Here i'm

By the time I finished the book I was astonished by the turn of events. This was the first novel by Mrs. Christie that hasn't gone well with me. And I think for that Mrs. Christie herself is to be blamed entirely. Firstly for choosing espionage as the center theme for this book. And secondly for writing this book.

Well if anything, one thing is assured and that's espionage is not Mrs. Christie forte. As much as I appreciate Mrs. Christie's work, this book fails to impress at all.

This book begins with intriguing plot involving a diplomat and mysterious look alike girl who thinks her life is in danger. And then the plot thickens for some next few pages as this diplomat tries to search this girl, he even succeeded and then right in the middle of the book Mrs. Christie loses the plot and started babbling about god knows what for the next 200 pages and then in the end she again catches your attention and finish off in style like always.

This book suffers from a few drawbacks. To begin with, the story fails to pick up at any point of time, it was rather like reading excerpts patch together to assemble a book. The story is little disoriented as in, the beginning and the ending are so much out of sync that it felt like they came from two different books. Also the story sways from one character to another a lot, so it actually tricky to comprehend what actually is going on. The lack of a dedicated protagonist also works against the benefit of the book. Moreover there are several questions left unanswered which leave the reader pondering at the end and rather gives an impression of an incomplete story.

These are a lot of drawbacks to even deserve two stars but there are also a few things which work in favor of Mrs Christie like the eloquence of this master story teller which make this novel an easy read despite of its flawed story.

I would say if you are not a die hard Christie fan you can give this book a pass and devour something worthy.