One, two, buckle my shoe (by Agatha Christie)

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We have a large collection of Agatha Christie's novels, mostly acquired when my sons were teenagers. I have read most of them, but there are some I have never read, or which I read so long ago that I have entirely forgotten them. Last year I decided I would read some of them, interspersed with other books, and I have finished about seven or eight. On the whole I liked them, but I can’t say I looked forward to reading another.

This time I tried ‘One, two, buckle my shoe’, which sounded interesting. Each chapter is headed by a line from the nursery rhyme, and Hercule Poirot, who is involved right from the start, think about the different lines and particularly a shoe buckle…

We first meet Poirot feeling nervous as he goes for a dental appointment. He sees various other patients, and has his treatment, and spots a lady wearing a buckled shoe getting out of a taxi. He chats to the boy who opens the door (a fan of crime fiction), and to some of the other people in the waiting room. And then he leaves, feeling relieved… only to learn, later in the day, that someone has died. The police think it was probably by the person’s own hand, but Poirot’s instincts are against this. He is convinced that a crime has been committed…

The book follows the usual course of Christie’s crime fiction. Possible suspects are interviewed, various red herrings are followed, and more than one other person dies later in the book. I find this style works well in the author’s country home stories, where there are only half a dozen or so very different people, any of whom could have done the deed; usually the prime suspect then loses their life, and is thus ruled out. The boundaries are clear in most of those books, and I can often work out what happened, and who was the perpetrator.

However this book involved (in my view) rather too many people. Agatha Christie wrote excellent plots, but her characterisation was not particularly good. Poirot certainly has plenty of character, but I found the various suspects rather two-dimensional and difficult to distinguish. Amongst the patients there’s a wealthy (but unassuming) businessman, a lady who used to be a missionary, someone from the Home Office, and a dubious Greek man.

Then there are household staff, there’s a second dentist, and two young men who are interested in girls, rather to the dismay of the girls’ families or friends. I found that if I put the book down for a few hours I had forgotten who was whom… and I didn’t much care.

There’s a lot of politics involved too, and mention of people meeting abroad, or on ships. Poirot’s memory is excellent and he never forgot anything, but I found myself skimming too often, and probably missing significant parts.

On the whole, I found myself less than enthusiastic about this book, and also feeling that I need to take a break from crime fiction. It’s not a genre I particularly like anyway. Having said that, I found it difficult to put down in the last few chapters, as I was interested to find out what had happened. When Poirot - as is inevitable - explains what happened, and who did the deed, and for what reason, I could see that it was very cleverly planned. But there weren’t really sufficient clues for me to have worked it out, and the motivation was only there if a very minor incident had been seen as significant.

It’s not a bad read, but I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to Agatha Christie’s books.

Review by Sue F copyright 2019 Sue's Book Reviews