Black Coffee: Novelisation

"Hercule Poirot har dragit sig tillbaka, men han tvekar inte att ställa upp när den berömde vetenskapsmannen sir Claud Amory ber om hans hjälp. Sir Claud arbetar med en uppfinning av största betydelse och har skäl att tro att någon är ute efter hans forskningsmaterial. Han vill därför att Poirot ska komma till hans hus i Market Cleve och därifrån ta med sig handlingarna till försvarsdepartementet i London. Poirot lockar med sig sin gamle vän Hastings på utflykten. Men när de väl anländer till sir Clauds hus visar det sig att uppdraget helt ändrar karaktär ..."

excellent first book completed in 5 hrs stretch ( )

This book sucked which is why I kicked it to the proverbial curb when I got to 40 pages in. I often say that a good DNF review can steer potential readers away from a book that the reviewer articulates why it would be a waste of time. Honestly, all you have to know is that Agatha Christie did not write this novel. Instead, Christie wrote a play called "Black Coffee." However it was not turned into a novel. Decades later, Charles Osborne would take up the mantle and write this. I have no idea why anyone thought the guy could pull this off, and the foreword by Christie's nephew talking about what a good job Osborne did must have been in jest.

This is a bad novel aping to sound like Christie. I don't know how else to spell it out. It's like trying to see your reflection through a really dirty mirror. You can almost see yourself, but then you move a little and that's all she wrote. I just could not get past how unlike Poirot this sounds in Osborne's hands. He obviously did not get our egg head shaped detective at all. Yes, Poirot is vain, but is not so far up his own ass that he would be acting like he does in this book.

The overall mystery, did not interest me either. Poirot is called in when a man named Claud Amory is worried that someone in his home is hoping to steal secret formula.

Don't even get me started on why Amory doesn't just leave his home and come to Poirot. That would make too much sense. Instead Poirot goes to Amory's home to help and of course finds him dead. Amory has been poisoned by coffee he had after dinner. Of course my first thought is who drinks coffee after dinner. I can't drink coffee after noon or I will be up all night. Insomnia sucks. Oh wait, back to this terrible book. Poirot now has a household of suspects. Hastings is also in this one and of course just like Poirot acts so alien you think he and Poirot have been body snatched by aliens.

I finally called it a day at page 40. Back to the library this book goes. Well I got my first DNF of 2017, maybe the Book gods are coming back....sigh. ( )

¿No oíste lo que dijo mi padre? -preguntó Richard con intención-.Dijo que el café estaba muy amargo. Al principio, Lucía no pareció comprender.
-El café está muy amargo -repitió. Miró a Richard con expresión incrédula y dejó escapar un gritito de horror, que se apresuró a sofocar.

This is a 1998 novelisation of a play Agatha Christie wrote early in her career and which was performed in 1930. It concerns theft of a formula for an explosive devised by scientist Sir Claud Amory, and then murder as he is poisoned by a member of his household, just as Hercule Poirot arrives, called in by Sir Claud to investigate the theft. This is a classic locked room mystery, but I found the characters uniformly rather irritating. As in a number of other Christie novels, nationalist stereotypes of the time against Italians in particular, grate rather. I found Captain Hastings' character completely pointless here - he contributes nothing whatsoever to the plot. Poirot comes across as rather more arrogant than usual as well. Overall, definitely not one of my favourite Christies, though it functions as well as ever as a lightweight page turner. ( )