Why Didn't They Ask Evans, by Agatha Christie

The Book

    Bobby Jones, the twenty-eight year old fourth son of a local vicar in Wales is just trying find his place in the world. After all, here in the early 1930s, there aren't so many jobs to be had. But why dwell on that, when you can play a round of golf with one of the local doctors on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Just as they are getting to end of the holes, Bobby, who is a terrible golfer, thinks he hears a cry. Although Dr. Thomas disagrees, they go together to peer over the cliff only to find that a man has fallen. He's not dead yet, but with a broken back and other injuries, Dr. Thomas believes that there is nothing to be done. Bobby agrees to stay with the body, while Thomas goes for help. Bobby stays with the dying man, who is blessedly unconscious, right up until the end, and then he expends his last energy to say "Why didn't they ask Evans?" Bobby then straightens the man's belongings, putting a photo back into his pocket and covering the man's face with his handkerchief. 

As time drags on, Bobby is really worried about staying with the dead man, not because it's spooky, but because he promised his father to help out a evening church services and his dad will be angry with him if he misses. Just as he's contemplating this, a man named Roger Bassington-ffrench offers to stay with the body, Bobby accepts the offer and runs off to church to help his dead, having a great story to tell in this tiny Welsh village of Marchbolt. He tells the story to anyone who will listen, and his friend Lady Frances "Frankie" Derwent. Frankie thinks the story would be better if it weren't an accident but murder. With no evidence to the contrary, the coroner's inquest calls is death by misadventure, and here the book should end. Except after Bobby recounts the man's cryptic dying words, he receives a mysterious offer of employment in South America, and when he refuses to accept it, he then survives a morphine overdose. Frankie is convinced someone is trying to murder her friend. Since the local cops aren't going to put up an investigation, she does it for them. Many hijinks ensue, until Frankie and Bobby catch the killer and of course, admit they are in love with each other.

My Thoughts

    This is the most difficult book since The Secret of Chimneys to read, in my opinion. The Big Four, is easily Christie's worst novel, to date, with the polished first draft of Chimneys running a close second. But this book is supposed to be a breezy thriller, and as such only Frankie lives up the bill. I agree with other critiques which say the plotting is haphazard and the characters are inconsistent. Some of the clues that are laid in front of the reader are not well done. This book is better than those other two, but not by a lot. 

The Big Four, despite it's myriad problems, is at least readable, perhaps because it started life as a series of short stories, and at the end of the day they just should not have been combined to make it an entire novel. But Christie was under deadline pressure to get a book to her publisher, and in a bad place mentally, so her powers were a bit diminished. And Chimneys was rushed to fulfill a contract to a publisher she disliked. So tight deadlines at least explain those two books. All I can say as to what explains this book is she was exhausted from writing Lord Edgeware Dies and Murder on the Orient Express. Both of which have two of the more ingenious plot twists in the cannon. Or perhaps it's because this books directly after Orient Express that I had such a let down. All I know is that no book since Chimneys has tempted me to fall asleep faster. 

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

    He again we have one of the leatherette editions my library purchased in the 1980s. The interior is complete with horrible wallpaper-esque interior covers, indicating that this is earlier in the 80s and older. The book is in extremely good condition, considering it could not have been printed later than 1994. There are no markings or bent pages. In fact, is seems to have been barely read before me, the 214 pages are crisply white, as if they have never been opened to the air before. A little sleuthing on my receipt reveals that this book cost $20.00, which is fairly typical for these editions that are between 200 and 250 pages

This Book              $20.00

This Summer        $700.83           

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