Taken at the Flood, Agatha Christie

The Book

In the tiny town of Warmsley Vale, a young widow of an older rich man, Mr. Gordon Cloade, is in a lot of danger. Rosaleen Cloade, formerly Mrs. Underhay, is a woman very much under the thumb of her protective brother, David Hunter. Rosaleen is sweet, pretty and dumb. 

Gordon's family, his brothers Jeremey and Lionel, both professionals, his sister, Mrs. Adela Marchmont, and other distant members of the family have all been benevolently helped out by Gordon's generous hand throughout the years. But his marriage to the pretty young Rosaleen has disinherited them. All of the Cloades want her dead, for under those circumstances Uncle Gordon's sizable fortune is divided between them all equally. 

As they all contemplate that, a man, purported Enoch Arden, arrives in Warmsely Vale and promptly tries to blackmail David. David gets his sister out of town, and together in London they try to raise the money to pay the man off. David returns on the appointed day, has some mysterious run ins with the locals and then returns London and his sister. The next morning Enoch Arden is found dead. 

Enter Hercule Poirot. Now Enoch (for those of you familiar with Tennyson's poems you realize this is the name of a man believed to be dead who returns home to find his wife has remarried) is identified as Mr. Underhay, Rosaleen's first husband. All chaos ensues and two more people die. One more character is nearly killed as Poirot untangles this mystery.

My Thoughts

If I weren't committed to reading all the way through the Agatha Christie cannon, I would quit the whole endeavor right here with this book. It's not a bad plot, and the twist of who did it and why is satisfying. But holy cow are the girls in this book STUPID. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. 

The full grown women are barely any better. 

I get it. Christie is from a certain era, where women were raised to believe such stupid things, like girls ask for it (they don't), exciting men are what women want (as if that's an excuse for getting hit), and women are dependent on men. Yeah, except they're the ones bailing the men out of their stupid messes. 

I hate them all. And I don't want to read books where everyone is this stupid. Hard pass if you're a modern woman. 

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from the Algonquin Public Library District. Is is lightly used and according to the the sticker in the front of this 263 page book, it entered their collection in September of 2018. It's in pretty good condition, there are no dog ears, markings or stray spots at all in the book. It was easy to hold, so I wasn't the first person to read it. The cover says it was $13.99 at the time of purchase, so that is the number we will use. 

This Book                                                     $13.99

Items Reviewed this Year                           $185.96

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