<\/p>\n
Deb scorned: “Agatha Christie? All her mysteries follow the exact same formula – you can pick ’em every time!”<\/p>\n
She explained the formula. I won’t give it away here. Early in the book, there is a telltale sign about which character is guilty. About halfway through the book, the guilty party gives away another telltale sign. Then it is just a matter of wading through the rest of the pages before Miss Marple or M. Poirot announce the name.<\/p>\n
I didn’t read another Agatha Christie book for years after being told this, but one day I found myself sitting around a holiday house, and I picked one up from the bookshelf.<\/p>\n
I tried to put the spoiler out of my head, but there was no chance. The first telltale sign gave it away, and I knew who the murderer was. I kept ploughing on regardless, until the second telltale sign appeared, confirming guilt of the character. <\/p>\n
Agatha Christie takes on a whole different feel when you are sure whodunnit. It wasn’t nearly as enjoyable.<\/p>\n
I am vehemently not<\/em> the sort of person who reads the last page of the book first; I am befuddled by those who choose to do so. <\/p>\n Once I saw the title of the video, The Usual Suspects<\/em>, in a rental store. I remembered that I wanted to see it, but had no recollection of why. I grabbed the box, held it behind me and refused to look at it again. I watched the movie with a friend who had never heard of it. Without any preconceptions, we could just let it unfold. When the movie was over, my friend and I just looked at each other and said “Wow!” in unison.<\/p>\n That’s the way to watch a movie! Don’t go reading spoilers on a web-site first!<\/p>\n For my favourite TV shows, I don’t even want to see the “In Next Week’s episode” teaser; if I am going to watch it anyway, I would rather the plot was gradually revealed to me the way the writer intended, rather than the television station’s promo team.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, after briefly considering abandoning the Agatha Christie novel, I chose to keep going, shaking my head at the attempts to confuse me or persuade me that another character had a better motive, or that my chief suspect was a million miles away at the time.<\/p>\n Can you be smug and<\/em> forlorn? I think that described my emotions, until I finally reached the last page… SHOCK! It wasn’t him! The bullet-proof theory was nonsense! I had been under a misapprehension about the murderer’s identity the whole time! <\/p>\n Agatha Christie: 1, Spoilers: Nil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Deb scorned: “Agatha Christie? All her mysteries follow the exact same formula – you can pick ’em every time!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,35,21,41],"tags":[106,78],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-based-on-a-true-story","category-heroic-failures","category-observation","category-story-telling","tag-anecdote","tag-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}