What I Happen to Be Reading At the Moment

Elephants Can Remember isn't really a Poirot mystery. He does make several appearances and advises Mrs. Oliver on how to go about her investigation, but for most of the novel we follow Ariadne Oliver discovering a past mystery and going in search of answers. These answers come in the form of "elephants": witnesses who were around when the murder-suicide of a husband and wife occurred. It could have been a double murder, and even if it was a murder-suicide, there is uncertainty which partner was the one who committed the crime. The investigation into the old crime digs up past memories and rumors of a mad sister, violent pasts, and the fate of Ariadne Oliver's goddaughter, the daughter of the deceased couple. The strong point of the novel is that it follows Mrs. Oliver, one of my favorite figures in the Poirot cannon because she acts both as a mouth-piece for Poirot as well as a character who thinks about murder mostly in a theoretical way. Her investigations by going and talking to a wide variety of people recalls Miss Marple without some of the more refined old lady mannerisms. However, I figured out the solution to the mystery even having disengaged that part of my brain (detective fiction is more fun discovering things along with the main detective). The puzzle that Christie presents is vaguely derivative and all in all too simple. As a generally Christie mystery, Elephants Can Remember is a mid-quality addition to her canon. As the second to last Poirot novel, it comes up wanting in the area of developing a challenging case for both Poirot and Mrs. Oliver.