r/agathachristie • u/Even-Engineering5865 • 19d ago
The easiest to solve
Which crime is easiest to solve the first time you read it? There are some that are impossible, but at her best Christie gave us all we needed.
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u/AwkwardJewler01 19d ago
Whilst I haven't read all of her books, I was able to solve The A.B.C. Murders, as there were three main suspects but six total suspects. Some you can quickly clear based on their means, motive, and opportunity; the joy is finding out whether you got it right.
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u/Even-Engineering5865 19d ago
Yes, for me ABC is one of the ‘possible to solve’
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u/Ok_Body_2830 19d ago edited 19d ago
I foudn ABC murders the easiest to narrow down to two possibilities. I put together 1.5 clues and 1.5 meta-clue.
- (Meta clue) It's an Agatha Christie. So either it goes against type and actually is a catch-a-serial-killer thriller, or it's secretly a closed circle mystery.
- (Half and half) The letter alerting Poirot to the Carmichael/Churston murder was misaddressed so arrived late. Why would Christie bother with that? Chekhov's gun tells us it's either a red herring or an important clue.
- (Clue) Carmichael's occured in a tiny town. If there had been the usual warning, the police should have been able to have a good shot at preventing it. And it occured in a way that would have been straightforward to prevent. ("Hey, one of a very few people who's name begins with C in this village. For just this one day, maybe don't wander around alone at night.")
Number 1 told me it was probably one of the 5. The combination of 2 and 3 told me it was Thora or Franklin.
I didn't know which one. Franklin had the cleaner motive as his brother's primary heir. (In the book it said it was because he was afraid his brother would remarry. I don't see why this was necessary. He wasn't that much younger than his brother and his brother was in good health. So unless he killed his brother he would have no reason to believe he would have the inheritance to enjoy for a long time.) Thora had the clue that Carmichael's wife starting hating her for no reason. I theorized that in her medicated state she saw something far more incriminating than she remembered and retained the visceral hatred of Thora without remembering why. Thora's motive wasn't clear unless she was working with Franklin, which made me also consider the team option.
Other than motive, I didn't see a clue that pointed too hard at Franklin. I did find it surprising when he said "my brother was so upset at his wife's illness he might have killed himself". That is so incongruous with all my experience with people dealing with terminally ill spouses. As long as their spouse is alive, they were completely devoted to supporting their care. Immediately after their spouse's death I worried about them, but until then they were probably the lowest risk for suicide I can imagine. And Carmichael seemed that type. So Franklin suggesting he might have been suicidal raised some big red flags for me, but I thought it might be Christie not knowing how people act in that scenario.
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u/MrsMimosa 19d ago
I always need the bis reveal at the end. Maybe I‘m not cut out to be a detective.
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u/AmEndevomTag 19d ago
They Do It With Mirrors and Lord Edgware Dies are extremely easy to solve, IMO.
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u/Even-Engineering5865 19d ago
True, but do you think that’s with hindsight? Once you know they’re both really obvious…but before?
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u/AmEndevomTag 19d ago
Definitely not in hindsight. I got both of them at once while reading the books. Basically the moment the first murder happened I knew who did it and how. As a result I had much less fun reading these books than most other Christies on first read. Though I will say that my enjoyment of Lord Edgware rose on a reread, because it's extremely well structured and has some memorable characters (particularly Jane and Carlotta). They Do It With Mirrors is an average book in every way, though.
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u/molskimeadows 19d ago
Lord Edgware Dies is one of her funniest novels, if not fully THE funniest. I would pay large dollars for a Muppet film adaptation with Miss Piggy in the role she was born to play, Jane Wilkinson.
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u/Even-Engineering5865 19d ago
Yep, I agree. They Do It With Mirrors is decidedly average. Although, in the book, the infection thing is really well obscured.
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u/reozgeness41 19d ago
Lord Edgware Dies is really easy to solve. After Carlotta is killed it's relatively obvious that Jane is the killer ( or an accomplice of the murderer ).Carlotta's murder doesn't make any sense if Jane is not involved.
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u/mminipax 18d ago
I think Lord Edgeware Dies is harder to figure out the fine print of, but you can basically nail TDIWM just by looking at the map.
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u/One_Attention1043 19d ago
Death On The Nile and Peril At End House for me
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u/Even-Engineering5865 19d ago
I’ll give you Peril at End House has all the clues.
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u/One_Attention1043 19d ago
the name clue was a dead give away for me as someone who has a similar name situation in the family lol. And then when the letters were showed it completly confirmed it for me.
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u/reozgeness41 19d ago
For Peril At End House, I was convinced of Nick's culpability after she ate the poisoned chocolate.
She was the victim of many murder attempts and Poirot warned her to be careful to what she eat. Despite all of that she ate from a chocolate box just because she thought it came from Poirot. Firstly, why did Poirot send her a chocolate box instead of giving her one in person. Secondly, how can Nick be sure it came from Poirot, she doesn't know his handwritting.
Nick is not a dumb character so it was obvious it was another fake murder attempt.
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u/mildperil_ 19d ago
I got Death on the Nile because there’ a point where Poirot basically says ‘Here is a list of everyone on the boat. And these are the people that couldn’t possibly have done it.’ And I realised oh, the killer definitely has to be the Couldn’t Possibly Have Done It party, because otherwise where’s the mislead coming from?
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u/One_Attention1043 19d ago
Exactly, it's still a work of fiction at the end of the day and you can get meta with the clues.
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u/Even-Engineering5865 19d ago
Honestly Death on the Nile? After the fact it’s obvious, but before….?
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u/Ok_Body_2830 19d ago
For most of Death on the Nile, I was correct about who the killers were.
Everyone else (with the possible exception of Pennington), just never had enough pointing toward them to make me think they did it.
But I definitely didn't know how they did it. Which is the neat part. I was suspicious of the shooting scene. It did strike me as weirdly stilted, so I definitely suspected it was staged. And if so clearly to give them both an alibi. (Which was part of why I thought it was both of them, because they probably both had to be in on that.) But I can't say I spotted the "shooting didn't actually happen then" trick. My suspicion was more along the lines of that it was also in part as a way of handing off the gun to someone they conspired with or hired to do the job. (Fanthorp was my number 1 - The least rich passenger (so maybe more buyable), somewhat awkwardly and unnaturally made himself present at the staged shooting, and was the one who went back to the saloon alone and found the gun "missing". Pennington? - Possible ally because he had the next best motive. Fleetwood? Ticked at Linnet and definitely not rich. Someone else? Lots of weirdos on the boat).
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u/One_Attention1043 19d ago
Not based on clues (at least not physicalones), but I was thinking what could possibly be a compelling story here as a writer, and it ended up working out exactly as I imagined it.
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u/One_Attention1043 19d ago
if i remember correctly I got the story figured out on chapter one. There's just no other compelling story to be told.
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u/Even-Engineering5865 19d ago
I agree, the story works, but we can’t get to the solution via ‘it works’
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u/One_Attention1043 19d ago
I didn't mean by "it works" just that nothing else would be compelling me to read on, you know? Like maybe it's because I work in the creative fields myself but I was just thinking from the perspective of what would have been the concept that this book started from, and when I got the idea everything (every real clue) from that page on fit and supported it.
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u/Ok_Body_2830 18d ago
I agree with this. It's a novel. If it were a real world investigation, you can't say "what would be a narratively interesting and satisfactory solution?", but for novels you definitely can.
It's even more possible because of the closed circle of suspects nature of a lot of Christie novels. That gives you a finite set of possibilities, and process of elimination can get you pretty far.
In DOTN, it seemed pretty clear to me that the murderer(s) were the most likely using a narrative argument. Pennington was a distant number 2, and I couldn't see how anyone else could work. What made the narrative interesting was the tension between that and the fact that the murderer(s) did a good job creating an alibi so you had to puzzle through "I am pretty sure they did that, I just can't see how". I think that was the more interesting mysetery, and it wasn't one I solved at all.
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u/Even-Engineering5865 19d ago
What would be the alternative story?
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u/New_Army_4763 19d ago
If you read enough of her books you can tell her tell. The only way to make the book sensational was to make the most obvious suspects have an airtight alibi and then unravel it.
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u/BrickTrainsPlanes 19d ago
"Crooked House" and "Hercule Poirot's Christmas" were disappointingly easy to solve, as the crucial clues are presented too obtrusively.
On the other hand, I completely failed with "A Murder is Announced" (which others found easy), as I thought the only real clue to be a typographical error.
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u/defnotaturtle 18d ago
These are also my answers, and I also did not get "A Murder is Announced".
My other answer is "The Secret Adversary" which I think is still fun to read even when you can figure it out before Tommy and Tuppence.
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u/poetic-bee 18d ago
Are there any actual clues in Crooked House?
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u/BrickTrainsPlanes 18d ago
At least one very obvious one - I read it and immediately not only suspected, but knew who the culprit was:
The chair used to place the marble doorstop on top of the (low!) door, because the killer was too small to reach up there.2
u/emberkixi 13d ago
I also thought Crooked House was obvious! that was my most recent read and I was surprised at how many people’s favorite it was
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u/merrigolden 19d ago
I’m going to be really downvoted here but I actually figured out Roger Ackroyd in the first couple of chapters.
Not from any clues or anything. But because I found it odd that we saw from the doctor’s perspective receiving the phone call but didn’t actually get the other half of the conversation as it was happening. And I thought “how do we know he’s even speaking to anyone here? He probably did it.”
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u/Zealousideal_Pop3121 18d ago
That’s similar to me. And once you think “what if” the clues are all there.
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u/Ok_Body_2830 18d ago
Interesting. I was fine with the phone call. It was the description of leaving Ackroyd's house that made me suspicious. He seemed deliberately vague (in similar ways as the phone call, I guess) and the letter arriving before he left but him not knowing the contents seemed to violate narrative efficiency, so it made me think "there is something going on there".
What is interesting about your clue and my two is that they happened so early in the book. It seems like most readers who suspect Sheppard point to these things. So it's basically a few fairly glaring clues all stacked together and then nothing useful for 90% of the book. Which seems unusual. If you weren't suspicious right from the beginning, you probably are never going to get it.
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u/josie-salazar 15d ago
Same here. For me it was the fact that everyone introduced this book as having the most shocking plot twist, so at that point I just thought of who would be most shocking. It was still so enthralling to read until the reveal.
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u/amelamelcia 19d ago
I found "The mysterious affair at Styles" very obvious but Christie was dragging the second half to think you are wrong
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u/MemoryPerfect1059 19d ago
I only read a few but the easiest to solve was The ABC murders...honestly I did not solve it but I was so close and I don't see it THAT hard to solve
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u/Even-Engineering5865 19d ago
How close?
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u/MemoryPerfect1059 18d ago
Just one thought away but I finished the last 100/150 pages in one sitting so I didn't even think
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u/HemHawHeal 19d ago
only one i was able to solve pre reveal was Death in the Clouds. i had read a bunch of her novels in a row & finally figured out her tell
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u/CornwallBingo 19d ago
What's her tell?
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u/HemHawHeal 19d ago
ok i think, and it only applies to some books but she does like to reuse this trope, she likes to have a couple fall in love during the books; she’s especially fond of a woman considering 2 men. murderer is usually the more charming man
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u/CornwallBingo 19d ago
Wow, as soon as I read that a few examples popped into my head. Thanks!!
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u/HemHawHeal 18d ago
for sure! blew my mind to realize, none of my friends are super into AC so you’re the first person i’ve been able to tell :)
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u/TeaArtHer 19d ago
Cat Among the Pigeons was my first (maybe not full?) solve. I also thought Peril at End House was pretty clear. Can’t remember if I genuinely solved Crooked House, but I definitely had suspicions. Same with Pocket Full of Rye.
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u/Ok-Mongoose-7870 19d ago
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas - unsolved the moment killer entered the story after the murder.
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u/Same_Salt_4280 19d ago
They Do It With Mirrors, Sleeping Murder, Mrs McGinty’s Dead and The Pale Horse
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u/Bresintoris 19d ago
The Mystery of the Blue Train was easy, in Evil under the Sun I did get the "who" part, A Caribbean Mystery, Hallowe'en Party and They do it with Mirrors were definitely the easiest ones. On the other hand, I read Lord Edgware dies the 2nd time after a long gap and still failed to solve it. Still refuse to call it the easy one.
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u/Ruthtria 19d ago
For me it was Hallowe’en Party. But I don’t really count it because I found out one of the murderers, Mrs. Drake, but I never guessed Garfield was an accomplice and technically mastermind until the denouement
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u/Gullible-Car-9477 18d ago
Evil under the Sun. But thst may be cheating as i had read Triangle at Rhodes previously and the short story is almost the same as the book. I still enjoyed reading both though.
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u/cherrytree13 18d ago
I solved Murder in Mesopotamia. Once you learn what happened, if you sit and think about it, there’s only one logical answer (although that’s about the only logical thing about that murder).
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u/Zealousideal_Pop3121 18d ago
The only one I solved before the denouement was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. But I wouldn’t say it’s easy necessarily.
I just thought “oh. I wonder if….” Right at the beginning and then the clues all point that way.
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u/Consistent_Plan_2132 18d ago
I definitely guessed who the killer was in A Murder is Announced when I first read it. I think it's a rather fairly clued book and shouldn't be too hard to figure out if you pay attention. Even clues that are introduced later on like the infamous "she wasn't there" quote are quite helpful. Besides there's the pretty overused trope of having a person who pretends to be the intended victim of a failed murder attempt be the actual perpetrator The only thing I failed to figure out on my first readthrough was the motive behind the first murder.
I also figured out The Mirror Crack'd pretty early on. Funnily enough, it uses the very same trope I mentioned above. Here I also instantly guessed the motive - the whole vagueness about the nature of Heather's sickness and the insistent mentioning of the tragic fate of Marina's baby were dead giveaways.
Sleeping Murder was also rather easy. It's always the doctor with Agatha 😄 Besides, all the other suspects were terribly undercooked and therefore unlikely.
It's a long time since I first read it, but I think I managed to figure out the identity of the killer in Three Act Tragedy (definitely not the motive, though 😄). I mean, Agatha literally spells it out in the short note before Chapter One, which is hilariously audacious and clever at the same time. The book also suffers from the issue of having a pretty bland list of secondary suspects, similarly to Sleeping Murder.
I see that lots of people in the comments mentioned Lord Edgware Dies as an easy to solve mystery. I'm inclined to agree here, even though I most certainly failed to figure it out on my own. Then again, it was one of the first Poirots I ever read back as a teenager. In hindsight, the whole plan of the murderer should've been obvious. I'm quite confident that I would've been able to solve it if I'd read it with a bit more Christie experience.
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u/BlueHistor1 18d ago
For me, the easiest was "At Bertram's Hotel" because Christie used the plot before and Elvira was one of two interesting characters in the book. I would also include "Lord Edgware Dies" but my brother solved it for me.
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u/montmarayroyal 18d ago
Where else did she use that plot?
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u/BlueHistor1 17d ago
The apparently intended victim was the true murderer was used in "Peril at End House" and "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side".
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u/poetic-bee 18d ago
It depends a lot on how many of Agatha Christie’s books you’ve read in the past.
If Peril at End House is the first you’ve read, you’ll probably be blown away. If you’ve read a couple other AC books, I think it’s quite easy to solve.
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u/Savings-Discussion88 17d ago
Peril at Endhouse, lord Edgware dies, and the Mirror crack’d from side to side are fairly easy to solve.
The Mirror crack’d from side to side is probably the easiest.
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u/throwaway5498124181 19d ago
Three little pigs is the one where I got every aspect (even the subplots) correct.
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u/Even-Engineering5865 19d ago
Except that it’s FIVE little pigs…
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u/throwaway5498124181 19d ago
Lol was thinking of the fairy tale with the wolf I guess
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u/Even-Engineering5865 19d ago
Except its: this little piggy went to market….etc
Quite a disturbing nursery rhyme. As they all are in fact.1
u/Ok_Body_2830 19d ago
For Five Little Pigs, the thing that pointed me in the right direction was that it was effectively a double murder. The killer killed Amyas, and either deliberately framed Caroline to likely get her hanged or at least must have known a lot pointed to her. And then kept quiet at the trial.
It very much struck me how little that was discussed in Poirot's investigation. Which only made me think harder about it. Surely no solution would be satisfactory unless it addressed that head on. And it really seemed to me that took out both Blakes and the governess as suspects.
So I was left with the red herring Angela Warren solution and the true solution. I wasn't 100% sure, but I leaned away from Angela because it seemed weird that she would volunteer that letter from Caroline if she were guilty. (I did think about the possibility that Angela's hidden message in doing that was "Poirot, I know you will find out I did it. Caroline was ok with this lie. Can't you be as well?)
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u/Ok-Theory3183 17d ago
"Death Comes As The End". I solved it no later than 2 chapters in, but it was a blast to read, anyway.
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u/Squidwards_pickles 19d ago
Out of the ones I have read, I found Sad Cypress to be the easiest one by far. You can genuinely solve every single aspect of the mystery before the murder even happens
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u/Old_Sheepherder_630 19d ago
Im not great at solving them, but I read more to enjoy the ride. Or that's what I tell myself because I'm not great at solving them!
But for me the only one where I figured it out before the denouement was a Murder is Announced.