Joint Blog: Victim in Most Need of a Bludgeoning
Well ladies and gentlemen, we now have another Poirot topic for your consideration. Our next topic is, Victim in Most Need of a Bludgeoning in the Poirot series. Yes, we actually have some victims in these books that deserved killing. Heck I was annoyed that Poirot was even involved trying to solve these cases.
Moonlight Reader chose Appointment with Death and I chose The Hollow.
Believe me I agreed with Moonlight's choice, but had my own reasons for choosing The Hollow. As Moonlight said, the person I chose is a realistic terrible person (we have all met this guy before) the person that Moonlight chose was just straight up evil in my opinion.
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Moonlight Reader's opinion:
Worst victim:
Mrs. Boynton from Appointment With Death.
"You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?"
In my opinion, there is one kind of person: the kind of person who will commit murder given the right circumstances. After being alive for almost 50 years, I've concluded that everyone has a breaking point. Some people's breaking point is much quicker than others, but everyone has one.
Mrs. Boynton - the "victim" - didn't seem to realize this. She had dominated her family to the point that they were unable to act against her. She thought that the fact that she had been able to torment her family into submitting to her meant that she was invincible. She was a domestic tyrant, who tried to take her act outside of the family.
She was wrong - and found this out in the most unequivocal way possible, when she tried to psychologically torture the wrong person. Color me not even a little bit sympathetic. Some (fictional) people just need killing.
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Obsidian Blue's opinion
Worst victim:
Dr. John Christow from The Hollow.
"And if you cast down an idol, there's nothing left."
The man looks at women as annoyances and or people who are supposed to worship him. The problem with that is that if you are setting people up to idolize you, when they realize that you are flesh and blood, the worshiping stops.
John Christow totally dominates his wife to the point she's unable to make any decisions without him telling her what to do. His mistress acts like he's a genius and therefore he get a pass on being a miserable human being. Everyone surrounding the man realizes he's been making a fool of his wife for years and then he runs into an old lover at one of his friend's country estate. He promptly runs off and has sex with her (charming). By the time he ends up dead next to the pool Poirot is on the scene. I heartily did not care who did it in this case since everything about the guy is repugnant.
What ended up totally disgusting me was the ending which showed this man ended up ruining at least three women and his children's lives. I actually hated the fact that Poirot tracked down the killer in this case. Justice was not done, and it is probably the only case where I wish that the victim could have been murdered more than once.
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You can find our other three joint posts here:
Most Contrived or Ridiculous Poirot
Next up: Best/Worst Villains. Find it on Moonlight's blog on Sunday!
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