The Clocks

The Clocks was first published in 1963 and so is a fairly late Poirot book. This is reflected in an older Poirot who plays a curiously passive role in the book. In fact, the lead in the investigation is taken by Inspector Dick Hardcastle and a young member of the secret service called Colin Lamb. Poirot doesn't even make an appearance until about two thirds of the way through the story.

The plot centres on the murder of an unidentified man in the house of a blind woman who apprarently has no idea who he was. The body was discovered by a secretarial temp who had been sent to the address apparently at the behest of the blind woman. This turns out to be untrue. A weird feature of the crime scene was that 4 clocks that didn't belong in the house were left with their time changed to 4.13.

For fans of Poirot, this may be a disappointing story as he appears so late and is oddly passive. His first appearance comes with a long monologue about crime writers of the time and their relative strengths and weakneses . It very much seems to be Agatha Christie's views shining through and it isn't quite convincing from Poirot.

There are some interesting reflections on the state of espionage and the way in which there were double agents and double double agents. This is not surprising as the period in which the book was written was at the very height of the cold war. There is a very interesting if brief comment from Poirot about the threat from nuclear bombs; effectively he shrugged his shoulder and accepted whatever would be would be.

As you would expect, all the loose ends are tied up neatly although some may stretch credibility to breaking point.

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