This story gets Poirot out of his streamlined London flat and puts him and Hastings aboard the Queen Mary for its maiden voyage. The coherent plot is simple enough to follow, devoid of the usual red herrings, well acted, difficult for a viewer to solve, and takes us on the ship where the theft of one million dollars in American Liberty Bonds evidently takes place.
It's rather like a Sherlock Holmes story -- the bonds are in a practically impregnable steel case to which only three high-echelon bank personnel have keys. So which of them done it? Or were more complicated shenanigans involved? I pegged the bank's Chief Security Officer because he has a Scots accent and outlandish ears, proving that while I am as good a detective as Poirot I am not as sneaky a writer at Dame Agatha.
But I loved the Queen Mary. The ship itself is shown only in newsreels of the period but nobody exaggerates its sensational debut. No one is building passenger liners like the Queen Mary anymore. It's now docked as a tourist display in Long Beach, California, not far from Howard Hughes' equally obsolete "Spruce Goose." Liners now hardly look like ships but rather like apartment houses build on barely discernible hulls. Where the Queen Mary was stately and spacious, the new ships resemble overpacked Disneylands with laser shows and other glitzy diversions. The kids will love it.
Also a pleasant sight is the toothsome young fiancée of one of the suspects. This the blond, blue-eyed, magnificently innocent Natalie Ogle, whose only flaw is her last name. "Ogle" doesn't sound Aryan enough to do her appearance justice. She gorgeous and her character glows with appeal, not all of it of a savory sort.
It's rather like a Sherlock Holmes story -- the bonds are in a practically impregnable steel case to which only three high-echelon bank personnel have keys. So which of them done it? Or were more complicated shenanigans involved? I pegged the bank's Chief Security Officer because he has a Scots accent and outlandish ears, proving that while I am as good a detective as Poirot I am not as sneaky a writer at Dame Agatha.
But I loved the Queen Mary. The ship itself is shown only in newsreels of the period but nobody exaggerates its sensational debut. No one is building passenger liners like the Queen Mary anymore. It's now docked as a tourist display in Long Beach, California, not far from Howard Hughes' equally obsolete "Spruce Goose." Liners now hardly look like ships but rather like apartment houses build on barely discernible hulls. Where the Queen Mary was stately and spacious, the new ships resemble overpacked Disneylands with laser shows and other glitzy diversions. The kids will love it.
Also a pleasant sight is the toothsome young fiancée of one of the suspects. This the blond, blue-eyed, magnificently innocent Natalie Ogle, whose only flaw is her last name. "Ogle" doesn't sound Aryan enough to do her appearance justice. She gorgeous and her character glows with appeal, not all of it of a savory sort.