A visiting British Christie expert, Lady Gwendolyn Tompkins, rounds out the eccentric-older-woman-as-force-of-nature troika with Laurel and Henny this time around. The cozy, estrogen-steeped weekend is rudely invaded by Neil Bledsoe, a nasty caricature of toxic masculinity with a hatred for ... well, just about everything good and true and feminine, it seems. Naturally, Bledsoe ends up dead (I won't even count that as a spoiler, though the murder feels a long time coming; Hart has to vamp longer than she's accustomed to to account for the greater length of the book), and the list of suspects encompasses virtually the entire guest list of Christie enthusiasts.
This book is a tribute to Christie in more than just the constant references to her books and life which pepper the text. Christie was an expert at presenting a murder in a way that the reader felt no sympathy for the victim, only academic interest in unraveling the mystery. Hart likewise presents Bledsoe as so wholly vicious that the reader explicitly is meant to applaud the agent of his death. Unlike other books in the series, not only does the killer go unpunished, but Annie and her gang conspire to pervert justice -- which, again, is okay because justice is personified in Brice Posey.
I found the reader's assumed complicity in the murder off-putting, and I hadn't realized before how very female the point of view in this series is. Men are evil, or weak, or, like Max and Chief Saulter, happily submissive to the women in charge. It is certainly true that in the past the opposite was true in most literature: male characters had all the narrative power, and women were damsels, temptresses, or sidekicks; turnabout, however, doesn't make fair play. I find myself choking on the implied sisterhood.
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