Agatha Christie is a genius, and yesterday I rediscovered it. I had read the novel "Evil under the sun" previously, and yet, while watching the televised version of it, I was unable to figure out who had committed the murder. She is an expert at throwing you off into the wrong direction with all the simultaneous plots. It takes the works of Monsieur Poirot's little gray cells to untangle the the mystery and to separate fact from fiction.
What especially interested me about this novel was the parallels one may draw to current events. The story starts off with Poirot being convinced to go for a healthy vacation to an island after it was thought that he had had a heart attack. The vacation, however, turns out to be not as relaxed as his doctor may have hoped. From the moment he steps on to the island, he has the feeling that one woman's life is in danger and that he might need to prevent the murder as opposed to solve one, which is the usual case.
Here is the first part if you feel like watching it:
Well, as is expected in an Agatha Christie novel, a murder is committed. The woman who is murdered is Alena Stewart. The big mystery is that the man, who was most likely to have committed the crime, Patric Redfern, could not have, as he had solid alibi. The ingenious twist to the story is that the woman discovered at the beach is in fact not Alena, but Mrs Redfern. She is just pretending to be a dead Alena. The rumor spreads that Alena is dead when she in fact is not. Instead she is strangled a few minutes later as Mr Redfern meets up with her is a cave. She is then placed in the same position at the beach as Alena had been laying at, and nobody is able to figure out what had happened.
So a murder is committed after the time of death...this means that the murder could have been prevented if someone had looked into the issue before running off in panic to look for help. My point is that I think this happens more often than we think, and that is is occurring right now at a global scale. Summer is a time when people are carefree and especially August is a popular holiday period. But there is "Evil under the sun" as we speak. Right now rumors are spreading that a killer virus is responsible for the death of many and that many more will fall victims to it. At the same time, the Pharmaceutical companies are rushing to produce enough vaccine to combat it. Perhaps nobody has even died yet from the flu, but when fall comes, more will fall ill and perhaps die, and when this happens, we will be sure to blame the swine flu for this. Perhaps though, if someone had used their little gray cells, we wouldn't panic and we would have stopped and examined the case, and found out that we were actually in no danger. When people panic, they become easy victims, and thus fail to see that no murder has been committed. They also fail to draw parallels to past events (like the Swine flu hype of 1976).
Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction, and we could all need a few more Poirots in this world, because yes, there is evil under the sun.
What especially interested me about this novel was the parallels one may draw to current events. The story starts off with Poirot being convinced to go for a healthy vacation to an island after it was thought that he had had a heart attack. The vacation, however, turns out to be not as relaxed as his doctor may have hoped. From the moment he steps on to the island, he has the feeling that one woman's life is in danger and that he might need to prevent the murder as opposed to solve one, which is the usual case.
Here is the first part if you feel like watching it:
Well, as is expected in an Agatha Christie novel, a murder is committed. The woman who is murdered is Alena Stewart. The big mystery is that the man, who was most likely to have committed the crime, Patric Redfern, could not have, as he had solid alibi. The ingenious twist to the story is that the woman discovered at the beach is in fact not Alena, but Mrs Redfern. She is just pretending to be a dead Alena. The rumor spreads that Alena is dead when she in fact is not. Instead she is strangled a few minutes later as Mr Redfern meets up with her is a cave. She is then placed in the same position at the beach as Alena had been laying at, and nobody is able to figure out what had happened.
So a murder is committed after the time of death...this means that the murder could have been prevented if someone had looked into the issue before running off in panic to look for help. My point is that I think this happens more often than we think, and that is is occurring right now at a global scale. Summer is a time when people are carefree and especially August is a popular holiday period. But there is "Evil under the sun" as we speak. Right now rumors are spreading that a killer virus is responsible for the death of many and that many more will fall victims to it. At the same time, the Pharmaceutical companies are rushing to produce enough vaccine to combat it. Perhaps nobody has even died yet from the flu, but when fall comes, more will fall ill and perhaps die, and when this happens, we will be sure to blame the swine flu for this. Perhaps though, if someone had used their little gray cells, we wouldn't panic and we would have stopped and examined the case, and found out that we were actually in no danger. When people panic, they become easy victims, and thus fail to see that no murder has been committed. They also fail to draw parallels to past events (like the Swine flu hype of 1976).
Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction, and we could all need a few more Poirots in this world, because yes, there is evil under the sun.
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