My Five Word TL:DR Review: Just didn’t hit the mark

I do love a good mystery and I’m very happy for another author to take up the pen and write some Poirot mysteries, but this one just didn’t work for me, although, that being said, I wasn’t at any point tempted to stop reading.

Poirot and Inspector Catchpool take a vacation on the small island of Lamperos, well, it was supposed to be a vacation but Poirot has a different agenda, just that Catchpool doesn’t know, and soon enough a dead body pops up.  It’s New Year’s Eve and Poirot has accepted an invitation to a house where a small community of people live, a community with some rather radical ideas, all following a leader.  This group are quite intertwined with each other and not necessarily in a good way.

Okay, I’m going to keep this short because, I like the author and her writing is good.  This book just didn’t really work for me.

I felt like the period setting was great and the story got off to a good start.  We immediately arrive at this strange house, a house with perhaps the most unusual layout you can imagine.  And, well, the inhabitants are also a very strange group of characters.  It immediately has the feeling of being totally messed up, like these inhabitants know each other maybe a little too well.  Then the party begins.  Poirot and Catchpool end up taking part in a strange Resolutions list which takes a dire turn.  A few hours later somebody from the party is dead.

Firstly, I didn’t really become attached to any of these characters.  They’re a little bit annoying in some respects and this didn’t help me to really sink into the story because I didn’t become invested.

Secondly, the story went round and round but it felt really convoluted.  I think what this really missed for me was the opportunity of giving me a chance.  To be clear, more often than not I try and second guess murder mysteries and even though more often than not I get it wrong I like the feeling of following a trail of breadcrumbs, or sometimes red herrings.  So, this could be me of course, but I didn’t feel like I was getting hints (whether right or wrong) as to what was going on.  Poirot was kind of being very quiet and secretive, which is normal I suppose, but Catchpool was clueless – as was I – it just all felt a bit more cryptic than I expected.  That’s obviously a ‘me’ thing but I felt like I was lacking the involvement that I usually feel.

Lastly, I didn’t really feel any tension.  I liked the island, I was intrigued by the group of people.  I was definitely intrigued about the mystery, but I wouldn’t say that I felt ramped up – now that might just be linked to the fact that I didn’t really become attached to the characters.

Anywho.  To cut to the chase.  I certainly wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading this.  I never had a problem finishing, in fact I wanted to finish to find out what was going on, I enjoyed the setting, the mystery was definitely difficult to solve (especially for me) I thought the writing was good, it captures the spirit of the time, it just, unfortunately, didn’t quite work for me.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opinion.

My rating 3 of 5 stars