Sleeping Murder – Arthur Hofn

Don’t tell me anything.

Ironically there may be some spoilers in the following blog. Earlier this year I finally got round to reading Curtain by Agatha Christie. In general I love Christie’s books and with so many of them it took me a while to get round to Curtain. However there is something different about this particular novel.

Curtain is subtitled “Poirot’s Last Case”, and although it was written in the early 1940s the book wasn’t to see publication until 1975. This was deliberate. At the time of writing Poirot was already a success and so Agatha Christie wanted to have the ending of the range in place should anything happen to her (it was during the war and it’s been suggested this might have informed this decision). She did the same with Sleeping Murder for Miss Marple.

Regardless there proved to be many many more novels featuring Hercule Poirot to come which were written up to the early 1970s and so Curtain was locked away waiting for the right time for publication; this happened just before Agatha Christie died.

Because this is the final Hercule Poirot novel anything can happen. In any murder mystery books you don’t want to find out the ending before you get there, in this one it’s even more important as the stakes could be so much higher. Of course whether they actually are or not you need to finish the book yourself to find out, but just knowing this is the last one makes anything possible.

As a result it became an obsessive compulsion on my part not to find out anything about this book until I was able to read it. I’ve not been reading the Hercule Poirot novels in any kind of order, just as and when I found them in book shops, but I probably should have hunted this one down a lot sooner; I’ve spent years diving at the off button on the radio or telling my friends to stop talking just in case. Now I no longer have to do that, and it’s such a relief! (Also, if you haven’t done so already, go and see The Mousetrap at the theatre when things open up again, you’ll save yourself a lot of worry and it’s a really enjoyable play).

“I will not look through keyholes,” I interrupted hotly. Poirot closed his eyes. “Very well, then. You will not look through keyholes. You will remain the English gentleman and someone will be killed.”
― Agatha Christie, Curtain

This is just the tip of an iceberg when it comes to reading for me. I really don’t like knowing anything about a book before I read it. That might sound a little odd, but books are generally written from the viewpoint that the reader knows nothing about the world they are entering from the start and so the writer goes to the trouble of explaining it as they go along. It’s nice to see that work pay off. I won’t even read the back cover.

I’m fairly well read in the classics but you will find some shocking gaps in my knowledge simply because there are books I want to read that I’ve not got round to yet and so have been avoiding finding out any information about them. For example I know very little about the works of Charles Dickens, I’ve read a few, but for some of his great works I know nothing and want to keep it that way until I’ve found out by reading it from the books themselves.

Of course this raises the question, how do I know I want to read something if I don’t know anything about it? Well finding out some scant information is inevitable, but when I get to the point I ‘m interested that’s where I put the breaks on. As a result I find I’m reading a wide range of books. Once I’ve built a trust and liking for an author I can then happily go about just knowing the title of their other works to put add them to my “to read” list. Agatha Christie is a perfect example of this.

Of course knowing nothing about a book before I read it can lead to some interesting issues. It was only last year that I read To Kill A Mocking Bird and it wasn’t until page 23 that I realised for certain the protagonist was a girl! With a name like Scout you can see my problem and it was not clearly stated until around that point.

As it was it was interesting to see all the odd details that I did know come together. I’d known the general concept but was surprised by how late in the book it’s introduced or that it would be told through the eyes of a young girl. I’d known the names Atticus Finch and Boo Radley for years but had no idea what they represented. I think I enjoyed reading it far more because it was all a discovery for me.

“I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Where possible I love picking up a new book turning to page one and learning the concept of the story as I read it. I’m the same with films and TV programmes. Of course this proves to be a difficulty when it comes to promoting my own books and I’ll speak about that in a future post, sorry for the spoiler.

Buy Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case by Agatha Christie
Buy To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee