[the murderer] had risen. His handsome face was transformed, suffused with blood, blind with rage. It was the face of a killer – of a tiger. He yelled: “You damned interfering murdering lousy little worm!”
He hurled himself forward, his fingers stretching and curling, his voice raving curses, as he fastened his fingers round Hercule Poirot’s throat…
I found this Christie story really disappointing, to the extent that I am going to curtail my Agatha reading project. The murder takes place in an isolated location, and there’s a locked-room element in the sense that it takes place on a deserted and inaccessible beach. There is some nice character stuff, particularly the victim’s troubled step-daughter. But the solution depends on crucial misdirection of the reader by the author, and the motivation for the crime is pretty obscure. Enough Agatha for me for the time being.
Government spends £37m fighting benefit cut appeals
Might it not be cheaper just to give people the money?
That was Sarah Palin’s choice for same-sex spousal benefits in Alaska. She counted up the applications and how much it would cost, got estimates on the cost to fight it in court, and said it was cheaper just to pay the benefits. A neat way to silence the rightwingers.