The Clocks

For other uses, see The Clock (disambiguation) and Clock (disambiguation).

The Clocks
Dust jacket illustration of the first UK edition
AuthorAgatha Christie
Cover artistMichael Harvey
LanguageEnglish
SeriesHercule Poirot
GenreCrime, espionage
PublisherCollins Crime Club
Publication date
7 November 1963
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages256 (first edition, hardcover)
Preceded byCat Among the Pigeons 
Followed byThird Girl 

The Clocks is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 7 November 1963[1] and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year.[2][3] It features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The UK edition retailed at sixteen shillings (16/-)[1] and the US edition at $4.50.[3]

In the novel Poirot never visits any of the crime scenes or speaks to any of the witnesses or suspects. He is challenged to prove his claim that a crime can be solved by the exercise of the intellect alone. The novel marks the return of partial first-person narrative, a technique that Christie had largely abandoned earlier in the Poirot sequence but which she had employed in the previous Ariadne Oliver novel, The Pale Horse (1961). There are two interwoven plots: the mystery Poirot works on from his armchair while the police work on the spot, and a Cold War spy story told in the first person narrative.

Reviews at the time of publication found the writing up to Christie's par,[4] but found negatives: the murder of a character about to add useful information was considered "corny" and "unworthy" of the author,[4] and "not as zestful".[5] In contrast, Barnard's review in 1990 said it was a "lively, well-narrated, highly unlikely late specimen" of Christie's writing. He loved the clocks at the start, and was oddly disappointed that they were red herrings.[6]

  1. ^ a b Peers, Chris; Spurrier, Ralph; Sturgeon, Jamie (March 1999). Collins Crime Club – A checklist of First Editions (Second ed.). Dragonby Press. p. 15.
  2. ^ Cooper, John; Pyke, B. A. (1994). Detective Fiction – the collector's guide (Second ed.). Scholar Press. pp. 82, 87. ISBN 0-85967-991-8.
  3. ^ a b "American Tribute to Agatha: The Golden Years 1953 - 1967 Christie". JS Marcum.
  4. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Guardian1963 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Observer1963 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Barnard1990 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).