I literally just said mysteries are silly

And this mystery is a little silly.

It holds up, but it can actually be kind of taxing to read because he prose is so thin and flimsy at times that there’s so little to hold onto.

But I was reading this (for the first time, even though I’ve seen the 1974 film and read several of her others) because I was interested in the possibility of teaching this book with a group of special ed 12th graders this year. The class is technically British literature, even though I have been told I don’t have to adhere to that because of the nature of the class, but I want to expose them to British literature anyway. This book is basically written on a fourth grade reading level (literally…I checked) and it presents the case in chunked out pieces of information and could really allow for the students to break it apart and try to put it back together. I could link with it critical thinking, deductive reasoning, assumptions, and tie it in to some light history. It could be fun.

Now, the movie is coming out and obviously that is another selling point. But I wanted to say something about that because when the trailer came out one of the common points people kept making is Kenneth Branagh’s mustache choice. According to a lot of commenters they were mad because of how meticulous Poirot is about his facial hair and how they thought this was silly and misguided.

To which I say: “Two men below her window were talking French. One was a French officer, the other was a little man with enormous mustaches.”