Hellen

I can't be the only one in my generation that used to watch CSI religiously and after that the other CSI's and after that all the old and new crime series to satisfy the need for new crime show episodes. After all those years and hundreds of episodes my interest in such shows has decreased a lot. They try to offer different angles, but after several hundred hours a lot's needed to surprise me and my crime show heuristics(if the killer is found within 30 minutes, it's not the killer and then it's probably the deceased person's husband, wife or close relative & it's always the waiter, etc). Or is it?

This is the first Agatha Christie book I've read and I may have been slightly influenced by the charming smell and look of this edition (today 67 years old), but I've been pleasantly surprised by the story. No cross-checking digital databases, no DNA tests, no surveillance tapes. Poirot and Hastings are old-school and very modern for their time; profiling, alternating interviews with philosophical ponderings and in the end a showdown that Poe's Auguste Dupin might've appreciated. It's a simple story, but after all those years of increasingly ingenious crime shows that's just what I was looking for.