Well, February has been a bit slow when it comes to reading. I’ve only finished three books, the first of which I actually started in January, and now feels like a long time ago!
That was the final novel in Agatha Christie’s Poirot series, which I borrowed from my local library.
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case follows the detective and a friend of his as they attempt to catch someone who has been directly involved in the deaths of several people. Poirot isn’t in the best health and is determined to solve the case while he still can.
I’ve read many Agatha Christie books over the years and found this one a bit disappointing. It felt a little by the numbers, with clues that didn’t really translate into solving the case. One for die-hard fans of the crime writer.
After that I read Humans, by Matt Haig, which has been on my TBR pile for ages.
If you haven’t come across it yet, after solving a major mathematical puzzle, Professor Andrew Martin is quickly disposed of by aliens who don’t want humans to have access to the technology that his discovery would surely lead to. To make sure that word of the discovery hasn’t spread, an alien is sent to Earth in the professor’s form, tasked with hiding his secret at all costs.
He quickly learns that there is more to humanity than his race had thought and becomes sympathetic to the people he encounters.
This is one of those books that objectively I enjoyed very much, yet I found to be a slow read. It’s more cerebral than pacy, especially for the first half of the book. But it’s also full of insights on what it means to be human, along with some touching emotional moments and plenty of dark humour.
I finished the month with another crime novel, from Swedish writer Camilla Lackberg. The Lost Boy is about the investigation into the murder of a man who has recently moved back to the sleepy coastal town of Fjallbacka. At first the police struggle to find out much about the victim, who everyone seemed to like. But could his death be tied to the murder of a drug dealer, or to his former job at a women’s refuge?
I’ve read most of Lackberg’s previous books, which follow the work of police detective Patrick Hedstrom and they’re always entertaining. The writer is great at combining horrible crimes with scenes of domestic cosiness as she explores the detective’s family life as well as his work. This novel follows the pattern of previous work and is a surprisingly quick read for a fairly hefty story.
February’s reads
- Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, by Agatha Christie
- The Humans, by Matt Haig
- The Lost Boy, by Camilla Lackberg
This post contains affiliate links.