YMMV / The Man in the Brown Suit

• Unintentional Period Piece: Many of Christie's books read this way, but this one is an extreme example, with its very heavy "Sunny Colonial Adventure" shtick. Casual racism gets really bad at times. Some of the events take place in what was then Rhodesia. De Beer diamonds are an important part of the backstory, two young men who met at Cambridge go off to "prospect" in British Guyana before WW1 (then go off to war and die), telegrams abound, and trains take many days to get to places. There's also a rebellion in Johannesburg which is treated as a result of deliberate provocation, and the protagonist hopes that "the right people are getting killed - the ones who really wanted to fight." Anna's ideas about love and romance are (aptly) summed up as inspired by "The Sheik."