The Seven Dials Mystery: Book Review

Today, we will be reviewing one of Agatha Christie’s lesser-known novels, The Seven Dials Mystery. Find out what we thought of this mystery and how it holds up to Christie’s other works!

The Seven Dials Mystery Summary

Gerry Wade is known to sleep late into the day and his guest mates decide to buy a bunch of alarm clocks and play a prank on him. But Wade sleeps through all of them and is later found dead in his room. They guest mates bought eight alarm clocks but only seven were found in Wade’s room.

Was Wade killed or did he die accidently by taking a large dose of sleeping medicine? When another friend of Wade is killed, Lady Eileen or better known as Bundle, decided to look into the murders and the secret society known as The Seven Dials and their connections to the murders.

Commentary

The Seven Dials Mystery was released in 1929 and is one of Christie’s earlier works. Critics were not fans of this novel and considered this one of Christie’s lazier works. In Christie’s own words, she said that these “light-hearted thriller type” novels were easy to write and didn’t require too much plotting compared to her detective novels.

And that is what makes this novel a failure in my opinion. Unlike most of Christie’s novels, I didn’t care much for the characters or the mystery at hand. If this wasn’t a Christie novel, then I wouldn’t have finished it. 

Christie wrote this novel for an American audience because she was being paid large sums which were free of income tax. She had issues with income tax in her career and these helped her a lot. This novel entered the public domain on January 2025 so you can read it for free.

Christie was not known for writing thrillers and this novel shows why. But it is a good mystery and the plot twist is great and one you won’t see coming. But a critic once said that Christie didn’t give any clues as to who the murderer was and I agree with that. The plot twist will either get you riled up or you will call it very clever but I doubt most people will guess the correct murderer.

Conclusion

This is a Christie novel that I would say to skip because you won’t be missing much. This is the second book with Superintendent Battle and the novel features many of the same characters as the first book in the series. As we now know, this was a quick paycheck for Christie and unless you are eager to read all her books, I wouldn’t recommend it. 

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