Sunday Times

The Sunday Times appears in the supplied material as a critical voice on Agatha Christie’s crime fiction, praising both the deceptive design of The ABC Murders and the concise, puzzling construction of a separate mystery. Its two quotations offer distinct kinds of commendation: one celebrates Christie’s skill as a player of the murder game; the other stresses a plot’s simplicity, economy, and power to confound.

Critical Praise of The ABC Murders

The Sunday Times describes Christie as having no rival in the cunning of the murder game. The remark accompanies discussion of The ABC Murders, whose apparent sequence of alphabetically arranged killings conceals a different underlying design. The review’s emphasis on cunning aligns with the book’s movement from an apparently public challenge to Hercule Poirot toward the concealed logic that ultimately explains the crimes.

Praise for Economy and Misdirection

In a separate critical notice, the Sunday Times calls a mystery simple and economical, yet completely baffling, and praises the careful placement of its clues and the author’s sleight of hand. The assessment foregrounds a central pleasure of the detective story: information can be presented scrupulously while its meaning remains difficult to see. The praise is directed at another work, not identified in the supplied passage, and should not be conflated with the review of The ABC Murders.

Place in the Book’s Critical Reception

These brief notices preserve two complementary judgments of Christie’s craft. One stresses her command of the murder puzzle as a contest in ingenuity; the other values disciplined construction, clue handling, and surprise. In this material, the Sunday Times is therefore represented not through reporting on the crimes within the novel, but through concise critical endorsements of Christie’s plotting.