Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
To offer an alternate viewpoint, I quite enjoyed "Black Coffee". Certainly not up to the standard of Christie's best, but certainly on a par with her lesser works.
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Having read
The Big Four, I definitely consider it to be a lesser work but one that I appreciate making the effort get through because it showed me other facets of the Poirot character; and while the plot is a hash, I still think the writing is good stuff. But
Black Coffee just seems too obvious and clumsy to me, and trying too hard. There's also a bit of recycling, including dialogue bits (from other books) between Poirot and Hastings, and a blatant plot element from
The Mysterious Affair at Styles. I found it to be
meh and added nothing to my appreciation of Poirot.
On a side-note, do you plan to read
The Monogram Murders? I want to, but I'm thinking I should read more (or all) of the Poirot books before I do, just to be in a better position to judge whether Sophie Hannah did a good job. What do you think?