The Pale Horse

The Pale Horse, by Agatha Christie, is pretty disappointing compared to Murder on the Orient Express. It focuses on witches and magic more than logic and detection, a fact that quite annoys me. It’s worked to Christie’s advantage, though, because I now want to read more  of her stories to make sure they’re good.

The Pale Horse starts with boredom. There’s chatter that doesn’t seem to connect at all with the mystery, although if you keep reading, it does. It’s still quite boring, though. “Geez, when is the mystery-solving going to start?” I thought. Well, it starts soon enough, but no logic is used. Instead, it’s “Are they really witches?”, “Do they really kill people?”and “Am I going crazy, or is this real?”  Thankfully, there’s a stash of logic at the end. Christie stores all the logic at the end, and we’re left wondering why she didn’t spread it throughout the book.

The characters are pretty good. Though they don’t jump to life, (“witches”, anyone?) they’re good enough to make you not want them to die. But they still don’t make you freak out over them.

The Pale Horse’s sparse amount of logic doesn’t make me happy. The characters are…eh. The Pale Horse is just barely good enough to read… but if you really like mysteries, enough to overlook the fantastical and boring stuff, go ahead and read it. I, however, will not be reading it again.