Book Review: Third Girl

This is my first Read Christie 2025 review! Read Christie 2025 is a challenge from Agatha Christie Ltd. That assigns a Christie book to each month of the year based on a theme. This is my first year doing the challenge, and I plan to post a review of each of the selections near the end of the month.

This year’s theme is “Characters & Careers.” If you want to read along with me, these are my upcoming selections:

• February: The Thirteen Problems
• March: Three Act Tragedy
• April: The Seven Dials Mystery
• May: Cards on the Table (I’ve already read this one, but it’s been a while. I might reread it or I may pick one of the alternative selections when they are announced.)
• June: Crooked House
• July: Come, Tell Me How You Live (nonfiction)
• August: One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (My edition of this book is called An Overdose of Death)
• September: At Bertram’s Hotel
• October: Towards Zero
• November: Cat Among the Pigeons
• December: N or M?

Review

Third Girl was written in the 1960s, and it has a lot of great elements from that era. Poirot and his friend, the writer Ariadne Oliver, are faced with a case involving modern young people. This book is a great look at how older people viewed the revolutionary younger set without devolving into a condemnation of “kids these days.” Christie’s subtle humor allowed her to make shrewd observations both about the youth and their elders.

The characters/careers that inspired this selection are artists. While artists are key characters, their profession isn’t the most prominent part of the story. Mostly, their “arty”ness is just another reason for the old folks to question their morals and motives. Again, though, Christie’s approach is balanced, so don’t get the idea she’s bad-mouthing artists.

The main selection for this month, Five Little Pigs, has a more obvious artist connection, but I’d read that book quite recently, so I chose this alternative pick. I’m not going to do a full review of that book, but I did really enjoy it and I recommend it to any mystery fan.

Back to Third Girl. I found it enjoyable, engrossing, and unique. While Christie’s career spans decades, many of her books don’t seem to clearly belong to a certain era, or at least the events of the era aren’t directly involved in the story and serve only as a backdrop. In Third Girl, the worldviews and tensions of the swinging sixties are essential to the plot and character development.

Another thing that makes Third Girl unique is that it doesn’t focus on a murder or whodunnit right out of the gate. The story begins when a young woman visits Poirot declaring she “might have committed a murder” only to change her mind about consulting him and run out again.

Naturally, Poirot’s interest is piqued, and he isn’t willing to dismiss the incident. He consults Mrs. Oliver who helps him identify the girl as Norma Restarick. Further investigation by Poirot and Mrs. Oliver reveal that Norma has disappeared. She had a strained relationship with her family, especially her stepmother, who she hated. This tension was increased by Norma’s boyfriend, David Baker, deemed too modern and unsuitable by her family.

Norma’s stepmother had recently been hospitalized, and many suspect that Norma poisoned her. However, the stepmother survived and is once again in good health, so this couldn’t be what Norma referred to when she mentioned murder. 

Poirot and Mrs. Oliver continue investigating, trying to locate Norma and discover if she had really committed a crime. Norma herself believes that she is going insane and commits crimes she doesn’t remember later. There is plenty of evidence and testimony to suggest that Norma might be mentally unstable, but nothing that proves she’s a killer.

The case grows more complicated as possible explanations seem to grow—there are even reasons to suspect international espionage is involved! The conclusion of the story is very satisfying and up to Christie’s standard for a plot twist that surprises but stays believable.

Observations

• The opening scenes of this book are delightful. Poirot reflects on a book he recently published to condemn the clichés of detective fiction. Poirot frequently voices these criticisms, and I’ve always thought that’s a great bit of self-aware humor on Christie’s part since she’s a writer of modern detective fiction.
• A little later, Poirot visits Mrs. Oliver who has been experimenting with hair pieces. The results are hilarious.
• The book switches between the points of view of Poirot and Mrs. Oliver. Christie does a great job presenting their wildly different perspectives and personalities in a way that is entertaining but also helps the reader follow the development of the case.
• While Poirot plays a large role in almost every book he’s in, Third Girl is one of few that actually puts the reader in his head. He’s not just the main character, he’s one of the point of view characters. I loved getting a look into the workings of Poirot’s mind, and Christie did a great job depicting his thought process without ever giving away the mystery.
• The descriptions of the mod young people made me giggle. They were summed up as either having “beards and jeans or brocade and hair.” The man with the brocade actually seems a bit old-fashioned compared to how most people dress and act now.
• Mr. Goby makes an appearance in this book. He is one of Poirot’s contacts who has helped him before, and I was excited to see him again. Goby is a somewhat shifty character who never looks people in the eye when he speaks, which makes him a fun addition to any story. Christie’s gift for subtle humor is revealed again: “Mr. Goby looked at the bookcase and said goodnight to it.” “Mr. Goby informed the clock on the chimney piece.”

Third Girl provides a wonderful example of two sides of Christie: her ability to probe and portray human nature and her gift for subtle humor.

She handles the social issues of her day gracefully yet shrewdly. The case looks at the darker side of people: mental illness, drugs, manipulation, family troubles. Christie does a good job handling these issues by neither shying away nor wallowing in them. She wraps the book up with a characteristic happy ending, but it doesn’t come across as making light of the topics or as unrealistic (at least in my opinion. I’ve discovered that what is sufficiently realistic in fiction can be subjective.)

At the same time, this is one of the funniest Christies I’ve read. There are smile-to-yourself and laugh-out-loud moments. But, again, they never feel out of place in the midst of the deeper subject matter. This is a book I’ll definitely revisit one day both for entertainment and writing inspiration.