Elephants Can Remember (1972)
Blurb:
My review:
Christie’s penultimate novel and last readable book is a very vague affair: the telling consists of paragraphs lasting 1 ½ pages, riddled with inconsistencies, which are unwanted and dangerous in an investigation into the past, especially when no one is quite sure whether the fall of the psychotic twin sister over a cliff and the ensuing suicide pact took place ten, twelve, fourteen, fifteen or even twenty years ago; for this reason, neither author nor reader have any idea of how old the characters, all of whom are very flat, actually are. The detection consists of serial interviewing of tenuously linked witnesses (the “elephants”) by Mrs. Oliver, who is as forgetful as the elephants are not; Poirot plays the armchair oracle rôle of Dr. Priestley, whom, speaking pedantic but natural English and shorn of both foreign phrases and character traits, he resembles. These obscure the plot, which, as always with Christie, is interesting, if imperfectly realised; had she fleshed out the characters, rather than leaving them as skeletons in the closet, and if more work had been put into it, it could have been one of the most interesting Christies, with a genuine sense of tragedy about the book. As it is, let the book limp its way to the elephants’ graveyard.
Query: have woman worn wigs for fashionable reasons since the 18th century?