Postern Of Fate

This was the last book Agatha Christie ever wrote and concludes the series of books featuring Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. These books was an interesting experiement on Agatha's part as these two characters age with each of the novels they appear in. When we first meet them in The Secret Adversary, they are young twenty somethings and with each succeeding novel they pass through different stages of life through middle age and then into old age as they are in The Postern Of Fate.

The Tommy and Tuppence novels are not murder mystery novels rather they are action adventures and thrillers more in the territory of John Buchan with a great deal of international intrigue and espionage.

In The Postern Of Fate Tommy and Tuppence move into a new house in Hollowquay and whilst going through some old books they had bought as part of a job lot of furniture they discover a message about the death of a certain Mary Jordan many years before. the message reveals that it had not been natural death. This sets the pair off on one last adeventure trying to unravel a mystery from some seventy years before.

At this point one has to be honest; the plot is a total shambles and you should not be surprised if you finish the book none the wiser as to what the whole thing has been about. There is also a lot of rambling dialogue and despite the promise that in the final chapter one might get the full picture in classic Christie style, the thing sputters to a halt and nothing is really explained.

Christie experts argue over whether the book should ever have been released. Some suggest that Agatha's husband and his secretary were firmly against it but were over ruled by Agatha and her publishers. There is also the suggestion that the book reveals the extent to which Agatha had begun to decline mentally and it may indicate the oneset of dementia. The jumbled conversations of elderly characters trying to piece together half remembered stories from long ago is somehow very poignant as it reflects the confusion that the writer seems to have when it came to the story she was telling.

Having said all of that, it remains an entertaining read and gives glimpses into Agatha's own life as she says a final good bye to the Beresfords. Agatha's expereince of frequently moving and doing up properties appears in the book as she talks about dealing with electricians who continually pull up floor boards only to disappear for weeks on end with the jobs incomplete. There is also a brief section in the book when the piano tuner arrives to tune the piano which had survived the bombing of the Bereford's home in London - Agatha's own piano which now resides at Greenway was a similar wartime survivor.

There is also a paragraph in which tuppence recalls the food once served at dinner in their house (having found "china menus"). The great list of food echoes the meals Agatha described in her autobiography greedily eating in her youth at the grand houses she visited. She marvelled at the shere amount people used to eat.

There are some intriguing and strange passages including one in which Colonel Pikeway refers to some dark and odd things lying behind Britain's entry into the common market. It is not enlarged upon and might be just a reflection of the Euro scepticism that ultimately led to Brexit;. Agatha Christie the Brexiteer perhaps? There is also a section about the possible use of germ warfare -this has strange and frightening  pre echoes of the Covid Pandemic unleashed on the world by the Chinese over 40 years later.

This last Agatha Christie book is poor by any measure BUT because of the exceptional output that preceded it, few can really want to completely eviscerate it. This is an author saying goodbye to characters as they, like her, advance into their eighties. Those of us who get to see the progress of dementia in someone we love, will perhaps be forgiving  of the failings in this book and wonder at what it might have been had that sad affliction not robbed her of the clarity of mind she had enjoyed throughout the rest of her life.

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