I read it over my mother’s shoulder, or she mine—year upon year watching her read Christies in black hardcover with a little silver skull on the spine, curled into herself, cozy in this case with Poirot and his preposterous traveling den of vipers and coincidences, trapped between snowdrifts in the mountains of Eastern Europe, a vessel for dubious nostalgias—for Europe itself, for colonialism, for violence refined on this paperback’s cover to the degree of lamp, menu, lilies, plate, and knife. The solution matters less than our readerly sadism in the name of a justice that strips everyone bare.