The Case of Agatha Christie
lrb.co.uk
lrb.co.uk
I read dozens of Christie novels in middle school. Somehow I kept getting hooked by the obvious question: "Who did it?" and gobbled up the book until I had the answer.
With my last Christie book I decided to skip the 150 pages of "fluff" and go straight to the last chapter. The immediate gratification allowed me to get busy with other things, but felt so much less interesting than the delayed gratification.
It was a point of no return though and I never went back to another Christie book or another mystery novel.
And Then There Were None
Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Murder on the Orient Express
The ABC Murders
I prefer to imbibe Christie by way of the various TV adaptations. Notably enjoyable IMO are the first three or four seasons of the PBS Masterpiece Poirot series with David Suchet as Poirot, the Joan Hickson Marple television films from the 90s, and the short-lived Partners in Crime series.
Recently, fifty years later, I tried to reread, solely for nostalgic reasons. And must confess agreement with Wilson as quoted: The thing was wooden, flat, and ultimately unreadable - I opted out halfway.
In contrast, a couple of years ago, I read straight through the Peter Wimsey novels, and absolute found them still worthwhile. Wouldn't have cracked them at eight, though. 14 or 15 first time around.
Also, the only two fans of her work that I have met don't actually like or engage in the puzzle aspect; they don't try to solve (nor - curiously - even have a concept of evaluating multiple hypotheses).
These two observations make me wonder if popular detective fiction isn't puzzle fiction at all...
I'm not sure about impossible. There was one story, Peril at End House, where I have figured out who the murderer was very early on, in the first few chapters or so. It was a weird feeling of thinking that Poirot was being led astray for a while.
That being said, as your other comments say, this is not really a goal for me. If I was serious, I'd lay out the story carefully with pen and paper. But mostly I'd rather just read the story.