Reviews and More

One thing that I’ve always liked about checking baseball player stats on ESPN.com is that everyone’s annual salary is listed right there with their other vitals, such as college team, experience, height, weight, birthday, etc. That means, for example, whenever I check out the Atlanta Braves roster, I can see that Mike Hampton, perhaps the most overpaid pitcher ever to play the game, is getting a whopping $15.4 million for sitting on the DL all season. Don’t forget, this comes on top of sitting out the entire 2006 season as well, also due to injuries. What a joke!

I tell you what, I wish the NFL would start using the same kind of financial reporting software that MLB does so we can see the player salaries for that league too. I’d love to see how much David Carr is earning as a second- or third-stringer in Carolina or how much Edgerrin James got for his 72 YPG, 6 TD performance in ‘06.

It seems like all you have to do in pro sports anymore is have one good season (it can even come in college, as Carr’s career shows us) and you’ll get a cushy contract that will set you up for life!

One of my first “real” watches was a Swiss Army watch that I got when I was in junior high school. It was one of the cheaper models (less than $200 back then), but at a time when everyone else was wearing rubber Swatch watches, it really stood out in the crowd. It looked cool, was durable, and no one else at my school had one.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about buying another nice timepiece for my collection and was checking out the newest styles of Swiss Army Watches that are available today. I haven’t been paying much attention to the Swiss Army line over the years, so I was completely surprised by how upscale and elegant some of the models are. I didn’t know Swiss Army had moved in that direction with their watches! I definitely liked what I saw and will likely buy something from this manufacturer the next time I purchase a wristwatch.

After taking nearly three months off from Agatha Christie books to read some works from other authors, including Michael Connelly, J.K. Rowling, E.M. Forster, and Anita Shreve, I decided to resume my personal goal of getting through Christie’s entire list of novels in chronological order. So I picked up 1938’s Appointment with Death and tore through it in just three days. Wow, I never realized how much I missed Christie’s sparse style! I love not having to deal with extraneous scenes just because the author wants to fatten the book up a bit!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Much like in her previous novel Death on the Nile, Christie devotes the entire first part of Appointment with Death on establishing plenty of motives for the whole cast of characters to want to kill the eventual victim.

In this case, the soon-to-be victim is an odious woman named Mrs. Boynton, who, we learn, exerts a strange psychological hold on her adult children and step-children. These grown men and women — Lennox, Raymond, Carol, and Ginevra Boynton — don’t do anything without their mother’s consent. This extends to everything from career paths (no one is allowed to get a job) to taking unaccompanied walks to talking to fellow travelers in Jerusalem, where the bulk of the action occurs.

The strange dynamic of the Boynton family of course attracts the attention of others, especially a Frenchman named Dr. Gerard and a young English doctor named Sarah King. Dr. Gerard and Miss King often take their meals together and talk about the psychological implications of Mrs. Boynton’s domineering ways. As doctors, they enjoy bouncing various theories off each other as to how this grossly obese, immobile woman with a failing heart can control four grown adults so completely. They don’t arrive at a definitive answer because there really isn’t one.

Later in the novel, two small groups of travelers make a side excursion to Petra. The Boyntons make up one group, and Sarah King, Dr. Gerard, Miss Pierce, and Lady Westholme make up the other. The two groups camp near each other, which proves to be a significant event, especially since it is here that Mrs. Boynton is finally murdered. She is found dead in a seated position outside her cave, with what appears to be a puncture mark (from a hypodermic needle) in her wrist.

Despite the puncture mark, local authorities were simply going to pass the death off as accidental since Mrs. Boynton had a bad heart anyway, but Dr. Gerard is not satisfied. He claims that his hypodermic needle was stolen, and he thinks the killer used it to inject Mrs. Boynton with some poisonous substance.

This is where Hercule Poirot finally enters the story (after just a casual mention at the beginning of the novel). He happens to be traveling in the area as well, and agrees to take on the case when it’s presented to him by a local official named Colonel Carbury. Poirot promises to unearth the truth in 24 hours — and of course he does.

The rest of the novel then deals with Poirot’s interrogation of everyone present at the camp at the time of Mrs. Boynton’s death, plus his customary detailed explanation of the case in front of all interested parties.

My Reaction: I thought Appointment with Death started out great! The Boyntons were an interesting bunch, and I found myself as obsessed with their story as Sarah King was. I wish Christie had spent even more time on the subject than she did: even devoting one-third of the novel to the Boyntons wasn’t enough!

But after that strong beginning, things went downhill for me. I thought it was far-fetched for Poirot to be able to unravel the mystery just from interviewing each character one time. He didn’t have to pursue any leads, double-check anything, view the body or the camp, or anything else, really. I mean, obviously this was a deliberate choice on Christie’s part and was meant to show how brilliant a detective Poirot is, but it didn’t make for fun reading. Personally speaking, I derive enjoyment from murder mysteries on two fronts: First, in the actual murder. If the writer sets up a good murder scene, I’m hooked. Second, in the investigation. This is a big one for me, so when the investigation simply consists of questioning the main suspects in a hotel room, I feel cheated.

Moreover, I thought the way Poirot figured out who the killer was amounted to little more than a wild guess at best. Sure, he had two separate clues that led him to the particular conclusion he drew, but those clues were little more than hearsay and he didn’t bother to investigate or verify the claims for himself.

Despite these problems, I still enjoyed Appointment with Death and thought it was a good mystery on the whole. It’s a quick, entertaining, and easy read, and for these reasons, I give it 7.5 stars out of 10.