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Pholon's Book Review #4
Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express
versus
Karen Slaughter - Faithless
I regularly shop for books. Ideally visiting the second hand section and finding some gems. Recently it perchanced that I stumbled on a 3-for-the-price-of-2 deal and, as I had picked up 2 books already, I looked around to get a free third one. I couldn't find anything, but they had this whole shelf of A. Christie novels. Now I know that this particular writer is often associated with being read by the same elderly women that are into watching Morse, speed knitting and having tea parties. Nevertheless, Murder on the Orient Express is world famous so I decided to pick it up.
A friend and ex-classmate of mine is zealous about Karen Slaughter. It's supposedly extremely gory and thrilling. I'm not much into the horror-genre in books. Suspense is good, but I'd be inclined to prefer my dose of bloody messes on the big screen. This put aside, above mentioned friend is an English teacher, has had to read Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton and all that good stuff and is consequently, I'd say, a valid judge of fictional works.
Murder on the Orient express is not literature. It doesn't have deeper meanings or thought-provoking ideas, but that's not the point. It presents the reader a puzzle: a classic who'sdunnit? where you as a reader are engaged to think along. In that light it is very well done. Although being (somewhat) old, it doesn't distantiate the 21st century reader, nor is it pretentious in any way. It presents facts quite clearly (to serve the purpose) and the style of writing didn't make me feel particularly feminine or elderly as I was, too, engaged to solve this mystery.
Faithless on the other hand is a terrible piece of trash. Reading it in full is part agony part pure willpower. I wanted to put it down so many times but I had to keep on reading so I'd have grounds to write this review. On one of the first pages it says "Her dad sounded like a Shakespearean actor, not like the Georgian plumber he was". Oh hello introducing a character, might as well put a fucking sign over his head saying "Hi there reader, this here man is a plumber from Georgia". Disgusting. Go write plays if you need that. Also what does "Georgian" add? I did the research and it means virtually nothing. This didn't set a good tone for me, only to find out later that, without fail, all the main characters have something with their genitals (mostly vaginas). Two've had abortions, one's had a hysterectomy, one's had a miscarriage, the murdered girl is pregnant and the only dude in the book's got hepatitis B. It serves no purpose throughout the book but Ms. Slaughter just seems obsessed with vaginas. On top of this the one dude in the book is nothing less than Mr. McDreamy the 2nd, giving me the overall impression that this book is meant for female readers only as reading it made me both cringe and shrivel up.
Poirot is the leading detective in Christie's book. Although quaint, he is, of course, quite good at what he does. He lines out the facts and clues and works systematically towards his conclusions. This helps the reader of course but that's okay. He even explains his methods to his friend, thus making sure readers are reined in, preventing them from drawing hasty conclusions. It also prevents any Deus ex Machina moments that we see too often.
In Faithless on the other hand, the people are just plain terrible at their job. Apart from letting their emotions get to them while working on the case, they spend 50% of their time thinking about their respective vaginas and penises. 50 pages in the book Jeffrey (the main guy) already throws his hands up, exclaiming "I have no idea where to start!" They had just found the body with several clues/leads, only one of which has been pursued. Talk about clues - they do come in handy at times: Upon "investigating" the girl's room, Mr. Jeffrey instantly grabs a teddybear and subtracts a matchbox from a stripclub from its teddybearanus. No further searching is done - this is all there is - let's head to said stripclub. On top of that I'm not even discussing Lena, who, for being a detective, makes so many superduperdumb mistakes it's just plain painful to read about.
So, in conclusion:
Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express
Pholon's grade: 8
If you like to puzzle or are into mystery solving please do pick up this book. It's a quick and easy read and if you let it you will be engaged to think. Don't let the fact that you don't have dentures yet deter you, just don't tell your mates you're reading this
Karen Slaughter - Faithless
Pholon's grade: 2
Horrible book, don't read it - and especially don't read it if you've just finished MotOE. If you're a woman and you feel like putting yourself through this ordeal please feel free to - I'd like to have your opinion on it. To everyone else: just avoid this like the plague. Gave it a 2 out of respect for having been able to get it published.
Up next:
Telling my friend what a giant twat she is and then moving on to the new Thomas Pynchon novel (Inherent Vice) which I'm superduper excited about.
Issue #1
Issue #2
Issue #3
