I haven’t been reading much very lately, so my goal of going through all of Agatha Christie’s mystery novels in chronological order is taking much longer than expected. I just finished One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, which was her 27th full-length novel. Published in 1940, this book features her most famous character, Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. I usually enjoy the Poirot novels, but I have to admit that the last few have been rather disappointing, and unfortunately, One, Two, Buckle My Shoe continues this trend.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The novel opens with Hercule Poirot going to an appointment at his dentist’s office. Things progress normally enough: there are a few other people in the waiting room, his appointment with Dr. Morley goes off without a hitch, and he leaves without incident. The only slightly unusual happening occurs as Poirot is leaving. He notices that a woman named Mabelle Sainsbury-Seale lost a buckle from one of her shoes. Poirot returns the shiny buckle to her, and that’s that.
Later that day, Poirot learns from Inspector Japp that Morley died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. A London dentist’s suicide would normally not be a matter for Scotland Yard, but since one of the other patients that day was an important international banker named Alistair Blunt, Japp must perform a thorough investigation.
Poirot of course joins in, and when they can’t find anything in Morley’s history to suggest that there would be a legitimate cause for suicide, Poirot decides to continue digging. He figures out that it’s entirely possible that Morley was, in fact, murdered, so he begins working from that perspective. Poirot uncovers a few suspects, but the story gets more and more complicated as different motives and possibilities are introduced.
By the end, Poirot does indeed solve the case, though the solution is quite a stretch — and one that I don’t think even the most careful of readers could guess.
My Reaction: I’ve said this a few times before, but I think it bears repeating: I really miss having Poirot’s former sidekick Arthur Hastings around. Hastings more or less acted as a stand-in for the reader, asking the questions that we wanted to ask, muddling through the mystery on his own, and trying to learn from Poirot in the process. Without Hastings there, all of Poirot’s machinations take place inside his head, and it’s just not nearly as fun to read these books when we can’t see precisely how Poirot makes his leaps of logic.
Hastings’ input and questions were certainly needed in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, as I got completely lost about halfway through the book. As a result, I had no idea why Dr. Morley was murdered, nor did I understand the whole identity switch thing — which obviously had a negative impact on my enjoyment of the book.
Overall, I wouldn’t rank this book as one of Christie’s best, so there’s really no reason to read it unless you’re trying to get through her entire bibliography.