Taken at the Flood

by Agatha Christie

Ebook, 2011

Library's rating

Library's review

Hercule Poirot is visited by a woman who has been reliably informed by a member of the spirit world that her brother-in-law's young widow, sole inheritor of the fortune that until his death in the London Blitz had been supporting his entire extended family, had a previous husband who is still

alive. The sister-in-law wants Poirot to investigate and find him, so that the fortune can revert to her and the rest of her freeloading family, none of whom are apparently capable of supporting themselves.

This is another twisty mystery from Dame Agatha, and I should have known better than to boast on Liz's thread when I was only halfway through the book that I knew exactly how it was going to end. Yeah, not so much. The final chapters were a real rollercoaster ride, and if not for a truly unpleasant bit of domestic violence between the book's main romantic couple, who nevertheless end up together, I would have loved it. That bit was a little much even for me.

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Description

Fiction. Mystery. HTML: In Agatha Christie's classic puzzler Taken at the Flood, the indefatigable Hercule Poiroit investigates the troubling case of a twice-widowed woman. A few weeks after marrying an attractive widow, Gordon Cloade is tragically killed by a bomb blast in the London blitz. Overnight, the former Mrs. Underhay finds herself in sole possession of the Cloade family fortune. Shortly afterward, Hercule Poirot receives a visit from the dead man's sister-in-law who claims she has been warned by "spirits" that Mrs. Underhay's first husband is still alive. Poirot has his suspicions when he is asked to find a missing person guided only by the spirit world. Yet what mystifies Poirot most is the woman's true motive for approaching him.....… (more)