Title : By The Pricking of My Thumbs
Author: Agatha Christie
Rating
Book blurb
BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS is a pure classic. While visiting her husband’s aunt in a nursing home, Tuppence Beresford meets Mrs Lancaster, a sweet, addled, little old lady. When the aunt dies, leaving the Beresfords in possession of a painting formerly owned by Lancaster, Tuppence insists on offering it back – and is distressed to learn that the woman has been removed from the home, much against her will, by distant relatives.
Convinced that there is something untoward afoot, Tuppence starts investigating both Mrs Lancaster’s background and the home in the painting. Had it been only senility that had the residents of the nursing home talking about poisoned soup and illegitimate babies buried behind fireplaces? Or were ancient crimes coming out at last?
My thought
This book is another in the Tommy and Tuppence series. T & T are a little bit more obscure than Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Christie’s main sleuths, and they’re not quite as outlandish. But they are interesting, because they’re the only characters that really aged in Christie’s books.
By the Pricking of My Thumbs didn’t seem to receive good reviews when it was published. I imagine it is because this book feels a lot less like her plot driven mysteries where Piorot and Marple try to figure out the clues, and a lot more like a modern day crime novel or thriller. There are not the clues throughout the book to figure out the resolution to the mystery, but the book is still as tense as Christie’s other books, and perhaps even a little more melodramatic than usual. Dangerous criminal masterminds and child killers. Is this what really happens in the peaceful village of Sutton Chancellor? The temp and pace of the novel quickly quickens reaching fever pitch in a plot line that had my hooked. In fact Christie had me so desperate to find out the ending that I was shocked to find myself very quickly at the last page. The time flew by, had I really finished it so quickly? But like all good crime thrillers should be By The Pricking Of My Thumbs is addictive to the last.
Although it wasn't her usual style of story, I enjoyed it a lot and kept reading it until the very end.
