Mrs. McGinty's Dead by Agatha Christie

Mrs. McGinty's Dead by Agatha Christie ISBN-13: 9780062074089 Mass Market Paperback: 272 pages Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks First Released: 1951

Source: Borrowed from my local library.

Book Description, Modified from Back Cover:
Mrs. McGinty died from a brutal blow to the back of her head. Suspicion falls immediately on her shifty lodger, James Bentley, whose clothes reveal traces of the victim’s blood and hair. Yet something is amiss: Bentley just doesn’t seem like a murderer.

Could the answer lie in an article clipped from a newspaper two days before the death? With a desperate killer still free, Hercule Poirot will have to discover whodunit before someone else dies.


My Review:
Mrs. McGinty's Dead is a historical mystery set in 1951 in England (though it was a contemporary mystery when it was written). I thought it was humorous what Poirot had to "suffer" through to solve this mystery. He had to stay with a very unorganized and unskilled-at-cooking family. Mrs. Oliver's situation was also funny.

On the other hand, I found the mystery confusing. The whodunit and how was complicated. Especially in the case of the first murder, it didn't seem to me that it was realistic that whodunit would have gone unnoticed. However, the clues were all there, even though the major ones might only be understood by the English of 1951. I certainly was left thinking, "Huh? I don't know anyone who did that" over something Poirot thought "everyone knows" (relating to names). Ah, well, learned something new.

There was no sex. There was a very minor amount of explicit bad language. Overall, I'd recommend this novel to Agatha Christie fans.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


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