Murder is Easy (1939)
(in America as Easy to Kill)
Blurb:
My review:
'It's very easy to kill—so long as no one suspects you. And you see, the person in question is just the last person any one would suspect!'
This tale of multiple murders in an English village with a history of witchcraft, "so smiling and peaceful—so innocent—and all the time [the] crazy streak of murder running through it", is easily one of Christie's best, and anticipates her later masterpiece Towards Zero (1944). The detection by the retired policeman Luke Fitzwilliam and his friend's cousin Bridget Conway, with the assistance of the elderly Miss Waynflete and Superintendent Battle, is agreeable and competent, despite Nicholas Blake's yearning after the little grey cells of Hercule Poirot (the absence of Poirot terminates an unbroken stretch of appearances lasting ten novels). The choice of victims and methods—a series of highly suspicious "accidents"—is excellent, as is the choice of suspects, including an antique-dealer given to conjuring up the powers of darkness, and the local self-made squire, who sees himself as "the instrument of a higher power". The particularly memorable and surprising murderer, at once a pillar of society and a cunning lunatic, is unmasked in a highly exciting climax, showing Christie's masterly handling of tension.