If you are not aware that Agatha Christie is the ultimate in the classic British closed room mystery genre, you clearly have been living under some rock.

Christie, who died in 1976 at 85, wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections becoming the doyenne of this genre and the best selling author of fiction, her novels having sold more than 2 billion copies while her play, The Mousetrap continues to run in London’s West End where it has been staged since 1952 with the only interruption coming in 2020 due to COVID.  In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America‘s Grand Master Award. Later that year, Witness for the Prosecution received an Edgar Award for best play. In 2013, she was voted the best crime writer and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the best crime novel ever by 600 professional novelists of the Crime Writers’ Association. In 2015, And Then There Were None was named the “World’s Favourite Christie” in a vote sponsored by the author’s estate.

“Peril at End House” was the sixth novel featuring the Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot, and his somewhat naive, loyal companion, Colonel Hastings.  The book takes place in a small village in Cornwall with a run-down great house called End House where Nick Buckley, an intriguing and frustrating young woman has had her life threatened with a falling painting, failed brakes in her car, a careening boulder, and finally, a bullet when Poirot turns up vacationing there.  Through a series of twists and turns, Poirot, as always, identifies the perpetrator and saves the day.

Isaac Anderson began his review in The New York Times Book Review on 6 March 1932, by writing “With Agatha Christie as the author and Hercule Poirot as the central figure, one is always assured of an entertaining story with a real mystery to it … [T]he person who is responsible for the dirty work at End House is diabolically clever, but not quite clever enough to fool the little Belgian detective all the time. A good story with a most surprising finish.”  

Personally, I found the plot, characters, and setting to all be a bit dated and over the top.  I’ve read a number of Christie’s books, and perhaps I’m just getting a bit impatient with the tricks of her trade, but I was eager for this one to end.  There was a bit more of Cornwall in Christie’s book than there was in Silva’s, but I’m still in search of one that takes me more into the aura and feelings of southwest England.