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The Man in the Brown Suit

Hello everyone and welcome back. I'm sorry I have not posted in a while (and by "in a while" I mean 4 days). I have been on a very safe, masked (wear your mask!), and socially distanced vacation in a destination to which we drove. I read this book on vacation in the presence of the river and trees with ominous, mossy overhangs. Please enjoy.


While The Man in the Brown Suit is a Christie, it is painfully obvious that it is one of her earlier published.

Summary

Anne Beddingfield is standing waiting for her train at the tube station when she sees a man who smells overwhelmingly of mothballs. Suddenly, the man looks at the her and then just behind her and goes stark white. He stumbles backwards, from fear, and trips over the side of the platform. He lands on the tracks. A couple passersby help Anne get the man back on to the platform. A man in a brown suit rushes past Anne and claims to be a doctor. The brown suited man pronounces dead, but Anne notices he does not handle the deceased like a regular doctor. He is looking for something as he examines. Anne follows the man out of the station. He begins running and drops something out of his coat pocket. It is a note with a series of number and dots and the name of a place. The note smells strongly of mothballs, just like that man who fell off the platform did! One day later, a woman is murdered in her home. The inspector doesn't think the tube station 'accident' and the woman are related, but Anne most certainly does. Anne's father dies unexpectedly. She has no one, so she decides to go on the quest to find out what the man in the brown suit was really up to. 

Review

I did not enjoy this book. That is the my straight answer. I'm happy to report I do not have to write negative reviews often, but that is what this one is going to be. This book is the compilation of 8 mystery books' details. It was like if Agatha Christie had 8 ideas for 8 separate books but couldn't wait for them to be published so she decided to write all the plots into one book. 

The characters were confusing. Their names changed all the time, as multiple characters were using aliases simultaneously. There were not a lot of characters involved, but they all had multiple identities so it felt like they were different people. There was a fairly good romance in the book, but the male character in said relationship was awkward to me. He felt forced (and he happened to be the character whose name was changed the most in the book. I just couldn't keep up. He was Rayburn, then Lucas, then about 2 more.). It was a major struggle to get through this book. The ending was the best part, but I had to look up a detailed plot summary to understand it. If you want a challenging mystery to understand, this is it, only its boring.

Sorry Agatha. I have loved every other book of yours. This one was not for me! 2 stars. 


What did you think? What should I review next? Happy reading!!


Audience: 7th grade and up!
Publisher: Penguin Random House's Vintage Books
Date Published: originally - 1924; by Vintage Books - January 2020
ISBN: 9781984899408
Format: Paperback
Genre: Mystery/Detective/Thriller

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