Although I’m trying to read more Marple, I normally don’t read the non-Poirot mysteries because I generally don’t enjoy them (case in point: Tommy and Tuppence). But, I heard that The Seven Dials Mystery is good and an unconventional Christie, which convinced me to give it a go.

The Seven Dials Mystery starts with a prank that goes wrong: a guest, Gerry Wade, is proven to be a heavy sleeper, so eight alarm clocks are bought to scare him to an early start. But on the morning of the prank, Gerry is found dead and one alarm clock missing. The house is rented by Lord Caterham and when his daughter, Bundle, learns about the mystery, she’s drawn to the case and towards a secret society known as the Seven Dials.

So this was a fun read. I think the key to enjoying this is to put aside any expectation of a serious novel and look for something fun and campy. A lot of the things that I sometimes ‘complain’ about in Christie novels, such as the guys being useless or the romances being forced, are magnified and made fun of here. Bundle and Superintendent Battle are the two most capable characters (to me), and the guys who are the heroes of the story really just have very good luck. Practically all the characters are poked fun at, resulting in quite a few chuckles as I read the book. As for the romance bit, I’ve always thought that Christie’s romances were a bit unrealistic (me not being a romance fan probably made me biased) so the climatic scene made me chuckle. Bundle was wonderfully down-to-earth about the whole thing that you just have to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

By the way, this line created a mini-mystery for me. Towards the end, Battle describes someone as “a kind of Raffles, but much more dangerous than any Raffles ever was or could be.” The identity of Raffles is never mentioned, and since I’m Singapore (and living in our Bicentennial celebration year), I immediately thought of Sir Stamford Raffles. Alas, Wikipedia has shown me that Christie was probably talking about A.J. Raffles, a fictional thief. But the moment where I thought it might have referred to Sir Stamford Raffles was pretty funny – I couldn’t figure out why the founder of modern Singapore would be referred to in a mystery! It was definitely out of character.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It’s a fun, light-hearted read and it showed me that Christie doesn’t take herself too seriously. While many tropes in this book can be found in her other books (apart from having a genius detective, although I suppose you could argue Battle plays this role), you can tell that she’s gently poking fun at the tropes and having a good time doing so. I’d recommend this to fans of Christie who are looking for a twist on her usual mysteries.