Postern of Fate (Tommy & Tuppence, #5)

by Agatha Christie

A poisoning many years ago may not have been accidental after all...

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford have just become the proud owners of an old house in an English village. Along with the property, they have inherited some worthless bric-a-brac, including a collection of antique books. While rustling through a copy of The Black Arrow, Tuppence comes upon a series of apparently random underlinings.

However, when she writes down the letters, they spell out a very disturbing message:
M a r y - J o r d a n - d i d - n o t - d i e - n a t u r a l l y...
And sixty years after their first murder, Mary Jordan's enemies are still ready to kill...

• ISBN10: 0816131236
• ISBN13: 9780816131235
• Publish Date: 1 April 1985 (first published 1 September 1974)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 8 February 2021
• Imprint: MacMillan Publishing Company
• Edition: Large type / large print edition
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 488
• Language: English

Reviews

This is either pure genius or total insanity. And I honestly don't know which one I'm leaning towards.

I've loved all four of the Tommy and Tuppence novels. They've been well written, hilarious, strong mysteries and I've adored every minute. This one had moments of that but it was also fairly scattered.

Did Christie plan that? It was apparently the last book she wrote. She would've been 82 years at the time and she was experiencing dementia. Tommy and Tuppence are also of advanced age and experiencing dementia. Did Christie get confused while writing? Or did she plan for the writing to emulate the behaviour of herself and her characters?

It made it hard to follow but it also accurately captured the forgetfulness that plagues the elderly.

I'm sad that there weren't more Tommy and Tuppence because they were terrific - smart, brave, funny and with a knack for solving crimes. They were supportive of one another and were still as in love by the end as they were from the very start.

This might not have been the best Agatha Christie novel but it wasn't a terrible read - just not quite up to the high standards she'd set for the majority of her career. 3 stars.

[brokentune]

Postern of Fate was Dame Agatha's last book. And knowing this, made reading the book rather sad. Not only because it is the last book she wrote but also because she seemed to have written it in a way to emphasize that this truly was Tommy and Tuppence Beresford's last hurrah.

So, we have Tommy and Tuppence in their seventies, moving into a new home in the country, and being reminded by their acquaintances of the great adventures they used to get into. As they start to get settled in their new house, Tuppence finds a book that contains a coded message to indicate that Mary Jordan did not die of natural causes.

But who was Mary Jordan?

The unravelling of the mystery ensues.

While the first half of the book was not horrible and seemed to merely meander through the nostalgia of the earlier adventures of T&T, the rest of the book seemed to pursue a similar line of conspiracy theory as the abominable Passenger to Frankfurt (yes, some of the characters in Passenger also appear in Postern of Fate) and the slightly less annoying Destination Unknown.

Not that I don't enjoy a good conspiracy story, but not if it is told in such a rambling manner, without a logical train of thought, and, of course, not when it is anywhere near as ridiculous as or even reminding me of Passenger to Frankfurt.

So, with all these points against it, do I regret reading it? No. But then, I am a Christie fan/completist and appreciate that she is thought to have struggled with dementia in the late years of her life. A theory which the quality of her writing and plotting in her later books seems to support.