So as a library employee, there’s a set of concepts floating around my brain at all times that are specific to libraries, but that I frequently end up applying to outside life. One of them is the book talk: a very short, all-positive review of a book, and should at least sound like a genuine personal recommendation. (Booktalking something you haven’t read usually involves a mixture of intense enthusiasm and careful omission of certain truths.)

The point of a booktalk is to convince the audience that they must read this book right this very second, and thus take the library’s copy out today, instead of waiting and considering and (horror or horrors) maybe just buying it at the bookstore later. Thus, there are two approaches to booktalking items you didn’t quite love: 1) avoid them in favor of books about which you can genuinly gush, or 2) lie through your teeth. Since life is just to short for crappy books, I usually go with option 1.

Which brings me to the point of this entire writing: The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie. I got the paperback to about 10 cents, in light of my plan to read all of Christie’s works eventually. (The plan may need to be revised.)

Several of the characters here are reprised from a previous novel I haven’t read, The Secret of Chimneys, and the setting is much the same as well. The story here begins with the murder of a young man named Gerry Wade, concurrent with (but unrelated to?) a prank played on him by several friends. They secretly fill the late sleeper Gerry’s room with alarm clocks, but thanks to an overdose of sleeping medicine, even that won’t be enough to wake him.

This was my least favorite Christie novel so far. I suspect it has something to do with the choice of main characters: they’re all young, and most of them very wealthy. There are girls with ridiculous knicknames like Bundle and Socks (does anyone know if these sort of things were normal in 1920s Britian?), and on the whole everyone acts quite silly and spoilt.

I was also less than impressed with the plot. There are numerous complications, but nothing that feels like a real twist, and the solution to the mystery comes rather out of left field. I had initially blamed my own inability to see the solution, but according to the (actually cited!) quote on Wikipedia from a newspaper review, I wasn’t the only one who thought the story didn’t lead sensibly to the solution.

The same article quotes Christie’s autobiography on this title. She says this sort of “light hearted” books doesn’t require much plotting or planning. I would disagree; while this book may not have been given such careful consideration in writing, a good mystery does in fact require it.

Life is too short for bad books! Unless you have a drive to complete the author’s oeuvre, or have already read Chimneys (and actually liked Bundle and Bill? okay…), I’d recommend passing on this one.