“Why Didn’t They Ask Evans” by Agatha Christie

This novel by the Queen of the genre is a bit unusual – not in style, but in the choice of the leading characters. We’ll see neither Hercule Poirot nor Miss Marple here – on the contrary, the case will be investigated by two young people without any previous experience in solving mysteries.

Bobby Jones is a vicar’s son and his friend Frankie (a.k.a. Lady Frances Derwent) is lucky to have both a title and access to a lot of money – the family money, not hers, but it doesn’t matter. Both her title and her money help the young couple in their investigation, but when they come very near death for their amateurish attempt at interfering in the business of a criminal gang, nothing can help – nothing but a miracle…

But the story begins when Bobby happens to hear the last words of a dying man. “Why didn’t they ask Evans?”, asks the man before leaving this imperfect world. Nonsense, it seems to Bobby at the time. He doesn’t know that for having heard these words he will be fed eight grains of morphia. That’s where miracles begin too: he survives, while normally people don’t recover after half a grain.

Frankie is the brain of their team. Soon she comes forward with the plan to engineer a car accident…

The book is very exciting to read – you won’t be able to put it down until the end. All those characters: Roger Bassington-ffrench, his brother Henry, Sylvia Bassington-ffrench, Dr. Nicholson and his wife Moira – are drawn with the same precision and strength which few writers possess, but Agatha Christie does. Bobby and Frankie reminded me somewhat of Tommy and Tuppence of “The Secret Adversary” (no wonder London Weekend Television picked the same actors to portray both young couples), but the rest of the characters are entirely unique. Be prepared to be totally amazed at the end – the Queen of detective stories never fails to do it to us. Another favourite trick of hers – to play with the double meaning of the word “ask” (ask for a favour vs. ask a question). In my native language two different words would have been used, which renders an adequate translation of the novel impossible. Agatha Christie did it often, as well as playing with different spellings of the same word – the problems of book translators, apparently, never bothered her much.

Well, her books deserve being read in original; they are worth the time and the trouble of learning a language just for their sake. “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” is no exception.