The Big 4

 I finished Agatha Christie's The Big 4. It was not good. I was devastated. Hercule Poirot stories are usually cozy little mysteries (can you describe murder as cozy?) in a remote village with a bunch of cooky characters, but this book was a globe trotting adventure where Poirot faced off against an organization of criminals around the world. The titular crime syndicate, The Big 4, features a person from America, China, France, and England. Yes nearly every section even remotely touching on China has aged poorly. 

 Agatha Christie's books usually have a large number of characters with complex motivations or ideas that make it difficult to track who's doing what or why. The resulting story then has a lot of fun texture, with all these clashing personalities and motivations building a nice mysterious atmosphere. In this book the large number of characters ends up feeling both confusing and limiting. Since the book is so short it can't dwell on a setting for a long period of time, meaning there aren't a lot of red-herring characters to create mystery around who might be a member of the Big 4. For instance there are only 2 named French characters in the entire book. It was not difficult to guess the French member of the Big 4. One of the members does not even appear in the book, they just get passing mentions about how evil they are.

 The structure of the book is also weirdly bad? It's divided into several chapters where there's a short mystery that on it's own seems like it has nothing to do with the ongoing Big 4 plot, but some mentions are sprinkled in to make it all fit somehow. It all made me wish I was reading a mystery with a more focused plot. I had no real Idea what the Big 4's plan even was beyond some nebulous idea of 'world domination'. At some point a mountain exploded, I do not know why.

 Can I say also that "The Big 4" is a stupid name for a crime syndicate? It makes me think of digestive supplements for some reason.

 If you want a non-Poirot mystery to read, the Seven Dials is great! It's in the public domain so an ebook is easy to find. I found out that it's actually a mini series on Netflix too! 

 Ok, another long day of turning this blog into a goodreads account. I hope you had a nice April Fools, I got stuck in the rain on my walk home from the train and my landlord gave us two days to decide if we wanted to renew our lease. I'm not sure if those count as April Fools pranks or not. 

 That's it for me, I've been loving the Tomodatchi Life demo, I can't wait for the full game!