Nicely put by Peter Lennon in "
Getting Away With Murder" (May 24, 1990) in
The Guardian, and adaptable to many really good books in any genre, as well as to my anticipatory mourning of AMC-TV's soon-to-end series
Mad Men:
The post-coital depression on finishing an Agatha Christie story is severe. With the denouement the book instantly sheds its seduction; life seeps colourlessly from it as from a bicycle tube after passing over a sharp tack. The characters corrugate, crimp and fall to the ground. No fold in the crinkum-crankum of the story (which the detective is first obliged to crankum-crinkum to fit the plot in retrospect) by then holds any interest. You are not shocked that one of the pieces of cardboard has committed a felony nor do you rejoice that a brown paper bag with a perm has not.