The Garden-of-Live-Flowers incident in the Alice-mythos anticipates the method of the modern detection-fan. To find the Red Queen he has learnt to go in the most unlikely direction. So now the hard-pressed writer is inclined to try a double bluff and make his criminal the obvious suspect throughout. It would give away her whole plot to tell which of these bluffs Mrs. Christie employs in [The A.B.C. Murders]: one can only chalk up yet another defeat at her hands and admit sadly that she has led one up the garden path with her usual blend of duplicity and fairness. This is all the more riling, as she conveys throughout the book a subtle suggestion that she is not playing fair…. Moreover she deceives us, not by irrelevant red herrings, but by the identical trick the A.B.C. murderer uses to deceive the police…. The characters, particularly that of the murderer, are rather too perfunctorily sketched. Apart from this, one can have nothing but praise for The A.B.C. Murders, which is really a little masterpiece of construction. (pp. 271-72)
Nicholas Blake, in The Spectator (© 1936 by The Spectator; reprinted by permission of The Spectator), February 14, 1936.
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