Publisher: William Morrow
Published: April 17, 2012 (first published August 22, 1924)
Source: Library
Summary:
The Man in the Brown Suit is Agatha Christie at her best, as a young woman makes a dangerous decision to investigate a shocking “accidental” death she witnesses at a London tube station.
Pretty, young Anne came to London looking for adventure. In fact, adventure comes looking for her—and finds her immediately at Hyde Park Corner tube station. Anne is present on the platform when a thin man, reeking of mothballs, loses his balance and is electrocuted on the rails.
The Scotland Yard verdict is accidental death. But Anne is not satisfied. After all, who was the man in the brown suit who examined the body? And why did he race off, leaving a cryptic message behind: “17-122 Kilmorden Castle”?
My thoughts:
One of my goals this year is to read more Agatha Christie and to help with that goal, I’ll be participating in the #ReadChristie22, which this year is focusing on Agatha Christie’s love of travel and adventure. There are specific prompts and suggestions each month and I have a feeling I will probably be sticking to those as I really haven’t read too many of her books and the likelihood of me having already read the suggested book is small.
The first month’s prompt is a book inspired by her travels and the suggested book was The Man in the Brown Suit and it happened to be a book I hadn’t read. It’s also a book that is quite hard to find a physical copy for but luckily my library had it, so I was able to borrow it. I do eventually plan on getting a copy for my collection, but this worked for now.
I really enjoyed this one. It’s a bit different from the other books I’ve read by Christie, but that made it fun. It had more of a thriller/adventure theme to it and I loved that it definitely had parts of Christie in it – the surfing story was so interesting to see pop up because if I’m not mistaken while Christie was on a trip with her husband, she herself learned to surf. And Christie herself suffered terrible seasickness while on a cruise.
The mystery part did keep me engaged and I also found the diary entries to be quite intriguing as I was trying to work out how they would tie in. They definitely provided humor, that’s for sure. I really liked the character of Anne…she is full of spunk and resourcefulness. I liked that she was desperate for an adventure and an adventure she has!
This is one of Agatha Christie’s earlier books and it definitely has some of the hallmarks she is known for but hasn’t quite settled on. I think it will be great fun reading and becoming more familiar with her works as the year goes on.
