Agatha Christie’s Taken at the Flood is a Hercule Poirot story set during and after World War II. Gordon Cloade is killed in the Blitz a few weeks after marrying a young woman, Rosaleen, and changing his will to leave his money to his wife: or, more precisely, leaving the interest on his fortune to his wife for her life, after which the principal reverts to his family. This does not please his family, who have learned to depend on Gordon’s generosity; and they are rather interested in an overheard story told to Hercule Poirot, suggesting that Rosaleen’s first husband might have faked his death.
This was a nicely twisty one, which I enjoyed up to the very end. Christie sometimes has an odd idea of what constitutes a happy ending, especially when it comes to romance; she pulls something out here that simply beggars belief. My theory is that it’s a response to post-War anxieties, an extremely conservative response to the upheavals wrought by the return of men and women who served around the world. That ending might have been reassuring to Christie’s target audience in 1948, but here in 2006, I just can’t take it seriously.