(or so...)
This year (2009) I am attempting to finish reading every novel and short story collection written by Agatha Christie, a project I began in 2008.
Summary: A young suicidal woman named Hilary Craven agrees to tackle the job of finding out what happened to missing nuclear physicist Tom Betterton. Betterton is the latest in a line of geniuses to simply vanish. Are they being kidnapped and taken behind the Iron Curtain? Are they being murdered?
This novel has a kind of a journey motif. Hilary Craven is on a blind journey into the middle of nowhere with little hope of getting out alive. What the journey does for her is to wake her up from a kind of sleeping life she's been living and revitalize her. This protagonist shares much with those of The Man in the Brown Suit, They Came to Baghdad and The Seven Dials Mystery. We have strong female characters who are willing to go anywhere and do anything. With Hilary it is a bit different, however. She's just emerged from a devastating loss and no longer wants to live. She is chosen for a suicide mission simply because she may as well go this way and because she has red hair and vaguely resembles Betterton's wife.
The novel is interesting, but not completely plausible. There is an interesting connection between the villain of this piece and those in Ten Little Indians and Cards on the Table. Christie enjoys having her villains control the lives of others (think "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God").
Body count: This is an adventure/espionage type thriller - not a murder mystery
Summary: from the first edition book cover: "'Inspector Neale was thinking to himself that Miss Marple was very unlike the popular idea of an Avenging Fury. And yet, he thought, that was perhaps exactly what she was....'
Miss Marple came to Yew Tree Lodge because she considered it her duty to do so. Nobody knew what that benevolent old lady was thinking as she sat knitting and listening to what the various occupants of Yew Tree Lodge had to say to her.
The facts were certainly mystifying. There was the strange behaviour of Rex Fortiscue before his death, the grains of cereal found in his pocket, the unexpected return of the prodigal son, and the cryptic pronouncement of old Aunt Effie: 'Old sins have long shadows.'
In her mastery of the detective novel Agatha Christie has no rival. Once again she has written an exciting, baffling story, full of incident and mystery and peopled by queer and interesting characters. Once again her many readers have the chance to disentangle a series of crimes in a story which shows Agatha Christie at her incomparable best."
Much of the enjoyment of a nursery rhyme inspired Christie novel is the fact that once you've cottoned on to the fact that the murders are following a pattern, you get the pleasure and suspense involved in figuring out just how the crimes will adhere to the rhyme. In this novel, we perhaps see the pattern more quickly than Inspector Neale. Miss Marple comes in as an angry avenger, hellbent on bringing the murderer of young Gladys to justice.
The solution and the letter that comprises the final pages of the novel are ingenious and bittersweet.
Body count: - The king dies of poisoning whilst in his counting house - The queen dies of poisoning in the parlour whilst partaking of tea (bread and honey were present) - The maid is strangled in the garden whilst taking in the laundry - a clothes peg is attached to her nose
Detective/Sleuth: Miss Marple - growing into her Nemesis title
Summary: The events of this novel are triggered after the funeral of Richard Abernethie when his surviving sister Cora suggests that he did not die of natural causes but was murdered (Think LaToya Jackson). When Cora herself is murdered the day after the funeral, the family and the family's solicitor, Mr. Entwhistle, take her statement much more seriously. Poirot goes down to the Abernethie house (now on the market to be sold) pretending to be the head of an organization called U.N.A.R.C.O. (United Nations Aid for Refugee Centres Organisation). Of course, when we think of the term nark, we think of a stool pigeon, or someone who tells on others. I think Christie is having a bit of fun with Poirot here, since he'll be eventually informing the police of the solution to the mystery, and people tend to see him as an outsider and resent his way of bringing out the truth into the open. The solution to this mystery is very clever and the denouement is quite enjoyable. Some of the themes that come out of the novel include:
- Memory: Helen's inability to remember what was wrong after the funeral slows down the case. When she remembers, she's nearly killed for it. The family members' memory of Cora (who they haven't seen in years) and her uncanny way of blurting out the truth makes the odd statement about Richard's death something to pause over. Miss Gilchrist dreams of her teashop and is never happier than when baking, creating and serving elaborate teas for Susan or Timothy. - Inheritance: Richard's great fortune (and the contents of Cora's humble cottage) are the tangible items at stake. We get a bit of humor from this motif as we see this family bicker over dessert trays, malachite tables and even wax flowers. There is also discussion over Richard's dissatisfaction with the younger Abernethies. He has each of them visit to size them up and to see if any would be worthy of carrying on after his death, but none of them, save Susan Banks, seems sharp enough. Susan believes that had she been a boy, she'd have inherited the lot. - Nuns: These women pop in and out throughout the novel collecting for charities. But they take on a sinister tone when Miss Gilchrist suggests that one has been following her, one with a bit of hair on her upper lip. Nuns here are used in a similar way to how Hitchcock used them in "The Lady Vanishes" where we see the shocking and incongruous image of a nun wearing a habit and patent leather high heals attending to a patient on a train. - Disconnected families: Unlike the inmates of Little Paddocks or Stonygates - families made up of companions, refugees, distant cousins and step-brothers and sisters - the Abernethies are a single family composed of brothers and sisters and their children. We have a look at the older (Richard, Cora, Helen, Timothy & Maud) and younger (Gregory and Susan, George, Rosamund and Michael) generations but what creates the fragmentation are death and distance. The book shows a family tree at the beginning in order to show who was at the funeral, but the number of dead family members by the time the novel starts is about equal to the number living. Christie makes a point of showing how disconnecting an influence death is within a family. The surviving older and younger generations don't see much of each other and hardly know one another. - Painting may seem a tangential motif but becomes one of the central symbols of the novel. Cora marries a French painter and is herself a painter. Cora collects paintings and Miss Gilchrist comes from an artistic family as well. Cora nor her husband are considered accomplished painters in any way. Yet if we look at painting as vision, the motif becomes much more important: Cora is scoffed at for her lack of vision as a painter and collector - her paintings resemble postcards and she has no aesthetic sense when it comes to collecting. Yet, she has uncanny vision when it comes to seeing things about situations and people - she's always blurting out uncomfortable truths. And these things are all why she is killed. - Relationships: the novel explores several couples: Timothy and Maud, Susan and Gregory, Rosamund and Michael, Cora and Miss Gilchrist (one character suggests that they had one of those "frenzied female relationships - a possible reference to lesbianism), and you could even say Mr. Entwhistle and both his sister and Helen Abernethie. These characters all deal with their relationships in different ways: Timothy demands his wife do everything for him and Maude is too happy to mother him. Susan has pity on her introverted, somewhat mentally disturbed husband, but he doesn't love her. Rosamund must deal with Michael's infidelity. And Mr. Entwhistle relies on his sister and enjoys a platonic, respectful relationship with Helen. - Post-war England: Eggs are hard to come by still, stockings must be gotten through the black market, families are disconnected and with this disconnection a care for family heritage is also lost - the nieces and nephews only wish to spend money on business or artistic ventures, the house is to be sold and the old family butler is displaced. Miss Gilchrist's teashop was lost during the war and her yearning for it seems more related to wishing to return to a pre-war Britain - one of civility, decorum and style.
Body count: 1. Richard Abernethie - Did he die of old age or did someone speed him on his way? 2. Cora Lansquenet - There was no question of her murder - the axe stuck into her made this apparent. In addition, Miss Gilchrist is poisoned (but doesn't die) and Mrs. Leo (Helen) Abernethie is struck down with a doorstop (bud doesn't die)
Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot, with the help of Mr. Goby (Poirot's man of information - similar to Holmes' Baker Street Irregulars.
Rating: 5 bouquets of wax flowers on malachite tables out of five
Hello all you Christie fans. I apologize for the accidental privacy setting on my video review of They Do It With Mirrors. The problem has been fixed and you should have no problem viewing the video now.
Summary: from original dust jacket: A conjuring trick has a fascination all its own, a magic that survives from childhood days, when one saw with open-eyed awe one's first rabbit emerging from a top hat. The basic principal of the magician's art is, of course, to rivet the attention of the audience on detail so as to distract attention from the essential; to create the illusion of doing one thing while actually employed with something else. In her new novel They Do It With Mirrors Agatha Christie successfully demonstrates how a clever criminal can employ such tactics to get away with murder. Miss Marple, that deceptively meek-and-mild spinster lady, is staying with her old school friend, Carrie Louise Serrocold, at Stonygates, a country house turned into a college for juvenile delinquents. The college is run by her husband Lewis Serrocold, an energetic idealist with a passion for reforming young criminals. When Christian Gulbrandsen, Carrie Louise's stepson, comes to see Lewis Serrocold and is shot dead soon after his arrival, it seems impossible that anyone in the household could have had the opportunity to commit the crime. Yet it is on ly one amongst them who could have any plausible motive. In a succession of dramatic situation the clear-thinking, far-seeing Miss Marple penetrates and artfully contrived smokescreen and exposes a totally unexpected murderer.
Actually I think the sleight of hand is really Christie's. An excellent conjurer, she is able to focus our attention in one direction while all the while something completely different (and usually sinister) is going on. This is an enjoyable read from start to finish.
Body count: One skull shot through, two others smashed in.
Detective/Sleuth: Miss Marple with the help of Inspector Curry
Summary: Poirot stays in a horrible guest house in this rural Christie novel in order to solve the murder of a working-class cleaning woman who's been bashed on the head. Ariadne Oliver helps as she's in the neighborhood working on adapting one of her novels for the stage. The novel is light and comical and economically crafted. Yet this economy I think contributes to the novel's failure to truly engage the reader.
Body count: One old lady (and a few corpses from the past)
Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver
Summary: Victoria Jones, is a young cockney girl, fresh out of a job when she meet's Edward at Charing Cross. She crushes on him so bad that, after finding he's taking off on a trip to Baghdad, figures out a way to follow him out. Once in Iraq, Victoria finds life a bit more difficult than she'd thought - a man enters her room one night at her hotel and promptly dies in her bed, having been stabbed in the heart. Later, she's kidnapped by a co-worker and wakes up in a makeshift cell. A mirror soon tips her off to the fact that she's now a platinum blonde. Is there some connection between her and the mysterious American secretary, Anna Scheele who is now missing? Will she help foil a cold-war plot before it's too late? Will she be reunited with Edward? There are plenty of possibilities for our young heroine in this novel, but her ability to lie under pressure and her naturally assertive attitude leave us in little doubt as to her emerging successfully from her adventure. Like Anne Beddingfield of The Man in the Brown Suit, Victoria Jones is an independent, resourceful character. She'd never find herself in the same situation as say, Caroline Crayle or Elinor Carlisle.
Body count: A young man named Fakir Carmichael who's tramped around the world a bit and has come upon a huge secret. He is stabbed before he can give up this secret.
Detective/Sleuth: Our heroine is Victoria Jones. Richard Baker and Mr. Dakin are other important figure in this thriller.
Rating: It's a fun read for getting a feel for a British view of local and expat culture in Iraq in the early 50s but, like most of Christie's spy novels, this one is a bit too airy and unbelievable in a few places. Still, some great characterization. 3.5 artifacts from the souq out of 5
