Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie

'"The finest system in the world can make a mistake...
Justice is, after all, in the hands of men, and men are fallible."'

Rating: ✫✫✫✫✫

I've had Ordeal by Innocence sat on the shelf for a long time, and, with the television adaptation now being shown, it seemed the perfect time to read it. I'm glad I actually read the book before watching the adaptation, because there were a lot of changes that I wasn't too pleased by. Although I appreciate that they want to play on the drama of crime fiction, I just find that they're often over-dramatized, which takes away from the charm and overall feel of Christie's novels. And that's precisely why I always choose to read the book first. But I digress. This review will be looking only at Christie's novel.

Arthur Calgary is on his way to Sunny Point, a house known as Viper's Point to the locals. Calgary has discovered that he could have provided an alibi to a man two years before, which could have saved him from being sent to prison for the murder of his mother. The accused, Jack Argyle, died in prison during his sentence, but Calgary feels that he must contact the family, who he imagines will be pleased to know that Jack did not commit the crime. But when he gets there, he finds that the family are less than receptive to his news. Confused as to why, Calgary struggles to remove himself from the case. He soon realises that what he has done does not just put the real culprit back in danger, but it also puts the innocent through another, more dangerous ordeal.

I often find that without one central character to hold a mystery together, it sometimes doesn't feel like one coherent plot. I imagine that's why so many authors choose to create detectives, who can interact with the suspects and pull the reader in the desired direction. Although Arthur Calgary kind of picks up this central role, he is absent for most of the action, but I don't think the plot suffers at all because of this. There are so many characters and so many plot details to remember that the overall novel could easily fall into too many different pieces. But Christie intertwines all the clues together so that, if anything, everything comes together perfectly, and makes for a really intriguing and dynamic ending.

*spoiler alert*

The Characters

One of the things I really love about Christie's novels are the way she writes her characters. There are so many different supporting characters to a crime novel, but the story of Ordeal by Innocence isn't overwhelmed by them. They were actually all very interesting, and tied together in one, very dysfunctional, family. The idea that the five children were all adopted is obviously a very important part of the story, but it also helps the characters to be so diverse. This is a large family, but one that includes so many big personalities that there is never a scene that doesn't have an impact. Despite being so different, Christie makes her characters fit together to make the plot far more exciting!

It's hard not to start by looking at Jacko. He is the key component of this particular plot; if he hadn't been imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, this sequence of events would never have happened. Jacko is described by many different characters, and it's really easy to get a picture of the man himself. 

'"...hardly a normal personality."'

'"One of Nature's misfits."'

The Lawyer, Marshall, even goes so far as to say:

'"If I may put it in a somewhat cynical way, Jack Argyle was the perfect answer to the unpleasant fact of murder in the family."'

Jacko really does seem like a piece of work, and his entire character sets the plot up very well. You really do wonder right at the very beginning if it's true that Jacko is innocent; and if he is, who committed the murder? Throughout the whole story, the more we hear about Jacko, the harder it is to warm to him, and I found this a really interesting way of writing the story. In lots of stories, the reader would warm to the poor, misunderstood man who was found guilty of a crime he didn't commit. Not here. Not Christie. She continues to reveal facts about him that are undesirable, so that we almost don't want him to be innocent. The consistent stream of dark details about Jack Argyle puts pressure on the other characters to come to the forefront of the plot, and creates a really heightened atmosphere. I found that this really helped the other characters to stand out in what could easily be an indistinguishable sea of suspects. 

✼

And what a sea of suspects it is.

The characters and the plot are intertwined so carefully that to discuss one without the other would do them both a disservice. However, I do want to share some comments I made about the characters throughout the book.

Leo Argyle - I'll be honest, this was my first choice for the murderer, although not necessarily because he was in love with Gwennan. He seemed to me to be exactly the type of character that would be guilty. I also loved him, and that was reason enough for me to be convinced that he would be the guilty party. This was somewhat hindered by the part of the book where Leo looked back over his life with Rachel and the children. It was clear to me that, although jealous, Leo wasn't necessarily angry with her. This was a really sad and emotional section, and I found it really eye-opening, both in terms of the plot, and also in terms of Rachel's character.

Rachel Argyle - I wasn't at all sure what to make of Rachel. She was obviously a nice enough person, but her desire to have children had clearly unsettled a number of people, including her husband and the children themselves. She didn't deserve to die, but the measure I got from her throughout the snippets of information gathered in the book was that she was so detached from everything, and this ultimately led somebody to want her gone. The harder task was figuring out who would have been quite that angry with her.

Gwennan - She was sweet enough, and she clearly really loved Leo. 

Kirsten - Again, she was sweet enough, but I really got the feeling that she was in love with Jacko...

Hester - The biggest drama queen in the whole world ever, but I actually quite liked her. She was right not to marry Don.

Tina - I found her a little bit dull, but she was also very sweet. Also possibly the most normal character of the bunch. I quite liked her relationship with Mickey.

Mickey - I really liked Mickey, especially when he was talking to Leo about his life and what he wanted out of it. I found him to be very honest, and for this reason would have been very surprised if he was revealed to be the killer.

Mary and Philip - Mary I found to be very dull and very rigid. However she does show obvious contempt for her adopted mother.

'Stupid in any case to choose the children she had chosen. The under-privileged! Criminal tendencies like Jacko's. Unbalanced like Hester. A savage like Mickey. And Tina, a half-caste! No wonder they had all turned out badly.'

And what of Mary herself? All I could do when reading of Mary was to wonder what trait it was that she possessed that was less than desirable... Philip, on the other hand, clearly displayed his undesirable tendencies! I was absolutely convinced that Philip could walk! I kept waiting for the moment when he would stand and I would be proved right. How wrong I was. I initially quite liked Philip, for he made clear that he wanted to take an active role in the solution of the case. I actually found it rather a shame when he turned out to be quite unsavoury! Also, just because he's in a wheelchair, he's above suspicion? No thanks, Inspector, it doesn't work that way. Perhaps that's why I was so adamant that there was more to his story.

And finally... Arthur Calgary

If I'm brutally honest, I thought Calgary was a little bit dull, but he did have his heart in the right place. Whatever the repercussions of his actions, he did what he believed was best, and he ultimately put the guilty party behind bars. But despite whether I found his character to be good or bad, he served a purpose. As I mentioned earlier, Calgary filled the gap of the missing detective. Even if he only appeared in a few of the major scenes, he helped to pull the story together; he talked to external characters and gathered information that the reader would never have received otherwise, and he facilitated the reveal at the end. Christie didn't need him to be the most inspiring of characters. She just needed to use him for what he was, and I have no complaints about this. I think it was done to great effect.

The Plot

And so we arrive.

There are so many plot twits, crucial details, and character progressions, that I could talk about them all for days and not be done. But in my view of this book, there was a beginning, and an ending, and everything else falls neatly into one of these categories. One moment the reader is getting to know the characters, and the next we've arrived at the climax of the novel. The transition was so seamless that I can't even put my finger on where exactly the turning point is. This is a skill in itself, because the plot was fluid, and the sequence of events made perfect sense. I therefore can only really view the novel in two parts.

✼

I loved the first couple of chapters in establishing the premise of the story. It was so ominous and mysterious reading about Calgary. What exactly was he on his way to do? When I found out exactly why he was travelling to Sunny House, my interest only grew. We're teased by not being told immediately what happened to Jacko. We witness Hester and Leo reluctant to discuss him, but we only find out the truth behind the story when our interest has already been piqued. The murder of Rachel looked like an open and shut case, but Jacko's alibi blows the story wide open. Now we begin to see the consequences of Calgary's actions.

'"What does it matter to Jacko now? He's dead. It's not Jacko who matters. It's us!"

"What do you mean?"

"It's not the guilty who matter. It's the innocent."

She caught his arm, digging her fingers into it.

"It's we who matter. Don't you see what you've done to us all?"'

What I find really clever about this opening is that it's such a mirror image of the end of the traditional crime story. At the end, the reader is surprised when a character they thought was good is revealed to have committed the crime. Here, a character we believe to be bad (and we have heard enough about Jacko to be confident that his disposition was generally bad) is said not to have committed the crime. I loved the way Christie turned this on it's head, as it made for a really dynamic opening few scenes.

✼

Generally, in crime fiction, I'm more of a fan of the scenes leading up to the end, where the characters are really exposing themselves and you're really finding yourself gripped. In this book, however, the ending really did come together for me perfectly.

I feel like maybe I should have guessed the truth. It wasn't too outlandish, and I'd already made the connection between Kirsten and Jacko. I just hadn't yet worked out what that might have meant. I thought it was a wonderful piece of reflection by Calgary when he finally realised that Jacko was the key to the mystery:

'To begin with, he had made the mistake of concentrating on Mrs Argyle. In nine cases out of ten that would have been the right procedure. But this was the tenth case.

All along he had felt the presence of an unknown factor. If he could once isolate and identify that factor, the case would be solved. In seeking it he had been obsessed by the dead woman. But the dead woman, he saw now, was not really important. Any victim, in a sense, would have done.

He had shifted his viewpoint - shifted it back to the moment when all this had begun. He had shifted it back to Jacko.' 

As I've already discussed, Christie emphasised Jacko's character a lot. We heard about it from his family, and even his wife. When we get to the end and Calgary has that lightbulb moment, it's very believable that Jacko was the catalyst behind the murder, even if he didn't commit the murder himself. I'm so angry at myself for not going that extra distance and putting the whole solution together... But I think that's part of the appeal of this book. All of the characters made very believable would-be murderers! Christie's chosen path was, however, very neat, and it made the most sense. Jacko's hand in the murder was in keeping with his personality. Calgary did put Kirsten behind bars, but that didn't mean that Jacko wasn't also guilty all along.

The Verdict

I feel that it was always going to be a little inevitable that I loved this story, because I'm a huge fan of Christie as an author anyway (although there are some of her books that I would happily criticise!). There is a certain charm to her books. I can't imagine many crime authors nowadays getting away with the unrealistic delay of amnesia to providing Jacko's alibi. But here, it just works. I also love that the story focused on a crime in hindsight. This is always a technique that really appeals to me, and Christie is so great at executing such plots.

Aside from this fact, though, the plot structure was still very good. I'm impressed how neatly it was constructed. There was so much detail crammed into the pages of this book, but I never felt overwhelmed with information. Furthermore, the climax came just at the right moment. I've often found myself to be plodding along, waiting for an overdue reveal, but this hit me just at the right moment. There were bits of insight that could be easily missed, but were just subtle enough (like Kirsten's fondness for Jacko), and these fitted well into the structure of the story. I picked up on the hints about Kirsten, and could easily have made leaps towards the truth, but the ending arrived before I had chance to overthink it and ruin the possibility for myself.

It's stories like this that remind me why Agatha Christie is the Queen of Crime. Her characters were strong yet varied, and they all managed to stand out within the complicated story. The plot itself is detailed, but never confusing, and is structured so well that it seems to me to have been crafted so delicately. I was really impressed with this book, and am so excited to read it again in the future, knowing now how it ends and with the opportunity to look out for the bits I might have missed this time.