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Sad Cypress (Hercule Poirot, #22)

Agatha Christie

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Oct 10, 2020 Werner rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-crime-fiction

Although I'd read this Poirot novel as a kid of perhaps 11 or 12, I didn't have any specific memories of it, except for the English setting, and the fact that the title comes from an epigraph from Shakespeare (I'm not well read enough in his work to identify the source of the quote, though), which alludes to cypress wood as material for a coffin. (It reads in part, "Come away, come away, death/ And in sad cypress let me be laid....") So when I reread it for a common read this month in one of my Although I'd read this Poirot novel as a kid of perhaps 11 or 12, I didn't have any specific memories of it, except for the English setting, and the fact that the title comes from an epigraph from Shakespeare (I'm not well read enough in his work to identify the source of the quote, though), which alludes to cypress wood as material for a coffin. (It reads in part, "Come away, come away, death/ And in sad cypress let me be laid....") So when I reread it for a common read this month in one of my groups, it was essentially like a new read; I was meeting the characters with no prior memories of them, and trying to guess the solution to the various mysteries posed as much as someone new to the book would have. It proved to be a rewarding read, and reminded me anew (as other Christie books have earlier this year as well) why I liked her work even back in my childhood --though I'm sure I have a heightened appreciation of it with the benefit of adult perception and experience.

Set in 1939, and structured somewhat atypically for a Christie novel (at least compared to others I've read; which isn't all of them by a long shot!), this one begins with a short Prologue, opening the murder trial of one Elinor Carlisle, accused of the murder by poisoning of another young woman, Mary Gerrard. (Mary was 21 when she died; Elinor's age is never specifically given, but I'd suppose her to be in her early 20s.) We glimpse some of the tale's characters, mainly seen through Elinor's eyes, but she's psychologically in a bit of a daze. Her reflection that this all began with a "horrible anonymous letter" then segues us into the body of the book, with a third person recounting of all the events surrounding the death of Elinor's much-loved, elderly (and quite wealthy) aunt Laura, the widowed mistress of the country estate Hunterbury, who when Chapter 1 opens has been sidelined with a stroke, and leading up to the poisoning a few weeks later. (Mary was the daughter of Laura's lodge-keeper, and a great favorite of the old lady.) After a couple of sentences mentioning his presence in the court, Poirot doesn't enter the narrative at all until the beginning of Chapter 8, after Elinor's arrest. We then follow his investigations (though, of course, we don't read his mind! :-) ); and most of the last few chapters, leading up to the denouement, follow the course of the trial. (This part is very much an exercise in courtroom drama, such as Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason novels typically delivered, but fairly unusual for Christie.)

Although the police and Crown prosecutor think the case against Elinor is so damning as to be practically open-and-shut, readers who grasp the conventions of the mystery genre in general, and of Christie mysteries in particular, aren't apt to seriously think she's guilty --because if she is, what on earth worthwhile is there going to be for Poirot to do? After all, Christie didn't bring him on stage to confirm an already obvious solution to a crime; she entertained her fans by allowing him to deduce a hidden solution that's NOT at all obvious, and of course to invite us to exercise our little grey cells to probe the mysteries with him. I actually guessed the identity of the poisoner even before the crime occurred --but my reconstruction of the crime and the motive was very much off the mark in several respects, and then I abandoned that theory to focus all my suspicions on another character who proved to be innocent. The denouement caught me totally by surprise; but, as usual in Christie mysteries, after the reveal, I could see that all the clues were in place and the logic made perfect sense.

This is not, however, a mystery that focuses strictly on the intellectual solution to a puzzle; as in Christie's work generally, it's a story about people: well-drawn, nuanced characters (not least of them Poirot himself) in all of their relationships, with all of their feelings, hopes, secrets, and messy imperfections. One of my Goodreads friends who's reviewed this book found Elinor "unsympathetic." I didn't; I found her human, but a classy lady in spite of her human foibles, and never had any trouble rooting for her. The author, as usual, brings a lot of understanding of human nature to her tale, and a warm sympathy with her characters --at least, with the ones who deserve sympathy. That includes Mary, who (unlike some Christie murder victims) is a genuinely decent person and arouses our compassion as she goes through the opening chapters oblivious to the fact that she's doomed; our hopeless desire to save her adds to the emotional intensity here. All in all, I found this to be one of the best Poirot novels that I've read, and highly recommend it to genre fans. ...more

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