The man in the brown suit. More about Agatha Christie

Nobody reads this blog freqüently, but anyway, having a quick look at it it's easy to appreciate that the name of the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie appears often in it.

I like her style very much. When I was fouteen years old I read most of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes histories and I became quite interested in crime investigation, private detectives and policial stories. And then there was Poirot, Marple and all the Christie's characters. All so particular, so funny in their style... There are many more I like but as I like to write about the book I just finished today is Agatha's time.

I usually read her books in my mother tongue, which is Catalan (the language in which I write most of this blog). The problem is that not all her books are translated into catalan... So I got all the books which are translated into catalan, in catalan, and the other ones I get them in the original version (I always try to read original versions). From time to time someone lends me one in Spanish (my second language)... But most of them... Catalan and English.

The last one I've just read is The man in the brown suit. Christie has two different and essentially characteristic styles: the most famous, the Poirot-Marple calm and quiet style with not a great deal of action... Bases upon interviews with suspects and analising the crime scene (without the techniques of Bruckheimer's CSI). The other one is completely different: non-stop action and adventure from the very begining. Everyone is a suspect. Guns, shots, tension, intrigue, suspicion... even romance (but in a light way).

The man in the brown suit is from the second kind. The action begins in UK but soon it moves to South Africa... I recommend you to google the names of the places which appear in the book so you can see the views which are mentioned... It's a modern way of reading a book. And some of them are wonderful.

In this book appears for the first time a character which would appear later on in some of her best novels (Cards on the Table - one of her best closed-room murder novel in which the main detective was Poirot, Death on the Nile - famous also because it's adaptation to the wide screen and in which also accompanied to a great Poirot, and finally in Sparkling Cyanide in which he alone must discover the murderer ): the Colonel Race.

Quite both interesting and amusing book:

The man in the brown suit
Agatha Christie
HarperCollins Publishers