Is murder easy? Of course for the one who is exceptionally clever and
is just the last person any one would suspect. But the lucky streak cannot go on forever, for he is bound to make a mistake sooner or later, isn't he? That is precisely the case with Agatha Christie's
Murder is Easy. Written just before her classic
And Then There Were None, it's at best a dull long-winded amateur detective mystery marked by occasional streaks of brilliance.
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| Murder is Easy |
Returning from overseas, policeman Luke Fitzwilliam (the protagonist) meets Miss Pinkerton on a train to London, who proceeds to tell him an extraordinary story of multiple murders in her quiet idyllic village of Wychwood. She also adds that Dr. John Humbleby will be the next victim and that she is undertaking this trip to report the killer to Scotland Yard. Although Luke assumes the lady to be making up stories, he is surprised when he learns of Miss Pinkerton's death in a hit-and-run accident, and understandably shocked when he stumbles upon the obituary notice of Dr. Humbleby in
The Times a week later. Curious to get to the bottom of it all, Luke at once embarks on a quest to find the serial killer.
The intriguing premise is possibly the best thing about
Murder is Easy, for Poirot's replacement Luke is no match for the famous detective. But perhaps it was intentional, this character lacking his counterpart's "little grey cells", as his blundering act results in illuminating conversations that bring about an element of surprise even if despite Christie's best attempts at bamboozling (by shoehorning a clumsy romantic subplot and elements of macabre deliberately introduced to confuse the readers), the ending can be guessed a mile away. If only the story never sidetracked and managed to sustain its momentum,
Murder is Easy wouldn't have been that
easy to put down.
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