No worries :D I know better than to read the discussion thread for a mystery book before I've read it cover to cover. I'm still enjoying it regardless, and I'm kind of searching for the clues that are inevitably there.
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I've just come upon this thread and am interested to see how many people are reading their first Agatha Christie! You lucky people! I read them all many years ago and I love detective stories - not the gory kind, just the 'cosies'. The only advantage I've found to having a terrible memory at my age is the fact that I can re-read detective stories and can't always remember who did it! (The '47' in my name is the year of my birth, not my age! But the grey hair probably gives that away!) I do remember enjoying this one, and you've all inspired me to read it again very soon!
Hello, Penny - how nice to have another Baby Boomer on the Forums! I can beat you by a year, however. Like you I read a lot of Christies years ago - this was one I actually remembered 'whodunnit'.
Juniper - Either I was really tired when I finished or I managed to forget who did it :) I was still surprised by the end of the book and was left thinking "wait, I thought it was this guy"
*Spoilers*
I really thought it was Lombard who was the killer. Somehow I really did forget who did it, and little things about Lombard tipped me off. One thing I recall him saying to multiple people was a line of questioning about the truth or acknowledgment that the truth had come out. Then came the last three murders???
It would have been impossible for Lombard to have killed Blore, but then I thought maybe the last bit was carefully engineered. Then I went back to all of the victims, and I think of any who stood out. Wargrave makes sense I suppose. I think his was the most sensational of the murders in the sense that he went the extra mile to dress himself as a judge. It had an odd irony to it, but I still really didn't see him as the one.
One thing I found especially interesting as I read the note from Wargrave following the epilogue were his reasons and how he picked the order. It was such an odd image that he wanted to commit a murder, but his sense of justice prevented it. He killed people not to uphold his beliefs but simply because he wanted to do it. The choice was only made because he couldn't compromise his beliefs and kill an innocent so he simply picked people who needed punishment anyway. The selection of order was also interesting. I'm not sure that I would have placed the severity of the offense in the same order that he did.