Book Review: Third Girl

It's the sixties. The young are hip and carefree, are unkempt and into drugs; the time when men dress outlandishly and girls stay away from their families ever on the lookout for jobs. And Hercule Poirot, itching to exercise his little grey cells, gets an early morning visitor as he is having his breakfast, a Norma Restarick who insists she is a murder. But before things can progress any further, Norma declares Poirot to be too old for any help and goes away.

Third Girl

Poirot, ever thirsty for a case, is intrigued and enlists the help of his writer friend Ariadne Oliver to gather more information about the third girl (a girl who is accommodated in a flat already shared by two to share the rent). As the duo work together, Poirot is struck by the absence of any recent deaths, by Norma's besotted painter boyfriend who seems more than what he is and her picture-perfect family rolling in money. But he must dive deep and look for underlying patterns to confront the truth.

Even with a vastly different backdrop from her previous mysteries, Christie resorts to an array of suspects and red herrings to lead the reader astray. Mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver's portions are a delight to read through, and the way she employs her own fictional detective's tricks to help Poirot brings in some comic relief to the story. Poirot as always is brilliant, although he seems to be brooding over the fact that he is getting old (after all, it's the last but third novel featuring the detective). Slow, largely uneventful and predictable, Christie's Third Girl is not her best. Still, give me a Poirot any day.