Postern of Fate is a murder mystery featuring Tommy and Tuppence, some of Agatha Christie's less well known detectives. The book is set later in their retirement, as they settle down into a new house and discover secrets long hidden in the abaondoned books and toys found in the house.
This is a rather lovely book, in many ways. Unlike the Poirot or Miss Marple books, this is a much more light hearted read, and there's a lot of comedy moments with people misremembering or misunderstanding things. It's well written too, and I found it easy to imagine the doddering old ladies telling stories in a vague, distant way, or the insistance of Isaac to pronounce words the way he'd always done. I also liked the constant, and completely irrelevant, themes that cropped up, such as the name of the house (which had changed several times in the history of the book).
It's worth a note that the book is perhaps better termed an adventure story than a mystery in many ways. While there's not much action, per se, there is a lot of history that is slowly uncovered throughout the book, with Tuppence learning more and more about the people that used to live in her house sixty years ago, and the people in the area.
Perhaps my only problem with the book is the ending; I'm not massively sure exactly what was going on even having read the ending twice. This left me with a bit of a disappointment, since it felt like most of the nuts and bolts of the detective work is done completely off stage (so to speak) - it was ultimately finished quite abruptly.
But I can't really let that put me off this book too much. After all, this is a book that I enjoyed reading, and wanted to know more. I liked the characters, the writing style was amusing and inventive and ultimately any uncertainty in the plot just simply didn't matter too much. All in all, worth a read.
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