Threads – DaneCobain.com

Title: Dumb Witness

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 416

Rating 3.75/5

This was a pretty fun little Agatha Christie mystery, although I will also admit that my attention started to wander in a few places and so by the time that I got to the end, I’d lost all of the different threads and couldn’t really make a guess at what had happened. But with Christie, that’s almost not the point for me anyway – the journey is just as much fun as discovering the destination.

In this one, an old lady has a fall down some stairs, changes her will as she’s recovering and then dies soon afterwards. Of course, Hercule Poirot happens to be on hand and ends up poking his beaky little nose into things, and even though the doctor swears blindly that she died of liver disease, Poirot thinks otherwise. Of course, there’s always a chance that the doctor’s involved, too…

This book has everything that I’ve grown to know and love about Agatha Christie, and I really don’t think I can fault it other than the fact that it’s missing that vital little spark that turns an Agatha Christie novel into an Agatha Christie classic. It’s not too far off the mark though, and I also think it’s pretty accessible and not a bad place to start if you’re new to Hercule Poirot.

Of course, I’m not such a fan of Hercule Poirot as opposed to Miss Marple, and I’ve always found him a little annoying to read about. Here, though, he was bearable, and even though this copy of the book was over 400 pages long, it only took me a couple of days to whizz through it. It probably helped that I had a beautiful Harper Collins edition of it too.

There’s not too much more that I can say about this one, because it’s pretty bog standard for Christie and just what I’ve come to expect from her in the first place. It’s the kind of book where if you see it in a charity shop and you can pick it up cheap, I say go for it. It’s not a bad little introduction to Christie and her style, and it would work just as well as a standalone as any of her other novels.

All in all then, a pretty successful read and just what the doctor ordered. I like to read Christie books as palette cleansers. Hurray!

British writer of crime and detective fiction, Dame Agatha Christie (1891 – 1976). (Photo by Walter Bird/Getty Images)

Click here to buy Dumb Witness.

Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata – Death Note: Black Edition Volume IV | Review

Title: Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Author: Death Note: Black Edition Volume IV

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 417

Rating 3.5/5

I am still enjoying this series, but it’s starting to get samey by this point – and dare I say it, predictable? I don’t know, it’s just starting to feel a little bit as though the authors are trying to make it more complex at the expense of the actual story. Plus there was a character death that kind of bummed me out, although I kind of knew it was coming. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they turn out to not be dead.

I’ve compared Death Note to Prison Break in previous reviews, partly because each of these Black Edition bind-ups feels like a season of a TV show and partly because each individual issue ends up on a cliff hanger. It works, at least for a while, but at this point of the series the formula is starting to feel a little thin and I was kind of hoping for some extra innovation.

Still, I’m still enjoying reading through each of the different books in the series, it’s just that they went good, great, pretty good and then okay. That doesn’t fill me with much hope for the last two books in the series, but hey ho. I’m invested enough at this point that I want to see it through, and I also have a feeling that I’ve predicted a few of the twists and turns that the story is going to take.

I think another of the reasons why I gave this a 3.5/5 instead of a 4/5 or even a 4.5/5 is the fact that it’s getting hard to track who each of the death notes has belonged to. That then had the knock-on effect of making it difficult to theorise about what might happen next because there were too many different threads going on. But at the same time, I can see why that might appeal to some people.

All in all though, the series is pretty good and even though this isn’t the best installment, it’s worth reading and continuing on. There are only two more Black Editions to go now, and I will admit that I’m curious to see how it will end. I just think that at this rate, when I look back at it, it’ll be the first couple of editions that I think of. So yeah.