”
“Well, nobody can say I’m pigheaded. I don’t fly in the face of evidence. The trouble was there wasn’t any evidence before.”
“But there is now?”
“Yes, and I’ve come round to make the amend honourable, as you call it, and present the titbit to you on toast, as it were.”
“I am all agog, my good Japp.”

Christie, Agatha. One, Two, Buckle my Shoe: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot series Book 22) (pp. 125-126). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.



He looked encouragingly at George. “Now, my good Georges, what have you to say about the matter?”
George pondered. He said: “It strikes me, sir—”
“Yes, Georges?”
“You will have to find another dentist to attend to your teeth in future, sir.”
Hercule Poirot said: “You surpass yourself, Georges. That aspect of the matter had not as yet occurred to me!”
Looking gratified, George left the room.

Christie, Agatha. One, Two, Buckle my Shoe: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot series Book 22) (p. 63). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

A fun read, enjoyable read, 3.5 stars, rounded to 4 stars. ( )

Part of my weekend was in the company of Agatha Christie's feisty little Belgian detective. She wrote 45-ish books in the series and Sophie Hannah was selected by her estate to continue Poirot's adventures (Hannah has written 4 so far). I've read about 24 of them to date. The two from this weekend were nicely paired in an unplanned sort of way.

Both were intricately structured and featured familiar rhymes. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe was published in 1940, and there were definite wartime vibes in her writing. Five Little Pigs has been in my TBR pile for several years. It was well worth the wait. It also had one of the few times that (it appears) the murderer got away with the crime.

The covers for these books make me happy. I love it when thought is put into the artwork. I'd recommend any of the Poirot series of books if you like detective fiction. I would steer you clear of it if you hate bald-headed Belgians with magnificent mustaches.
( )

First sentence: Mr. Morley was not in the best of tempers at breakfast.

Premise/plot: Hercule Poirot goes to the dentist. Several hours later, he learns that the dentist--his dentist--has been found dead. Was it suicide? Was it murder? Can Hercule Poirot find out who hated this dentist enough to murder him--if it was murder at all? Why was he killed? Or why did he kill himself? Poirot tracks down who had motive and opportunity to commit this crime...

My thoughts: I didn't like this Agatha Christie novel at all. I don't know that I'd go so far as to say it's my least favorite Christie novel of all time. But it's probably bottom five material. I just didn't care for how this one unfolded. I don't mean I didn't care for how it resolved or how all was resolved. I meant the way that the suspects entered the story, the way the clues unfolded, it was just odd. Odd can be a good thing in a mystery. (But not always).

Have you read this one? What did you think? ( )

I have mixed feelings about 'One, Two, Buckle My Shoe'. It has a lot of strengths but when it was over, I felt slightly distant from the outcome.

I'm sure this is an Agatha Christie book that many of her readers will thoroughly enjoy.

The plot is very clever. It has more than one unexpected twist. The exposition is skilfully done, with the evidence being presented calmly over a period of some months and with each piece of the puzzle adding to the possible solutions to the death of a dentist but shedding little light on the inner workings of Poirot's mind.

Hastings' absence from this mystery added some things that I liked: Poirot's interactions with Jaffe took on a more peer-to-peer character that seemed appropriate and made the exposition easier and more credible and Poirot didn't seem as smug as he sometimes does, perhaps because he had no Hastings to patronise.

I liked the ending. The Poirot-explains-it-all scene was relatively low-key and served to do more than flourish the solution to the puzzle like a stage magician at the finale of his best trick. This time, Poirot's explanation also served to place him on the horns of a dilemma. Given his actions in previous books, I was surprised and pleased by the decision he made.

So why aren't I placing 'One, Two, Buckle My Shoe' up with 'The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd' as one of Christie's best books?

Mostly it is because it felt too mechanical to me. The plot was elaborate but clever and just about plausible but the storytelling had all the emotional depth of a science thought experiment. Most of us are more interested in the cleverness of Schroedinger's box than whether or not his cat lived. The use of the nursery rhyme verses to structure the chapters was clever but added to the emotional distance of the book. The characterisation of the people in the book, especially the young men, was paper-thin or trope-heavy if you prefer. They were well enough described to serve their purpose as plot devices - a distraction here, an annoyance there - but, with two exceptions, there was no one in the book that I cared about.

It's the two exceptions that kept me engaged with the book. The first is Mr Morely, the dentist who dies. He is not an important, exotic or charismatic man. He's an ordinary man who is a competent dentist. He appears only briefly before his demise and yet Christie managed to make him a real. A man whose sister loved him and whose staff respected him. A man prone to irritability and tied to habit. A man who worried about his secretary having a relationship with someone he judges to be untrustworthy. A man with a life that should not have been taken from him. The second exception is Poirot. For once, I saw Poirot as more than a slightly vain outsider with a compulsion to solve puzzles. This time I saw him as a man affronted by the death of someone he knew, albeit only in a professional capacity and who was determined that that death should not go unpunished.

I recommend the audiobook version, narrated by Hugh Fraser. I think his performance this time was particularly strong. ( )

This one didn't appeal to me as much as other Christies. I didn't really understand the motivations of the characters, even after going back and listening to almost half of the novel again thinking I'd missed something. There's also a more gruesome, more modern crime scene than I'm used to in Christie's mysteries. That's not a negative, necessarily, just a surprise. ( )