Christie in a Year

Hallowe'en Party

2011-10-23T03:16:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1969

Summary: Ariadne Oliver calls Poirot in to investigate the death of a young girl named Joyce who is drowned in an apple bobbing bucket at a Hallowe'en Party after having announced that she'd seen a murder once. We get the reintroduction of Superintendent Spence from Mrs. McGinty's Dead as well as references to characters in other Poirot novels: Miss Bulstrode and Mr. Goby. The novel does reflect the times as it is the first work by the author to use the word "lesbian" and there is some discussion around the abolishment of capital punishment. In this novel, Ms. Oliver, who (like Christie) loved eating apples, vows never to eat another after seeing Joyce's lifeless body slumped over the apple bobbing bucket.

Body count: Joyce Reynolds and her brother Leopold snuff it.

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot, Ariadne Oliver, Superintendent Spence

Rating: 3.5 apples out of 5

Commentary:

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

2011-07-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1968

Summary: Tommy and Tuppence Beresford (now an aging couple in their sixties) find themselves mixed up in a puzzle from the past after visiting their Aunt Ada at the Sunny Ridge Nursing Home for Ladies. Tuppence is disturbed by the sudden disappearance of a Mrs. Lancaster and believes that the key to solving her disappearance is in a painting given to Tommy's aunt by the missing woman. After finding the house and exploring a churchyard, Tuppence gets coshed on the head and Tommy has to find her.

This interesting novel doesn't seem to know whether it's about robbery or murder. The book becomes muddled midway through and bogs down with the late introduction of several characters and possible plot lines. While it's always fun to see Tommy and Tuppence, the mystery here is pretty lacking.

The literary allusion to Macbeth is appropriate given the number of witch-like old ladies in the novel.

Body count: several children apparently

Detective/Sleuth: Thomas and Tuppence Beresford

Rating: 2.5 diamond-stuffed dolls out of 5

Commentary:

Endless Night

2011-05-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1967

Summary: Penniless Mark and American heiress Ellie meet in the sprawling country landscape of Gypsy's Acre and fall for each other. Aided by Ellie's companion, Greta (whom no one in Ellie's family likes), the two lovers get married and buy Gypsy's Acre. Despite local superstition about the place and warnings from local gypsies, the two decide to tear down the old house and build a new place designed by Mark's friend, the famous architect Santonix. Santonix is a hard character to classify in the Christie canon. He's a mysterious figure who seems to see through people. If I had to lump him with other characters, I'd say he reminded me of Shaitana from Cards on the Table or Mr. Quinn from The Mysterious Mr. Quinn. He frightens people, not because of who he is, but because he sees you for who you are.

Almost immediately after moving into their new house, Ellie and Mark begin to have strange things happen to them. A note attached to a rock comes through the window, a bird is found stabbed through with a knife, and Ellie sprains her ankle. Greta is sent for and a short visit quickly becomes a live-in situation. Eventually, just when Mark and Ellie believe that all of the superstition has come to an end, disaster strikes. Ellie goes out riding and never comes back. Her horse is seen galloping by without its rider and she's eventually found dead in a grove. There are only minor injuries on her body from the fall from the horse. Death is determined to have been caused by heart failure. One neighbor claims to have seen Miss Lee, a local gypsy, in the vicinity shortly before seeing Ellie's horse. Unfortunately Miss Lee

Body count: 4

Detective/Sleuth: None

Rating: 5 gypsies out of 5

Commentary:

Tea Time - Christie Style

2011-04-06T07:29:00.001-07:00

Although I've lived in Turkey for over a year and a half and have visited Istanbul half a dozen times, I had not yet been able to go to the Pera Palace Hotel in the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul. The main reason for my wanting to visit this little gem of vintage architecture and throwback to the turn of the last century is because this was where Agatha Christie used to stay when she came to town. I have a feeling it was a popular destination for people who rode on the Orient Express. The Peral was built in 1895 and was designed by a Levantine architect and Istanbul resident named Alexander Vallaury. Some of the famous people who have stayed in the Pera include: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Ernest Hemingway, Jacqueline Kennedy, Greta Garbo, Alfred Hitchcock, King Edward VIII, Mata Hari and Sarah Bernhardt.

When I first came to Istanbul, I scoped out the Pera on a map and walked there from my hotel. Unfortunately, it was under renovation and I couldn't go inside. This was true of the second time I visited as well. When I was here last Christmas, we stopped by to get a drink in the lobby bar, but it was closed for the night and we weren't allowed in the lobby.

Today, when I got to my flat near Taksim Square, I jumped online to find out about visiting the Pera. I'd remembered my department head had said something about afternoon tea being served at the Pera, so I decided to check it out. Tea at the Pera comes with a price tag, but the spread and the ambience more than make up for the cost. The real reason for going to the Pera for tea is to people watch and soak up the atmosphere of the place.

If Christie visited the Pera today, I think she'd feel something akin to Miss Marple's experience going to Bertram's Hotel - very little has changed. There is an old fashioned elevator (the first in Istanbul), a jazz pianist, a very proper looking staff in the Kubbeli Saloon where tea is served, and an interior that makes even the most humble of travelers (i.e. me) feel a bit posh.

Me looking overwhelmed by the grandeur.

For tea, I was served:
-Tea (duh!) with an extra pot of water and milk (which I had to ask for - Turks don't like to mess up their tea with milk)

-Sandwiches: cucumber, smoked salmon, beef, and a brioche bite with a kind of crab mousse

-Desserts: a table heaped with loads of little sweet treats. I took a hearty sampling of the ones that looked good to me

The grandeur of the hotel saloon left me in no doubt that Mrs. Christie enjoyed traveling in style. I don't think I'd have bumped into her at a youth hostel or couch-surfed with her and Max. I enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere of bygone days sitting there in the saloon, but it made me yearn for more classic Christie works - the brave new world of post-war Europe of her novels in the 50s, 60s, and 70s seems a bit lackluster compared to what I'd experienced this afternoon. I wonder if Christie too sensed an aesthetic decline with the advent of pre-packaged everything, mind-numbing prosperity and growing cynicism.

At any rate, if you get to Istanbul, splurge and get the 55TL (around 40USD) tea with all you can eat desserts. If you like Christie, you'll really enjoy this treat.

Third Girl

2011-03-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1966

Summary: A lost, drugged out Norma Restarick turns up at Poirot's office saying she may have murdered someone. After telling Poirot she thinks he's too old to help her, she disappears and we don't see her for most of the novel. She's the third girl of a trio of women sharing a London flat. What's strange is that these three women are all connected in odd ways. Poirot teams up with Ariadne Oliver to help figure out if there was indeed a murder and if Norma was indeed the murderer.

Body count: Two
Detective/Sleuth: Poirot and Ariadne Oliver

Rating: 3.75 coils of hair out of 5

Commentary:

At Bertram's Hotel

2011-02-13T03:36:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1965

Summary: Not nearly as far-fetched as most of her espionage novels, this one has an underlying murder story only tangentially connected to the crime syndicate plot. Miss Marple enjoys a two-week stay at the eternally unchanging luxury hotel, Bertram's. During this time she begins to suspect that the hotel may be a front for some other activity - it's simply too good to be true. The novel revolves around two women, a mother and daughter: adventuress Bess Sedgewick and her estranged daughter, Elvira Blake. While mom does her best to avoid her daughter, her daughter seems overly preoccupied with the idea that someone is trying to kill her. What makes this novel interesting is not Miss Marple, who's powers of deduction are given little show, but the denouement - we don't quite get that this story of espionage is also a murder case until the end and the murderer, icily detached, gets away with it.

Body count: One death

Detective/Sleuth: Miss Marple, Father

Rating: 3 night's stay out of 5

Commentary:

A Caribbean Mystery

2011-02-13T03:17:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1964

Summary: When aged, retired Major Palgrave (like the name?) is found dead in his hotel room at a Caribbean resort, everyone chalks it up to heart failure. Everyone knew (tho' they didn't know where they'd heard it) that the old codger had a heart condition. Miss Marple finds it odd that he dies one day after telling her that he has a photograph of a murderer. With the photo came a story Marple couldnt' remember - all Palgrave's stories were a bit boring and unmemorable. What Marple did remember was the abrupt change of subject when other guests, the Hillingdons and the Dysons, arrive. The photograph goes missing and Marple's suspicions are confirmed. Victoria, the Caribbean maid is also curious about a bottle of heart tablets found in Palgrave's medicine cabinet - curious how they turned up after his death. During all of this the Kendalls, Molly and Tim, are trying to keep their new resort successful - hard to do when murder is at your doorstep. Hard to do when Molly keeps wandering about and having blackouts. hard to do when Molly is found holding a bloody kitchen knife whilst standing over a second victim.

Miss Marple is aided by self-made millionaire Jason Rafiel who gives her the soubriquet Nemesis.

Body count: Three people die in very different ways

Detective/Sleuth: Miss Marple

Rating: 3.75 Planter's Punches out of 5

Commentary:

The Clocks

2010-12-06T13:00:00.000-08:00

Publication date:

Summary: Collin Lamb, while trying to do a bit of espionage work in the sleepy neighborhood of Wilbraham Crescent is surprised when a woman comes screaming out of a house and runs into his arms. She's just come from the living room of a blind woman where a dead body lay on the floor and several suspicious clocks all registering the same time sit on the mantlepiece. Who is the man? Why did he come there to be killed? What do the neighbors of the crescent think? A young secretary from a local bureau may know but she's killed before she can tell what she knows.

This novel has some great elements and some great prose, but is not per se a great mystery novel - it simply doesn't deliver the goods in the end. Yet, I have to say I enjoyed reading it.

Body count: Two

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot, Collin Lamb

Rating: 3 out of five alarm clocks

Commentary:

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

2010-09-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1962

Summary: Miss Marple's sleepy little village is upset when film star Marina Gregg and her entourage descend upon the village and move into Gossington Hall (the Bantry's old home). Marina moves here to find the peace she's always searched for, but a poisoned daiquiri at a fete and the suggestion that victim Heather Badcock was not the intended victim throws her life in turmoil. Miss Marple's life is also in turmoil. She's getting old and her nephew Raymond has hired a monstrous sort of nurse/companion for her. Doctor Haydock feels that all Marple really needs is to do some unraveling. After two more deaths at Gossington Hall, Miss Marple arrives on the scene with the solution.

This novel has Marple at her crankiest (if that is possible). She is constantly sarcastic with Miss Knight, her companion, hangs up on Dolly Bantry, berates the Vicar and jokes with Inspector Craddock. Her characterization here is quite strong and enjoyable.

The novel has a strong connection with the real-life account of a tragedy surrounding an American film actress (I won't say more here, but we can discuss any spoilers in the comments.

The writing in this novel is quite nice because it lacks rigid structure - like village gossip, we get everything in bits and pieces - even Craddock who is quite diligent is two or three steps behind the reader because we're privy to the conversations of several characters.

Body count: 4 and I'll say no more

Detective/Sleuth: Miss Marple, Dermott Craddock

Rating: 4.75 daiquiris out of five

Commentary:

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side from Matthew Christensen on Vimeo.

The Pale Horse

2010-07-11T02:21:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1961

Summary: A priest is killed after hearing a confession of a woman dying under mysterious circumstances. The police find a list of names on his person and most of these people have died under similar circumstances. Mark Easterbrook, our novel's young hero decides to find out exactly what the Pale Horse refers to and see what connection it has to these mysterious deaths. Is witchcraft afoot?

The novel shows how even though witchcraft would have largely been discounted in the mid-20th Century in England, the aura of them still persisted. Christie's characters expound upon the fact that even today, every small village has its witch or outcast who is blamed when bad things happen in the community. Mrs. Dane Colthrope becomes a moral compass in this novel where death may or may not be the result of demonic activities. She seems not to care whether the actual cause is demonic or man-produced - the actions in and of themselves are evil.

Body count: Several people waste away before the novel takes place and some in the novel. Also a priest is struck down on his way home.

Detective/Sleuth: Mark Easterbrook (with the help of Mrs. Dane Colthrope and Ginger Corrigan), Detective-Inspector Lejeune and to a certain extent, Dr. Jim Corrigan. Several Poirot and Marple characters merge in this novel.

Rating: 4.5 hair-pulling bar room brawls out of 5

Commentary:

The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and a Selection of Entrées

2010-07-05T14:11:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1960

Summary: A short story collection featuring the following Poirot stories:
-"The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding"
-"The Mystery of the Spanish Chest"
-"The Under Dog"
-"Four and Twenty Blackbirds"
-"The Dream"

and a Miss Marple offering:
-"Greenshaw's Folly"

These are reworkings of older stories from various magazines and US publications, modernized and put together to make an interesting but ultimately mediocre collection of long short stories.

Body count: A dead girl on the lawn of an estate?, a dead man in a Spanish chest, a husband killed in his study, a dead elderly twin, a dead wealthy industrialist, a dead old lady (shot through the neck with an arrow no less!)

Detective/Sleuth: First five, Poirot. Last story, Marple.

Rating: 2.75 rubies out of 5

Commentary:

The Curious Case of the Vanishing Words

2010-05-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

WNYC's Radiolab has an interesting podcast about how a body of words of an author can tell us much about the way the brain works (or fails to work). Agatha Christie was one of the most prolific authors of the 20th Century. By plugging her novels into a computer and turning it into data, researchers were able to understand how she used language and how after her 73rd novel, Elephants Can Remember, she started consistently losing vocabulary and including more words that lacked specificity (thing, something, anything, etc.). It looks as though Christie developed Alzheimer's Disease later in life. Listen to the end of the podcast, it's great how they talk about how Christie must have had an intimation about her memory lost given the title of that novel and it's subject - an aging Ariadne Oliver who is beginning to have trouble remembering things.

Here's a link to the article and podcast if you are interested.

Cat Among the Pigeons

2010-05-18T09:46:00.001-07:00

Publication date: 1959

Summary: Not one but three murders, all in the sports pavilion of Meadowbank Girl's School, threaten the stability of the institution. But something's hidden at the school. Some jewels secreted from the country of Ramat are concealed somewhere on campus. Does student Princess Shaista know where they are? What about Jennifer Sutcliffe who was with her mother in Ramat just before the revolution and who's tennis racket hasn't been right since coming to school? What about Julia Upjohn, the clever student who can't understand why everyone wants Jennifer's racquet? Maybe Miss Springer knows, or Mrs. Vansittart or even Mademoiselle Blanche - if they did, they aren't speaking. Adam, the young, too-good looking gardener may know a thing or two. One thing is certain, Poirot will know all by the end of the novel. Not a bad feat for coming in in the last third. One hates to call Poirot incidental in this espionage thriller, but one wonders why he is in this novel.

The characterization in this novel isn't bad for a later Christie. I may like it better because I am a teacher, but there you have it. The idea that time marches on and things change, should change, is an interesting one in this novel. I also enjoy watching Miss Bulstrode, the headmistress, try and remember what Julia Upjohn's mother (a former intelligence worker during the war) said to her the day the students came to school. The idea of knowing you know something important but not knowing what it is is a great motif of Christie's.

Body count: Three teachers are killed in the sports pavilion on different occasions and a princess is kidnapped.

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot

Rating: 3.25 tennis racquets out of 5

Commentary:

Ordeal by Innocence

2010-04-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1958

Summary: When Arthur Calgary confesses to the Argyle family that he was the missing alibi for accused son Jacko in the murder of his foster mother, Rachel, he opens old wounds. If Jacko didn't do it, then someone else in the family did do it. Now Calgary must help the police find the killer to remove the shadow of suspicion from the rest of the family members. This is a somber, moody offering from Christie. We get some great characterization, loads of bitterness and a very unhappy family. You get a strong impression that Rachel's love for her children was frighteningly intense. Her tombstone reads, not without some sarcasm, "Her children shall rise up and call her blessed."

Some of Christie's best themes make an appearance here: fragmented post-war families, the effect of suspicion upon the innocent, parent-child relationships, and marriage.

Body count: Rachel gets clubbed, Philip gets stabbed and another family member is nearly killed.

Detective/Sleuth: Superintendent Huish, but Arthur Calgary is really the detective-type character. Philip Durrant does some sleuthing on his own as well.

Rating: 4.5 foster children out of 5

Commentary:

4:50 from Paddington

2010-03-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1957

Summary: Perfect setting for murder: Miss Marple's friend Mrs. McGillicuddy is on a train when she witnesses a man strangling a woman in the train running on the track next to hers and going in the same direction. Jane Marple sends super-efficient, amazing housekeeper Lucy Eyelesbarrow to find the body at Rutherford Hall - the only place where the body could have been thrown from the train. Lucy gets caught up in family affairs and tries to keep things together for the family while Jane quietly works out the crime.

The novel shows a postwar family, unable to afford full-time staff (largely because of Luther Crackenthorpe's penny-pinching ways). Lucy represents a new kind of woman. She is not of a servant class (she is an academically brilliant woman who chooses exclusive housekeeping as opposed to a job in academia because it's more lucrative). She's a bit like a more disciplined Anne Beddingfeld - adventurous but a bit more level-headed.

The novel is one of the first I'd ever read of Christie's and I remember liking it very much then (mostly because of the American title: What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw). It's a good Marple, but I wish we saw more of Marple. I also wish Lucy would have made a comeback in a later novel - she's a very enjoyable character.

Body count: Unknown woman strangled and found in a sarcophagus at Rutherford Hall, Alfred Crackenthorpe dies after eating some poisoned curry, Harold takes poisoned sleeping pills and dies.

Detective/Sleuth: Miss Jane Marple, Detective Inspector Craddock

Rating: 3.75-4 bowls of poisoned curry

Commentary:

Dead Man's Folly

2010-02-26T07:07:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1956

Summary: Ariadne Oliver asks Hercule Poirot to come to Nasse House, the home of Sir George Stubbs and his wife Hattie. She's been asked to create a story for a murder hunt contest at an upcoming fete and she feels something is amiss. Poirot arrives and senses the same thing. Their worries are justified when the murder hunt victim, Marlene Tucker, actually ends up dead - killed in the same manner as the character she was playing. This inviting premise should be followed by an intriguing mystery. Unfortunately, none of the characters has any particularly interesting qualities and the solution to the mystery is just okay.

Body count: Marlene Tucker, strangled to death, an old man found in the river, and maybe another body...

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver

Rating: Two and a half hostel trespassers out of five.

Commentary:

Hickory Dickory Dock

2010-01-02T01:44:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1955

Summary: After Hercule Poirot finds not one, but three mistakes in a letter his secretary, Miss Lemon, has typed for him he decides something must be wrong. Miss Lemon reveals that she is worried about her sister who manages a student hostel in London. Odd things have gone missing and everyone is tense. Poirot agrees to visit the hostel on Hickory Road and get to the bottom of the thefts. Within 24 hours of one of the students confessing to most of the thefts, the girl herself (Celia Austin) is found dead from an overdose of morphia. Poirot interviews this international cast of student suspects to form a clear picture of what may have happened. In spite of a couple of very clever twists, this novel is pretty average for Christie.

Christie's use of the nursery rhyme motif doesn't work very well here. There is no pattern to follow, no cruel, twisted meaning. It's just used because of the name of the street the hostel is located on. The interesting thing about this novel is watching how Christie deals with changing attitudes towards race. She still makes a few statements that don't sit well with the modern reader, but you see her changing.

Body count: Two female students and one alcoholic property owner.

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot

Rating: 3.5 vials of boracic powder out of 5

Commentary:

Destination Unknown

2009-09-04T05:48:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1954

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

Detective/Sleuth: None

Rating: 3.25 lepers out of 5

Commentary:

Destination Unknown from Matthew Christensen on Vimeo.

A Pocket Full of Rye

2009-07-31T16:19:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1953

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

Rating: 4 out of 5 blackbirds baked in a pie

Commentary:

After the Funeral

2009-07-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1953

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

Commentary:

Sorry about the privacy setting on my last video

2009-06-16T04:27:00.000-07:00

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.

They Do it With Mirrors

2009-06-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1952

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

Rating: 4.5 ladies sawn in half out of 5

Commentary:

Mrs. McGinty's Dead

2009-05-31T08:42:00.001-07:00

Publication date: 1952

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

Rating: 3.75 sugar hammers out of 5

Commentary:

They Came to Baghdad

2009-04-20T15:21:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1951

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

Commentary:

Three Blind Mice

2009-04-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1950 (US only)

Summary: A group of people at a country guest house are cut off in a snowstorm with a lunatic killer in their midst.

I am not covering the other stories in this collection because they appear in other collections which have been or will be discussed.

The story is a compelling read, but I think the stage play fleshes out the characters a bit better. The inclusion of Miss Casewell in the play (she doesn't appear in the story) helps round things out and adds one more odd character to a collection of very strange guests and Molly and Giles' guest house. The atmosphere of the story is great but the wrap up is a bit sudden. The back story on this one is perhaps the most interesting as it touches on a very real case of extreme abuse of children in foster care.

Body count: Mrs. Lyon and Mrs. Boyle - both strangled

Detective/Sleuth: Sergeant Trotter skis in to help things along.

Rating: 3.5 burnt pies out of 5

Commentary:

A Murder is Announced

2009-04-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1950

Summary:
A murder is announced in a local paper and is described as taking place at the home of Letitia Blacklock at 6:30 on a crisp fall evening. Half the village shows up curious to be a part of what seems to be a game or stunt. At 6:30 the lights go out, a torch is flashed, a masked man shouts, "stick 'em up!", shots are fired. When the lights come on, the gunman is dead on the floor, apparently from an accidentally or intentionally self-inflicted shot from the gun. When bullet holes are found in the wall behind Letitia and she's found with a bloody ear, Inspector Craddock and Miss Marple fear she was the intended victim. This theory is reinforced when her companion, Dora Bunner is poisoned after taking aspirin that was sitting on Letitia's bedside table.

This novel gets back into some fantastic characterization - you get a sense that Christie really understands these people. She also takes the Marple character to a more introspective place. We see Christie identifying with the middle-aged and up more and more in this period of her writing.

In addition to the fantastic plot she creates for this one - yes there are coincidences, but I accept those in the same way I do in the plays of Shakespeare or the novels of Dickens - she sets up some interesting pairings. WARNING - A BIT OF A SPOILER HERE:

We have two pairs of female companions - one an elderly pair of lonely women, the other a possible lesbian couple. We also have two sets of sisters who are defined by their differences. Christie doesn't pass moral judgement on the traditionally "unacceptable" behaviors displayed - i.e. lesbianism or being raised by a criminal father. Rather she focuses her attention on moral weakness in essentially kind people. She also goes into the ideas of inheritance we've been exploring. We have some people brought up poorly who emerge relatively unscathed - they are morally upright people. We also have people faced with challenges that either show off their strong moral development or their weakness and self-absorption. Another idea on inheritance - In this novel particularly, Christie pushes toward the future as a means of hope for the world. It is the youth who will make things better. We also have the traditional ending of a wedding, yet the family about to be created is something new - we have a momma's boy and a widow with a son. From the post-war chaos, Christie offers a hope with these two.

Body count: One masked man - shot. One elderly companion - poisoned. One middle-aged companion - strangled. It's worth noting here that Miss Bunner's death after her birthday party and Miss Murgatroyd's death when she's just made the key discovery of the plot (with her exclamation of "She wasn't there!") comprise strong emotional points within the novel and are certainly related. Both Letitia Blacklock and Miss Hinchcliffe's grief over the loss of their companions is very deep and very real.

Detective/Sleuth: The super duper introspective Miss Marple and the equally cerebral Craddock (Craddock and Battle are two of my favorite police detectives in Christie's works).

Rating: 5 slices of delicious death out of 5

Commentary:

Crooked House

2009-03-20T19:19:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1948

Summary: From the book cover: "In a sprawling, half-timbered mansion in the affluent suburb of Swinly Dean, Aristide Leonides lies dead from barbiturate poisoning. An accident? Not (bloody*) likely. In fact, suspicion has already fallen on his luscious widow, a cunning beauty fifty years his junior, set to inherit a sizeable fortune, and rumored to be carrying on with a strapping young tutor comfortably ensconced in the family estate. But criminologist Charles Hayward is casting his own doubts on the innocence of the entire Leonides brood. He knows them intimately. And he's certain that in a crooked house such as Three Gables, no one's on the level..." *my addition

This novel is an interesting study in families and inheritance. There is a large fortune at stake. There is a beautiful young wife. There is an irresponsible favored son. There is a careful, proper, jealous, unfavored son. There is a missing will. There is a deception perpetrated by the decedent. On the more personal level there are strong personalities stemming from Aristide Leonides and his first wife - cleverness, passion, ruthlessness. This novel explores how these traits play out in younger generations.

Early on the narrator and his father discuss the type of murderer they're dealing with. It's worth quoting here:

"One feel, very often, as though these nice ordinary chaps, had been overtaken, as it were, by murder. almost accidentally. They've been in a tight place, or they've wanted something very badly, money or a woman - and they've killed to get it. The brake that operates with most of us doesn't operate with them. A chid, you know, translates desire into action without compunction. A child is angry with its kitten, says 'I'll kill you,' and hits it on the head with a hammer - an d then breaks its heart because the kitten doesn't come alive again! Lots of kids try to take a baby out of a pram and 'drown it,' because it usurps attention or interferes with their pleasures. They get - very early - to a stage when they know that that is 'wrong' - that is, that it will be punished. Later, they get to feel that it is wrong. But some people, I suspect, remain morally immature. They continue to be aware that murder is wrong, but they do not feel it."

Body count: One poisoned grandfather, one nearly coshed-to-death granddaughter and one poisoned nanny. The denouement adds to this list, but one mustn't give too many spoilers.

Detective/Sleuth: There are a lot of detectives and would-be detectives. Officially, we have Tavener and Mr. Hayward, Charles' father. Charles serves in an unofficial capacity as a detective on the inside. Josephine plays detective as well and is often two or three steps ahead of the police. The solution to the mystery is actually discovered by a non-detective.

Rating: 4 crooked sixpence out of 5

Commentary:

Agatha's Casa

2009-02-24T16:58:00.000-08:00

Agatha Christie's country home, Greenway, is now open to the public. Sounds like a fun trip!

Taken at the Flood

2009-02-07T15:52:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1948

Summary: This is an unconventional post-war domestic mystery about a family done out of its inheritance by the untimely dropping of a bomb on the financial patriarch's (Gordon Cloade) London home during the Blitz. The young widowm Rosaleen, and her brother now inherit the lot - The brother, David Hunter controls his sister and the dispense of her new-found wealth. However this prosperity is threatened when a man comes to the village claiming to be Rosaleen's first husband. Christie turns convention on its head in this novel of inheritance and displacement.

This is another interesting character study for Christie. Although we are supposed to see Lynn Marchmount and Rowley Cloade as the novel's emotional foci, Christie casts a wider net and develops a number of interesting characters. I admit, I was completely baffled and didn't figure things out.

Body count: Three (not including Gordon): A man bashed on the head, a man shot in the head, and a woman poisoned with an excessive amount of morphia.

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot - who is perfectly placed in this novel, present without being too obtrusive.

Rating: 4.5 tubes of cherry lipstick out of 5

Commentary:

The Labours of Hercules

2009-01-23T19:30:00.001-08:00

Publication date: 1947

Summary:
Christie uses the 12 labours of Hercules as a structural device in this collection of Poirot short stories. Here Hecule(s) Poirot will only take on cases that in some way emulate the famous tasks undertaken by his Classical counterpart. Christie has a lot of fun using these tasks as symbols for various types of behavior. For example for the hydra which grows two heads every time a head is cut off Christie writes a story about village gossip. Cleaning up the Augean stables becomes a symbol for cleaning up a potentially damaging bit of political scandal. Each story is well-crafted and quite clever. Unfortunately, this collection may be lost on those who are unfamiliar with the classics, but heck, that's what Wikipedia is for, right?

Body count: Not too much murder but we have, in order of each story:
-a case of dognapping
-a village ruining two lives with its malicious gossiping
-a case of a missing maid a young mechanic has fallen for
-a murderous gang holed up in a Swiss hotel in the alps (one body found here)
-a political scandal involving the Prime Minister
-a case of two dangerous birds of prey in a hotel in Herzoslovakia
-a woman whose fiance thinks he's going mad
-a group of socialite sisters get involved with a cocaine racket
-a young school girl and a Rubens painting disappear
-a woman asks Poirot to help him rescue her friend from a cult
-an art collector asks Poirot to help him recover a valuable golden goblet taht was stolen
-Poirot meets his love, Vera Rossakoff who, having left her life of jewel thievery, is now proprietress of a nightclub called hell. Unfortunately, there's a lot of dope emanating from Hell. (my favorite thing about this story is that the stairs leading to the nightclub Hell (which is in a basement) all have good intentions written on them).

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot. While we don't have Hastings, we do see Japp, Miss Lemon, George and Vera Rossakoff

Rating: 5 dognapped Pekinese out of 5

Commentary:

The Hollow

2009-01-05T19:32:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1946

Summary: From the facsimile edition dust jacket:
"The Hollow is the home of Sir Henry and Lady Angkatell. Here, for a week-end, come a Harley Street doctor, his devoted wife, a sculptress, a girl who works in a cheap dress shop, a disgruntled undergraduate, and the dilettante Edward Angkatell, owner of Ainswick, the lovely country house which secretly means so much to most of these people.

For one of the guests there is no return journey. Murder takes place at the Hollow. But there is an expert in murder close at hand. Hercule Poirot is trying the experiment of having a week-end country cottage. He comes to Sunday lunch, and finds a problem in crime that nearly succeeds in baffling him - until one simple sentence clears away the mists and shows him the truth.

Another great exploration of character for Christie. Similar in tone to Sad Cypress, it is funnier and problematic. Christie regretted the inclusion of Poirot in this novel, but I don't mind him. The character of Henrietta is extremely well-drawn and in a way the emotional center of the novel.

Note, the curious drawing Henrietta is fond of doodling, the tree called ydgrasil, comes from Norse mythology and is described as a huge ash tree whose roots and branches hold the earth and Heaven and Hell together.

Body count: One vital, young doctor, John Cristow, is shot by the pool at the Hollow. His last words are "Henrietta."

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot

Rating: 4.5 ygdrasil's out of 5

Commentary:

Sparkling Cyanide

2008-12-30T19:29:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1944

Summary:

Six people were thinking of
Rosemary Barton
Who had died nearly a year ago...

This rather provocative epigraph opens this novel about murder and remembrance. Rosemary (whose name means remembrance) died when she drank a glass of poisoned champagne at a party. One year later, her bereaved husband is trying to play sleuth by gathering all of the people who were at the party together again. They go to the same restaurant and the same events transpire. Only this time it is George Barton who dies from cyanide poisoning in his drink. Colonel Race is the main detective in this case, but it is the active involvement of another character that leads to the clever solution to this mystery.

The theme of memory is strong in this novel, perhaps the strongest we've seen so far in Christie's work. The three-part division and the multiple narratives keep the story moving at a nice pace.

Body count: Two: Rosemary Barton and her husband, George Barton. They die within a year of each other and both by cyanide placed in their champagne .

Detective/Sleuth: Colonel Race and another character.

Rating: 4.5 glasses of poisoned bubbly out of 5. Happy New Year!

Commentary:

Death Comes as the End

2008-12-13T19:24:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1944

Summary: Christie's only period novel, this story of a seemingly cursed Egyptian family in 2000 BC Egypt is surprisingly contemporary in many ways. The pace of this novel is largely bolstered by the fact that it is essentially an elimination game. When Imhotep, a ka-priest, returns home to his family in Thebes bringing Nofret, his beautiful new concubine, things quickly become tense. After Nofret's body is found at the base of the cliff leading to the tomb, the family slowly starts getting picked off. Renisemb, Imhotep's only daughter begins to wonder whether Nofret's spirit is exacting vengeance or there is a murderer in the family.

Body count: Nofret falls from a cliff, Satipy ditto, Sobek dies when he drinks poisoned wine, Yahmose nearly dies in the same way, a slave boy is poisoned, Ipy is found drowned in the lake, Esa, who now has a slave taste all of her food before she will eat is killed with poison put in her unguent (I thought that was a clever way to poison someone), Henet is smothered in linen sheets.

Detective/Sleuth: No detectives in ancient Egypt, but Hori, Esa and Renisemb try to figure out who the killer is.

Rating: The novel is a fantastic, and from what I understand accurate, look at a middle-class Egyptian family in 2000 BC. The number of murders that occur keeps you reading. I give it 5 carnelian beads out of 5

Commentary:

Towards Zero

2008-11-29T11:54:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1944

Summary: This novel starts from the premise that rather than being the beginning point of a mystery a murder is the culmination of a particular set of people and circumstances that converge at one moment, at one time. While the immediate history of this novel involves Neville Strange's attempt to bring about a reconciliation between his ex-wife and his current wife under the roof of his aunt's house, the real story begins much further back and involves a child with a murderous streak. Superintendent Battle, with the help of his nephew Inspector Leach take on the problem of solving the murder of Lady Tressilian, Neville's aunt. All of the clues point quite directly at Neville - His jacket has her blood on it. His golf club has her blood and hair on it. The novel has a rather humorous way of eliminating one of its characters from the suspect pool which I won't spoil.

The novel also explores relationships between men and women. on multiple levels - Like 5 Little Pigs and The Moving Finger, this work seems to need to work out the relationships neatly, to pair people off in nice, tidy groups.

Body count: Three: One murder in retrospect (a young child shot through with an arrow), one ambiguous death (Mr. Treves, an elderly attorney with a heart condition, dies when he has to climb several flight of stairs when someone places an "out of order" sign on the lift), and one cold-blooded murder (Lady Tressilian is bashed in the head in her bed).

Detective/Sleuth: Superintendent Battle in his last case.

Rating: 3.5 smelly fish out of 5

Commentary:

The Moving Finger

2008-11-26T18:41:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1943

Summary: From the first edition jacket:
"As a place to convalesce after a bad flying crash Lymstock sounded ideal. So thought Jerry Burton when he took a house there for himself and his sister joanna. But they soon discovered that the undercurrents of this placid backwater were both swift and dangerous. A poison pen was hard at work sending letters which were usually as ridiculous as they were unpleasant until one day - the shaft struck home and death resulted. Who could be in this peaceful, old world village who was bet on creating chaos? The police found many suspects and their investigations revealed some surprising facts but they didn't find the criminal and the letters went on circulating. It needed an expert in human wickedness t o solve the mystery of the moving finger. Her is Mrs. Christie at her most subtle and her most entertaining."

The novel has an enjoyable pace and a somewhat comic tone thanks to its narrator, Jerry Burton. Although Jane Marple does not appear until the last part of the novel, it's still a great read. In fact, I enjoy her late entrance. She simply comes in, dithers a bit, and solves the matter quickly. There are a couple of interesting love stories involving Jerry and the awkward daughter of the first body and Joanna and the reserved doctor in the village.

The novel has a heavy Freudian influence as Jerry and his sister try and figure out what kind of mind is behind these menacing letters. The novel shares a literary relationship with Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night - a much longer novel about a poison pen (I highly recommend this novel - it's every bit as interesting (if not more) and doesn't even have a murder in it!)

Body count: One apparent suicide complete with an "I can't go on" note and one poor maid clubbed and then killed with an ice pick at the base of the skull.

Detective/Sleuth: Miss Jane Marple (appearing in the last quarter of the novel to solve the mystery

Rating: Four pestles out of five.

Commentary:

Five Little Pigs

2008-11-15T19:52:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1942

Summary: Carla Lemarchant seeks Poirot's assistance in finding out if in fact her mother murdered her father 16 years earlier. On turning 21 Carla received a letter from her mother (Caroline Crale) assuring her of her innocence. Poirot interviews the five people (a.k.a. five little pigs) involved in the case knowing that if Caroline didn't kill her husband, Amyas Crale, one of these five did.

This plot is solid, clever and carefully crafted without being bogged down in technical issues. Even knowing the solution to this one (I'd read it a few years ago), I was still in awe of just how cleverly Poirot brings everything to its conclusion.

There is something strange and fascinating about this group of five all dancing around Amyas Crale. There is almost a feeling of an Old Testament story going on here mixed with a strange Bohemian flavor. The characters are well drawn and get to speak in their own distinct words. Christie's changes in narrative voice are strong and distinctive.

Body count: Two: Amyas Crale, an artist whose glass of beer is poisoned with coniine and Caroline Crale who dies one year into her life sentence for the murder of her husband.

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot

Rating: Five ice-cold glasses of beer out of five

Commentary:

The Body in the Library

2008-11-09T12:01:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1942

Summary: From the first edition book jacket: "Colonel and Mrs. Bantry had always believed that 'a body in the library' only happened in books - until the day when a body was found in their own library! Whose body was it? Who placed it there? Why should it be found in the library of Gossington Hall? That gentle elderly spinster, Miss Marple was faced with all these questions. Following th trail from the quiet village of St. Mary Mead to a fashionable seaside hotel, she eventually found the answer. How did she manage it? Well, in her own words: "It reminded me of Tommy Bond and our new schoolmistress. She went to wind up the clock and a frog jumped out!'"

Body count: Two young women strangled. One is found on the floor of the Bantry's library, the other is found in a burnt out car in a quarry.

Detective/Sleuth: Miss Jane Marple, Slack, Sir Henry Clithering, Colonel Melchett

Rating: Marple novels pace a bit differently than Poirot novels, but they are worth the read. This is a very strong Marple mystery with the exception of one small plot hole that I wonder no one has figured out before. I give it 4.75 fingernail clippings out of 5.

Commentary:

N or M?

2008-11-06T16:39:00.001-08:00

Publication date: 1941

Summary: Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, now a middle-aged couple feeling useless as they sit at home and their children do their bit for the war effort get more than they bargained for when Tommy is asked to investigate a possible fifth column spy ring at a guest house in the coastal town of Leahampton. Tuppence, who was supposed to stay at home and knit, turns up in disguise and the pair begin gathering information. Clues include a children's book, a young child who is apparently kidnapped and a bloody hammer.

Body count: One woman is shot to death

Detective/Sleuth: Tommy & Tuppence Beresford

Rating: 3 out of 5 khaki balaclavas

Commentary:

Evil Under the Sun

2008-10-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1941

Summary: From the dust jacket of the first edition: "Hercule Poirot, resplendent in a white duck suit, with a panama tilted over his eyes, his moustaches magnificently befurled, lay back in a deck chair on a sunny terrace overlooking the bathing beach. Casually his fellow guests at the luxury hotel moved around him, talking, knitting, drying from their bathes, anointing themselves with oil. It was August and the holiday mood ran high; there was laughter among the crowds on the sands, children's voices from the surf; gay couples climbed on the cliff paths. But, as Agatha Christie's famous detective says, 'There is evil everywhere under the sun,' and before long his languid holiday is disturbed by a more than usually urgent call for his professional aid. No reader can help being fascinated by Poirot's manner and methods."

This novel brings back Colonel Weston who was involved in the case in the novel Peril at End House. Although this novel does not have Hastings taking an active role, he does appear in a conversation with Poirot after the fact but at the beginning of the novel.

The novel takes a remarkably cold attitude toward not only the victim, Arlena Marshall but also people in general. Poirot remarks early on that sunbathers look very much alike, that they are not individuals but just bodies sizzling in the sun. And while learning something about Arlena does help Poirot solve the case, we get to see very little of her and neither we nor any of the characters seem to really care that she is dead. Even Poirot, who does not approve of murder, is not overly concerned about her. Arlena is almost like a mirage - she is an idea of beauty or a symbol of wantonness depending on who looks at her. As a character who apparently attracts a lot of attention, she is not very memorable and pliably adapts to however people wish to see her.

Body count: One strangled body on the beach - two brown arms, two brown legs and a little piece of bathing suit in between.

Detective/Sleuth: Poirot and Colonel Weston

Rating: Five wax candles out of five

Commentary:

In the early 80s there was a glammed up film version of this novel with Diana Rigg as Arlena Marshall, Maggie Smith as Mrs. Castle (the proprietress in the novel was combined with Rosamund Darnley) and Peter Ustinov as Poirot. The film sticks to the ingenious murder but fiddles with the characters and makes them all somehow involved with the stage. The soundtrack is all Cole Porter tunes - an enjoyable, if somewhat unfaithful adaptation of a fantastic novel. Here's a clip:

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (US: The Patriotic Murders)

2008-10-10T17:45:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1940

Summary: When Poirot's dentist, Dr. Morley, is found shot through the head with a gun in his hand, Japp assumes the man killed himself. When Mr. Amberiotis, a Greek con man, is found in a hotel room dead from an overdose of adrenaline and procaine, the suicide theory is strengthened. Later another patient of Mr. Morley's, a Miss Sainsbury Seale, goes missing. Later a body of a woman whose face is battered beyond recognition is found in a trunk. Is this Miss Sainsbury Seale or another missing woman, a Miss Chapman. All of this activity seems to have political motivation as things heat up in Europe. It also seems related to Mr. Alistair Blunt, a prominent financier in London - someone's been taking pot shots at him both in the city and in the country at his estate.

This Poirot novel features Japp, mentions a conversation with Hastings some time after the events of the story, contains a reference to Vera Rossakoff, and mentions the case of the Augean Stables (from a collection of short stories which appeared in magazines but were not published in book form until 1947.

The plot itself is fairly clever but the complexity of it becomes tedious. The character of Alistair Blunt is a fascinating study, and Poirot's cynicism toward the younger characters in the novel adds a different quality to his own character.

Body count: One dentist shot through the head, one opportunist given an overdose while in the dentist's chair, one woman found stuffed in a trunk, her face smashed beyond recognition.

Detective/Sleuth: Poirot and Japp

Rating: 3.5 gaudy shoe buckles out of 5.

Commentary:

Sad Cypress

2008-09-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1940

Summary: Christie's first courtroom drama novel (although the real courtroom scenes do not occur until the third part of the novel) and one that contrasts sharply with her last novel (And Then There Were None). The story has a personal, intimate quality about it and to me at least it seemed to be one that explored a little autobiography for Christie who, like Elinor, lost her love to another woman. The novel had a delightful melancholy about it that was enjoyable to read, and the pacing of the clever plot held my interest. Christie sets up a nice duality between the characters of Mary Gerrard and Elinor Carlisle. They are two women coping with loss, two women who are somewhat isolated. One dies and one lives but it is the one with the most vitality that dies and the one with the deeper sense of sorrow and emptiness who lives.

I should also mention that there is an exploration of euthanasia. Mrs. Welman tells Dr. Lord that in any decent society, one would be able to tell their doctor they wish to die and the doctor would prepare a concoction that would result in a quick, painless death. Elinor also discusses mercy killing with Roddy. When the idea that Mrs. Welman may have had someone assist her with her own death (since she had two strokes and couldn't move) and that Elinor may have been that person, Dr. Lord states that despite Mrs. Welman's spoken wishes to die, she would have never really wished it. So the issue is brought up about one's true intentions. Someone may say they wish to die, but can you really assume that that is what they really want?

The title Sad Cypress comes from a song in the second act of Twelfth Night and describes a scorned lover. The singer appears to be a male slain by a fair maid and who now wishes to die in an unmarked grave. The sentiment works nicely with Elinor who is also a scorned by her lover (i.e. sh lost Roddy to the fair maid Mary). Yet it also works with Mary who may or may not have been killed by a fair maid.

The somber tone of this work and the complexity of the characters is evocative and gloomy, without being overly melancholic.

Body count: Mrs. Laura Welman dies shortly after a second stroke and before she can write a will (was she poisoned?), and Mary Gerrard, who fell asleep after a lunch of tea and fish paste sandwiches and never woke up again.

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot

Rating: A fantastically written novel with a great plot and a strong, moody feel. I give it five sweetly scented pink blossoms from the Zephyrine Drouhin out of five.

Commentary:

Christie Speaks

2008-09-29T09:51:00.000-07:00

Agatha Christie's grandson Mathew Pritchard recently discovered about 13 hours of tapes of Christie talking about her life and works. It sounds like some of it will be released. Read about it here...

And Then There Were What?! (Discussion 3)

2008-09-28T19:42:00.000-07:00

And Then There Were None is a problematic book because of its original title. I don't defend the original title here, but talk about the inherent racism in it and offer a possible reading within the context of the story.

And Then There Were None: Motifs

2008-09-25T17:47:00.001-07:00

This video explores some of the motifs running through the novel And Then There Were None. This novel is jam packed with themes and ideas that weave in and out of each other. Here are just a few. Please forgive the strange, slight echo that occurs through the second half of the video.

And Then There Were None (Discussion 1)

2008-09-25T06:01:00.001-07:00

Publication date: 1939

Summary: Ten people are lured to an island from which there is no escape and then slowly and rather coldly killed one by one until there are ten dead bodies on the island and a mystery no one can solve. The victims are killed according to the lines of a nursery rhyme or children's song entitled Ten Little Indians (one of the other titles for the novel). The rhyme goes like this:

Ten little Indian boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine.
Nine little Indian boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little Indian boys traveling in Devon;
One said he'd stay there and then there were seven.
Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
Six little Indian boys playing with a hive;
A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
Five little Indian boys going in for law;
One got into Chancery and then there were four.
Four little Indian boys going out to sea;
A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three little Indian boys walking in the zoo;
A big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two Little Indian boys sitting in the sun;
One got frizzled up and then there was one.
One little Indian boy left all alone;
He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.

Body count: 10 within the course of the novel, several deaths in retrospect. The ten victims are killed in this way:

1. Anthony Marston, described as a young Apollo and accused of vehicular homicide, dies when he downs a drink laced with cyanide (one choked his little self).
2. Mrs. Rogers, a housekeeper who (along with her husband) was accused of withholding medicine from an elderly woman in her care in order to inherit a small legacy, is given an overdose of a sleeping draught (one overslept himself).
3. General MacArthur sent his wife's lover on a suicide mission and for that little action is bashed in the head while sitting alone looking out at sea (one said he'd stay there).
4. Mr. Rogers, culpable of the same crime as his wife, is found with an axe in his head one morning. He was apparently chopping firewood (one chopped himself in halves).
5. Miss Emily Brent, a religious spinster who turned a servant girl out of her house for getting pregnant (the girl drowns herself in a river), is killed by an injection of potassium cyanide shot into her neck (a bumblebee stung one).
6. Justice Wargrave, a retired judge responsible for sending a man to the gallows when there wasn't enough evidence against him, is shot. He's found with a red shower curtain around him and some grey wool on his head, like a British judge's wig (one got into Chancery).
7. Dr. Armstrong, guilty of killing one of his patients because he was drunk while operating on her, disappears and is later found washed up on the rocks. (a red herring swallowed one).
8. Mr. Blore, a detective who committed purgery to convict a gang member who later died in prison, has his head crushed by a large clock sculpted like a bear (a big bear hugged one).
9. Philip Lombard, accused of abandoning a troop of African soldiers in the jungle (they all died), is shot on the sunny beach (one got frizzled up).
10. Vera Claythorne, a games mistress accused of allowing a young boy in her care to swim out in the sea too far and drown so that the boy's older relative (whom she loved) would inherit the family fortune, snaps after all the pressure and hangs herself in her room (he went and hanged himself).

When the bodies are found, the police are baffled as to who could have done it. Lombard could have shot himself but why then is the gun in the house and why does it have Vera's fingerprints on it. Who pulled Armstrong's body up high enough on the rocks to not be taken away with the tide? In the room where Vera is hanging there is a chair, but it's pushed against the wall. Who moved it? A bottle with a note in it found sometime later explains all.

This is the first of a few posts. There's too much here to discuss in one video.

Detective/Sleuth: Sir Thomas Legge and Inspector Maine, but they don't solve anything.

Rating: Five indian figurines out of five.

Commentary:

The Regatta Mystery

2008-09-21T14:28:00.001-07:00

Publication date: 1939 (only in the US)

Summary: A collection of short stories featuring Parker Pyne, Miss Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot. One story with an unknown narrator, and with no connection to any recurring characters in the Christie cannon, is a supernatural tale. Basically this collection feels like extra material from The Thirteen Problems, Parker Pyne Investigates, Poirot Investigates and The Hound of Death. The 5 Poirot stories are by far the most interesting in the collection. Yet, you get the feeling reading these, that Christie does not have sufficient page space to explore and flesh out her ideas more fully (as she did in Murder in the Mews).

Body count: These stories involve:
-The theft of a large, uncut diamond
-The discovery of a man, stabbed through the heart, in an old wooden chest
-The poisoning of a wealthy old woman
-An attempt to dissuade a son from marrying an undesirable young woman
-A reunion of suspects at a London night club to solve the murder of a woman who died four years before
-A woman stabbed through the heart in her hotel room while her husband was working in the room next door
-A factory owner has recurring dreams of shooting himself and is found shot through the head
-A man sees a vision in the mirror of the woman he loves being strangled
-Poirot investigates the death of a fellow passenger while on a boat cruise in Alexandria

Detective/Sleuth: Poirot, Marple, Parker Pyne

Rating: 3 out of 5 yellow irises

Commentary:

Easy to Kill (a.k.a. Murder is Easy)

2008-09-16T18:16:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1938

Summary: An elderly woman tells a young man on a train about an alarming number of deaths in her village. She's on her way to Scotland Yard to tell them who she believes the murderer to be. She's killed in a hit and run accident before she can talk to anyone at Scotland Yard. When the young man, Luke Fitzwilliam hears of the death as well as that of another person in her village, he decides to go down and investigate. The village of Wychwood under Ashe is the setting of a series of accidental deaths, strange, pagan goings-on in the woods and a Lord whose enemies comprise the list of bodies.

The novel, like The A.B.C. Murders involves the possibility of a serial killer. The village setting and the presence of some rather clever old spinsters makes this rather like a Marple mystery. Some of the motifs that come up include pagan vs. Old Testament retributive philosophies. In addition there is a question of marriage and why people do it. This novel has two spinsters, an aging Lord about to be married, a bewitching young woman, an effeminate devil worshipper, and an abusive, alcoholic husband, to name a few. Bridget espouses a philosophy of marrying for practical, even mercenary reasons, while Luke Fitzwilliam, the story's protagonist, favors marrying for love.

I'm beginning to see that in a number of Christie's novels there is an idea of looking toward the future and leaving the past in the past. Yet it is so often in the past that characters must look in order to find the truth.

This novel is interesting also in that it has a child child as one of the victims. He's a young, annoying boy who knows far too much.

Body count: A woman who dies from drinking hat polish instead of medicine, a boy who falls out of the window, a drunk who falls off a bridge and drowns, a doctor who dies of blood poisoning and a wise old woman hit by a car.

Detective/Sleuth: Superintendent Battle is the only character from other Christie novels. Luke Fitzwilliam is a retired policeman who handles the bulk of the investigation.

Rating: 4.5 pagan orgies out of 5

Commentary:

Hercule Poirot's Christmas

2008-09-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1938

Summary: A wicked patriarch of a dysfunctional family in the English countryside is brutally murdered in his room. His throat is cut, there is furniture thrown about the place and an inordinate amount of blood. Poirot works with the local police to a) find the murderer and b) find the location of some large uncut diamonds. The story has a lot to say about identity, family, revenge and inheritance. This last topic encompasses both monetary and character inheritances. The most interesting character to come out of the story is Pilar Estravados, granddaughter to the murdered man (Simeon Lee). She is a sexy Spanish woman who makes no secret of the fact that she hopes to inherit her dead mother's portion of Lee's fortune. The story sets up interesting couples that are compared and contrasted. The novel is enjoyable, but I feel it slumps a bit in the middle and has a solution that to my mind is slightly implausible.

Body count: Mr. Simeon Lee has his throat cut. The sound that came from his room was described as something inhuman and the crime scene was equally horrific. Also, someone nearly crushes Pilar's skull.

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot with a little local police help.

Rating: 3.75 holly berries out of 5

Commentary:

Death on the Nile - Opinions and Ideas

2008-08-28T21:54:00.000-07:00

A couple of friends of mine had also recently read Death on the Nile, so I asked them if I could ask them a few questions:

Appointment with Death

2008-08-27T20:09:00.000-07:00

"You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?"

“I’ve never forgotten anything – not an action, not a name, not a face.”

Publication date: 1938

Summary:

First the cast:

Detecting force:
Hercule Poirot, the Belgian Detective
Colonel Carbury, senior figure in Transjordania

The Boynton family (an American family):
Mrs. Boynton, the victim
Lennox Boynton, the victim’s stepson
Nadine Boynton, Lennox's wife
Raymond Boynton, the victim’s stepson
Carol Boynton, the victim’s stepdaughter
Ginevra Boynton, the victim’s daughter

Friends and fellow travelers:
Jefferson Cope, an American
Dr. Gerard, a French psychologist
Sarah King, a young doctor
Lady Westholme, a member of Parliament
Miss Annabel Pierce, a former nursery governess

This novel, like Death on the Nile, is a travel novel with an exotic locale (in this case Jerusalem and Petra). The plot hinges on the behavior of the matriarch of the Boynton family (and victim). She's described as malevolent, a sadist, taking pleasure in inflicting pain on her family (most of whom are step-children). I hadn't mentioned this in the video commentary, but I suppose you could say that there is a bit of a fairy tale motif at work in the story - a wicked step-mother domineers her step-children and they must do something about it and free themselves of their maternal connections. The youngest daughter Ginevra (or Jinny) is almost like a fairy tale princess caught in a dreamworld and needing to be awakened. I was perhaps a bit critical of the novel's overly optimistic and idealized ending, but if we work with the fairy tale motif, it works just fine. The psychological development of the characters is right in line with those of fairy tales when you apply Bruno Bettelheim's theories. The more I think about this story, the more it resonates with me on several levels. There's more here than meets the eye.

Body count: One lethal injection, one shooting death

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot with Colonel Carbury

Rating: A strong Poirot novel with engaging psychological plot twists. 4.5 out of five syringes.

Commentary:

Study Shows Brains Like Christie

2008-08-20T19:07:00.000-07:00

I found an interesting article about a study conducted a few years ago. According to the article:

Scientists in Britain say they've cracked the mystery surrounding the popularity of Agatha Christie's murder novels.

Neurolinguistic researchers at three universities studied more than 80 of her novels and have concluded her phrases activate a pleasure response. Neurolinguists explore the relationship between language and brain function.

"Christie's language patterns stimulate higher than usual activity in the brain," Dr. Roland Kapferer told the Sunday Times newspaper. Kapferer co-ordinated the study.

If you'd like to read the entire article click here.

So obviously if I want to keep clients reading the websites I write for a living, I need to adopt a more Christiean style.

Death on the Nile

2008-08-19T18:38:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1937

Summary: Poirot investigates the murder of a rich young heiress named Linnet Ridgeway. In the course of the novel he solves the mystery of the theft of a pearl necklace, he helps a comrade apprehend a terrorist and even helps two young people get together. Here's a run down of the colorful characters in the novel:

-Hercule Poirot
-Colonel Race, a friend of Poirot's with espionage connections
-Linnet Doyle, nee Ridgeway, rich heiress and the victim
-Simon Doyle, Linnet's husband
-Jacqueline de Bellefort, Simon's former fiancée
-Louise Bourget, Linnet's French maid
-Andrew Pennington, Linnet's American lawyer and trustee
-Marie Van Schuyler, a very wealthy elderly American snob
-Miss Bowers, her nurse
-Cornelia Robson, her cousin
-Salome Otterbourne, writer of risque romantic novels
-Rosalie Otterbourne, her daughter
-Signor Richetti, an Italian archeologist
-Mr. Ferguson, an Englishman with radical leftist ideals
-Mr. James Fanthorp, a shy Englishman
-Dr. Carl Bessner, an Austrian doctor
-Mrs. Allerton, British socialite
-Tim Allerton, Mrs. Allerton's son
-Fleetwood, Linnet's former maid's married ex-fiancee

A pretty large cast for Christie. The film adaptation with Peter Ustinov combines and simplifies some of these characters to make it more manageable for the flicks.

As we saw in an earlier novel and will see later, Christie employs a kind of retroactive foreshadowing - a character doesn't realize the significance of a statement or event until later. We the audience are also unaware of its impact until later. In this novel Mrs. Otterbourne, a closet alcoholic and failing writer and her daughter Rosalie are conversing. Their conversation goes thus:

Rosalie murmered: "I suppose we might as well go on to Egypt. It doesn't make any difference."
"It's certainly not a matter of life or death," said Mrs. Otterbourne.
But there she was quite wrong - for a matter of life and death was exactly what it was.

The novel has a very frank denouement with an almost eerie feeling as what we have just gone through in the novel (i.e. the death of five people) becomes the momentary gossip of some patrons of an English pub.

Body count: Four characters shot in the head at close or medium range, one character stabbed in the heart

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot, Colonel Race

Rating: Five figures of Ramses II out of five

Commentary:

Dumb Witness

2008-08-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1937

Summary: After tripping and falling down the stairs (and almost dying), rich spinster Emily Arundell writes a letter to Poirot asking him to investigate. Through an accident, the letter is not posted until two months later after which time the woman is dead - apparently from natural causes. Poirot has to determine whether it was one of the nieces and nephews: Theresa, the bold, stylish beauty and her rather conventional fiancé, Dr. Donaldson, Charles the rakish thief or cousin Bella Tanios and her Greek doctor husband, or Miss Arundell's companion Miss Lawson. The plot thickens when the old lady changes her will, disinheriting her kin and leaving all to Miss Lawson.

A note about the title. While it does refer to the dog, Bob, it could also refer to Miss Arundell herself. She is the only one after all who suspects someone is trying to kill her but can say nothing because of the delay in the posting of the letter and her death. I prefer the American title: Poirot Loses a Client

Body count: One woman, apparently from an existing condition and another who dies for a more personal reason.

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings (Hasting's last Poirot novel until Curtain)

Rating: The plot moves along nicely, and the characters are interesting, but the mystery itself is a bit far-fetched in places. I give it 3 games of fetch out of 5.

Commentary:

Murder in the Mews

2008-08-02T09:56:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1937

Summary: Four Poirot Stories:
"Murder in the Mews" - A young woman is found shot through the head on the bedroom floor of her flat the morning after Guy Fawkes Night.

"The Incredible Theft" - Poirot is called down to a home where a weekend party is taking place to investigate the theft of some important documents.

"Dead Man's Mirror" - Poirot is invited to dinner by a wealthy gentleman who is found shot through the head at his desk. The room is locked and the key is in his pocket. The mirror behind him is smashed.

"Triangle at Rhodes" - Two couples vacationing on the Isle of Rhodes get too friendly and a love triangle develops. The woman who appears to be at the center of the triangle drinks poisoned pink gin.

In the final story, it is suggested that the victim, Valentine Chantry, is dominated, even abused by her brutish husband. Poirot suggests that perhaps she wanted to be dominated by him, that women often do. A fairly freudian take on the sexes by Christie I think.

Body count: 3 bodies (see above)

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot, Japp

Rating: 3 pink gins out of 5 - I wasn't all that impressed with the stories except for the final two.

Commentary:
Disclaimer: I'm using my laptop to do this commentary and it's considerably slower than the computer I'd been using, so there are probably more errors and blips as the whole process takes longer.

Cards on the Table

2008-07-19T18:04:00.000-07:00

Publication date:1936

Summary:
From the first-edition book jacket:

"This case, to my mind," says Poirot, "has been one o the most interesting cases I have ever come across. There was nothing, you se, to go upon. There were four people, one of whom must have committed the crime, but which of the four? Was there anything to tell one? In the material sense - no. There were no tangible clues - no fingerprints - no incriminating papers or documents. There were only the people themselves."

In fact, this is the "closed" crime par excellence, the type of problem in which Mrs. Christite has always been most interested and which, by its very nature, is the fairest test of the reader's perspicacity. Four people are playing bridge, and in the course of the game their host, who has been sitting out, is murdered. He can only have been murdered by one of the players while dummy. Now any one of the four, given the right circumstances, might have committed the crime, for each of them is known to have committed at any rate one murder and is quite capable of committing another. As Mrs. Christie writes in her preface, "They are four widely divergent types, the motive that drives each one of them is peculiar to that person, and each one would employ a different method. The deduction must, therefore, be entirely psychological and when all is said and done, it is the mind of the murderer that is of supreme interest."

No wonder Poirot called it one of his most interesting cases. All Mrs. Christie's readers will emphatically agree.

This is the first novel, I believe, in which Christie addresses her readers in a forward. I'll include the whole thing here because I think it's tantalizing:

There is an idea prevalent that a detective story is rather like a big race - a number of starters - likely horses and jockeys. "You pays your money and you takes your choice!" The favourite is by common consent the opposite of a favourite on the race-course. In other words he is likely to be a complete outsider! Spot the least likely person to have committed the crime and in nine times out of ten your task is finished.

Since I do not want my faithful readers to fling away this book in disgust, I prefer to warn them beforehand that this is not that kind of book. There are only four starters and any one of them, given the right circumstances, might have committed the crime. That knocks out forcibly the element of surprise. Nevertheless there should be, I think, an equal interest attached to four persons, each of whom has committed murder and is capable of committing further murders. they are four widely divergent types; the motive that drives each one of them to crime is peculiar to that person and each one would employ a different method. The deduction must, therefore, be entirely psychological and when all is said and done, it is the mind of the murderer that is of supreme interest.

Body count: Two deaths within the span of the book - a stabbing and an apparent suicide. But also a few corpses litter the pasts of the four suspects.

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot, Ariadne Oliver, Superintendent Battle, Colonel Race - a meeting of professional and amateur sleuths from unrelated Christie novels and short stories. Oliver and Race will return in Poirot novels and Oliver, Battle and Race will also be featured in novels on their own. Interestingly, Major Despard and Rhoda Dawes will reappear with Ariadne Oliver in "The Pale Horse." Despard is the only suspect in Christie to make a reappearance.

Rating: 5 pairs of silk stockings out of 5

Commentary:

Murder in Mesopotamia

2008-07-12T15:25:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1936

Summary:
First edition book cover synopsis:
"This time the murder takes place among the members of an expedition which has gone to Meopotamia to excavate the ruins of an ancient city. As to the murderer, he was so diabolically clever that he would certainly have gone undetected if Poirot had not providentially been passing through on his way to Bagdad. And never, perhaps, has that keen brain been put to a greater test. The story is told by a hospital nurse attached to the expedition, and to have kept the whole tale in character as it would appear to her commonsense mind and professional eye is not the least of Mrs. Christie's achievements.

"The unusual setting is not only vividly but authentically described, for Agatha Christie is the wife of an eminent archaeologist and she actually wrote this story while accompanying him in one of his expeditions to Mesopotamia."

One of the interesting aspects of this novel is the narrator's (and other characters') perception of the first victim, Mrs. Leidner. Like the victim in Christie's later novel, Evil Under the Sun, her identity and the effect she had on men and men on her is a critical component of the solution.

While the narrator caught me off guard a bit, I liked her because she was quite different from other Christie heroines - not at all like Tuppence (who was also a nurse at one time), Bundle Brent or Anne Beddingfeld. She's a young, single woman who very well could end up a spinster. There is really no strong indication that she will find romance with any of the men in the story. Although she does like David Emmott or at least feels sorry for him, he ends up with another female (Dr. Reilly's daughter, Sheila) character in the novel.

This story, tho' written in 1936 supposedly predates Murder on the Orient Express. Amy Leatheran mentions at the end of her narrative that Poirot was returning to London just after this case by way of the Orient Express and had an adventure there - brilliant Christie touch.

Body count: Two. One woman whose head is bashed in, another woman who drinks hydrochloric acid, thinking it's water.

Detective/Sleuth: Poirot with the help of narrator, Miss Amy Leatheran

Rating: 4 stone querns out of 5

Commentary:

The Listerdale Mystery

2008-07-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1934

Summary: A collection of lighthearted short stories from the mid-thirties, some with a romantic bent to them. I think the primary thing to note about this collection is that it is a welcome book between a series of more serious murder novels. I think the collection creates a bit of a break for the reader who is following Christie's works chronologically.

Body count:
-1 house too impossibly reasonable for the woman and her mother who rent it.
-1 possible attempted murder and a possible frightening to death.
-1 girl, giving a young man a run for his money.
-1 woman murdered and four frightened suspects.
-1 man gets his cajones back when he gets into the wrong car.
-1 inspector who is tangling with the wrong husband killer.
-1 unemployed women gets to live like a duchess ... until she's suspected of robbery.
-1 basket of cherries to go ... with a side of ruby necklace.
-1 mystery writer who gets a good idea in an unconventional way.
-1 young disinherited man grabs for the golden ball of opportunity.
-1 young man who should always remember to grab the right trousers after swimming at the beach.
-1 angry opera diva - I wouldn't play opposite her Tosca if I were you.

Detective/Sleuth: None.

Rating: 3.5 rubies out of 5

Commentary:

Revising the Reading List

2008-07-01T17:17:00.001-07:00

I have decided that, given the fact that I'm ordering many of the Christie books I'm reading from the UK, it would be better to follow a reading list that reflects the British publications of Dame Agatha's novels. Here's a revised list of what I have left:

The Listerdale Mystery (1934)
Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
Cards on the Table (1936)
Murder in the Mews (1937)
Dumb Witness (1937)
Death on the Nile (1937)
Appointment with Death (1938)
Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938)
Murder is Easy (1939)
The Regatta Mystery (1939)
Ten Little Indians (1939)
Sad Cypress (1940)
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940)
Evil Under the Sun (1941)
N or M? (1941)
The Body in the Library (1942)
Five Little Pigs (1943)
The Moving Finger (1943)
Towards Zero (1944)
Absent in the Spring (1944)
Death Comes As the End (1945)
Sparkling Cyanide (1945)
Come, Tell Me How You Live (1946)
The Hollow (1946)
The Labors of Hercules (1947)
The Rose and the Yew Tree (1948)
Taken at the Flood (1948)
Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories (1948)
Crooked House (1949)
Three Blind Mice and Other Stories (1950)
A Murder is Announced (1950)
They Came to Baghdad (1951)
The Under Dog and Other Stories (1951)
Mrs. McGinty's Dead (1952)
Murder with Mirrors (1952)
A Daughter's a Daughter (1952)
After the Funeral (1953)
A Pocket Full of Rye (1953)
Destination Unknown (1954)
Hickory, Dickory, Dock (1955)
Dead Man's Folly (1956)
The Burden (1956)
4:50 from Paddington (1957)
Ordeal by Innocence (1958)
Cat Among the Pigeons (1959)
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960)
Double Sin and Other Stories (1961)
The Pale Horse (1961)
The Mirror Crack'd (1962)
The Clocks (1963)
A Caribbean Mystery (1964)
At Bertram's Hotel (1965)
Third Girl (1966)
Endless Night (1967)
By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968)
Hallowe'en Party (1969)
Passenger to Frankfurt (1970)
The Golden Ball and Other Stories (1971)
Nemesis (1971)
Elephants Can Remember (1972)
Postern of Fate (1974)
Poirot's Early Cases (1974)
Curtain (1975)
Sleeping Murder (1976)
Agatha Christie: An Autobiography (1977)
Miss Marple's Final Cases & Two Other Stories (1979)

The ABC Murders

2008-06-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1936

Summary:
Christie is in fine form here tackling the story of a series of murders not unlike Jack the Ripper's. Up to this point all of Christie's plots containing murders have revolved around committing a crime for a specific reason - love, money, revenge. Now Poirot has to look at a series of crimes related by their MO - namely, the killing of people whose surnames and towns in which they live follow the alphabet. The lower-class setting of the initial crime gives the opening portion of the novel a cheap, exploitation feel, similar, perhaps to Hitchcock's "Psycho." One feels the sense of having left the comfort of the drawing room of the country estate and into a world of alcoholism, physical abuse and poverty. The fact that Mrs. Archer's death is all but forgotten by the public in the novel enforces this.

Hastings in this novel, while still preferring action to thinking, is not presented as such a buffoon. There is a sense that as Christie matures as a writer, she abandons some of the jabs at Hastings in favor of maintaining a strong sense of atmosphere. I noticed a foreshadowing of one narrative device that will be used to advantage in "And Then There Were None" (where the narration leaves one with a sense of doom). At a couple of places in the novel, the narrator (when it isn't Hastings), in referring to an event, will allude to how people will feel about it at a later time. This may not seem all that novel, but the way Christie employs it helps deepen the sense of atmosphere - particularly the idea of retrospect and knowledge. People don't know at the time just how significant a moment is or what it means in the context of the story. We also do not know how things will play out and are teased by the narrator's calling our attention to something that should have meaning, but at present makes no sense. Of course, Christie does explain things later.

Body count:
Four bodies:
A. Alice Ascher - bludgeoned to death in Andover
B. Betty Barnard is strangled with a Belt in Bexhill-on-the-Beach
C. Sir Carmichael Clarke is bludgeoned at his country estate in Churston
D. George Earlsfield is stabbed in Doncaster (apparently mistaken for a victim whose surname began with the letter D)

Detective/Sleuth: Poirot, Hasting, Japp, and Inspector Crome (who barely tolerates Poirot)

Rating: I give it 5 pairs of silk stockings out of 5.

Commentary:

Death in the Clouds

2008-06-23T16:47:00.001-07:00

Publication date:1935

Summary:
From the dust jacket:
"Out of the blue of a September sky the great cross-Channel air-liner Prometheus appeared true to time and circled round gracefully to make a perfect landing at Croydon. A plainclothes inspector accompanied by a uniformed policeman came hurriedly across the aerodrome and climbed into the 'plane. 'Will you please follow me, ladies and gentlemen?' The disconcerted passengers were escorted, not into the usual Customs department, but into a small private room, for high over the Channel, death, quick and mysterious, had struck at one of their number. The investigation had begun into what was to proved one of Hercule Poirot's most baffling mysteries. Once again we marvel at the wonderful deductive powers of the little Belgian, perhaps the favourite characters in present-day detective fiction."

The novel is written confidently and is laid out well. Christie's own prejudice comes through again in a rather shocking, yet casual statement. As heroine, Jane Grey gets to know fellow airline passenger, Norman Gale, the narrator discusses their mutual likes:

"They liked dogs and disliked cats. They both hated oysters and loved smoked salmon. They liked Greta Garbo and disliked Katherine Hepburn. They didn't like fat women and admired really jet-black hair. They disliked very red nails. They disliked loud voices, noisy restaurants and negroes. They preferred buses to tubes."

Given the fact that the two people here are regarded as likable, sympathetic characters, it is hard to read the statement about hating negroes as anything but racist. Even more disturbing than the statement itself is the way it is dispensed with rather impersonally. It is delivered with a frightening casualness. I can't help but think by this statement that Christie herself was expressing a colonial racism that she shared.

We get a good explanation of Poirot's methods of detection here in another passage:

"There is no such thing as muddle - obscurity, yes - but muddle can exist only in a disorderly brain."

"Use any word you choose. The result's the same. Fournier's stumped, too. I suppose you've got it all taped out, but you'd rather not tell!"

You mock yourself at me. I have not got it all taped out. I proceed a step at a time, with order and method, but there is still far to go."

"I can't help feeling glad to hear that. Let's hear about these orderly steps."

Poirot smiled.

"I make a little table - so." He took out a paper from his pocket. "My idea is this: A murder is an action performed to bring about a certain result."

"Say that again slowly."

"it is not difficult."

"Probably not - but you make it sound so."

"No, no, it is very simple. Say you want money - you get it when an aunt dies. Bien - you perform an action - this is to kill the aunt - and get the result - inherit the money."

"I wish I had some aunts like that," sighed Japp. "Go ahead, I see your idea. You mean there's got to be a motive."

"I prefer my own way of putting it. An action is performed - the action being murder - what now are the results of that action? by studying the different results we should get the answer to our conundrum. the results of a single action may be very varied - that particular action affects a lot of people."

Body count: Two women. Marie Morisot is poisoned on board the airliner Prometheus and her daughter, Anne Morisot is poisoned on a train.

Detective/Sleuth: Poirot and Japp. Inspector Fournier of the French police works with Poirot in Paris.

Rating: 4.5 dead wasps out of five. The denouement is excellent.

Commentary:

Three Act Tragedy

2008-06-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1935

Summary:
N.B. My friend, Krishna provided me with this information some time ago, but I am unaware of the source, if it is his own material that he developed or if he culled it from somewhere else. A simple Google search may tell you. But I should just say here that none of the following information in this summary section is my own.

Published in 1935, Three Act Tragedy was the first AC novel to sell more than 10,000 copies within a year of its publication. Readers and reviewers loved it. The Times Literary Supplement felt that 'very few readers will guess the murderer before M Hercule Poirot reveals the secret' and The Guardian commented that AC was 'in great form'.

With an actor as the main protagonist, TAT reflects AC's love of the theatre. Like the plays of the time, the novel is divided into three 'acts' and has a list of credits at the beginning, though, unlike some crime novels at the time, it does not have a cast list. The original hardcover edition had a title page designed to look like a theatre programme. AC later considered adapting the novel for stage, but decided against it.

Partially set in Devon, TAT reveals the nostalgia that AC felt for her Devon home towards the end of each season in Iraq. The novel opens at Sir Charles Cartwright's home in the West Country town of Loo-mouth - a combination of the Cornish town of Looe and the Devon town of Dartmouth, the nearest town to AC's home at Greenway. Like the fictional Loomouth, the picturesque town of Dartmouth is built on two steep hillsides overlooking a harbour.

Sir Charles's home, high above the harbour, is appropriately called 'Crow's Nest' after the lookout point high on a sailing ship's mast. AC had great fun gently satirising Sir Charles' nautical pose, which owes more to his experience of playing sailors on stage than to any real life naval experience.

Looking for a suitably aristocratic surname for her heroine, AC chose the names Lytton and Gore, reminders of two formidable pre-war aristocrats. Lady Constance Lytton was a suffragette who was arrested and imprisoned several times. She began to suspect corruption within the prison system when she realised that, because of her aristocratic connections, she was always released from prison as soon as she went on hunger strike. Meanwhile, working class hunger strikers were maltreated and force fed. On her next protest Lytton disguised herself as a working class seamstress and, when arrested, gave a false name and address. She then received the same appalling treatment meted out to other suffragette prisoners. As a result, she became severely ill and partially paralysed. On her release she went to the newspapers and exposed the scandalous way such women were treated. She later wrote a book, Prisons and Prisoners, about her experiences.

Constance Gore Booth, who became Countess Markievicz, was an equally formidable woman. She was a militant campaigner for Irish independence who was known as 'the Red Countess', and led a detachment of Republican soldiers against the British in 1916 Easter Rising. She was captured and condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted to imprisonment. In 1918, while still in prison, she became the first woman to be elected as a British MP. But as a Sinn Feiner, she refused to take the oath of loyalty to the crown and was thus unable to take her seat in the House of Commons even after her release. In 1919 she was elected to the Irish parliament, the Dail.

Playwrite Muriel Wills, alias 'Anthony Astor', has an equally famous surname. In 1919 Lady Nancy Astor was the first woman MP to take her seat in the House of Commons. She was renowned for her drive and intelligence and for her witty exchanges of insults with Winston Churchill. It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast to the dowdy Miss Wills, but both women share high intelligence and strong powers of observation.

The character of Muriel Wills might have been partly based on one of AC's crime writing contemporaries, Elizabeth Mackintosh, who wrote crime novels under the name 'Josephine Tey', and plays under the name 'Gordon Daviot'. A former teacher, Mackintosh had given up her job to care for her invalid father. In 1932 her play Richard of Bordeaux was produced in London, directed by and starring John Gielgud. The two became close friends. Like Sir Charles, Gielgud used the profits from his career to buy a country house, the wonderfully name Foulslough, near Finchingfield in Essex.

Another possible model for Wills is Dodie Smith, who later became famous as author of I Capture the Castle and 101 Dalmatians. In the early 1930s she wrote plays under the pseudonym 'C L Anthony'. Her first big success, Autumn Crocus, was a West End hit in 1931. One of its start, Jack Hawkins, later commented on how surprised he was to find that the author of this witty play was a shy young woman rather than a sophisticated man of the world.

Charles Cartwright bears a passing resemblance to actor manager Sir Gerald du Maurier who died in 1934. Father of the writer Daphne du Maurier, Sir Gerald was one of the leading lights of British theatre in the inter war years. Like the fictional Charles Cartwright, he bought a home in the West Country and spent many years there. His house, 'Ferryside' overlooks the passenger ferry in the Cornish seaside town of Fowey.

Dapper little Mr Sattherthwaite also appeared in the Mysterious Mr Quin, where he acts as a Watson figure to Mr Quin's supernatural Sherlock. He meets Poirot again in a short story, 'Dead Man's Mirror' where they exchange reminiscences of Three Act Tragedy, and Satterthwaite approvingly refers to Lady Lytton Gore as 'A charming creature - pot-pourri and lavender!'.

The bored English child whom Poirot sees on the Riviera is perhaps based on AC's daughter Rosalind. In 1928 AC took 8 year old Rosalind with her to the Canary Islands, where she went to recover from Archie's desertion and to write The Mystery of the Blue Train. In her Autobiography she recalls that, despite the glorious weather and idyllic setting, Rosalind did not like being sent off to play on her own while AC was writing. Like the child in TAT, she kept returning to demand her mother's attention and to ask for more things to do.

Poirot refers back to several of his previous cases. Early in the Second Act he tells Satterthwaite how, after he had retired from the Belgian police force, his 'second career' as a private detective began with the events recounted in The Mysterious Affair at Styles. In Ch5 of the Third Act, he remembers his one failure, 'long ago, in Belgium'. The case is described in the short story The Chocolate Box, which appears in Poirot's Early Cases. In the final chapter he comments that Muriel Wills has 'the mongoose instinct for finding out'. This 'mongoose instinct' was also an attribute of the kind but incurably nosey Caroline Shepherd in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Satterthwaite too recalls past cases. He starts to recount an adventure that took place when his car had broken down and he was staying at a lonely inn, but Sir Charles interrupts before he can get past the first sentence. The full story is given in the short story At The Bells and Motley in The Mysterious Mr Quin. Satterthwaite later recalls his youthful romance, which he also mentions in The Face of Helen in the same collection.

In 1986 TAT was adapted for CBS TV as Murder in Three Acts, starring Peter Ustinov as Poirot. The action took place in Mexico instead of Devon and Tony Curtis was appropriately cast as Sir Charles Cartwright. Several changes were made to the plot and Mr Satterthwaite was replaced by Hastings, played by Jonathan Cecil.

Oliver Manders has a chip on his shoulder about being illegitimate. Illegitimacy was a great stigma in the 1920s and 30s. Having children outside marraige was considered scandalous and immoral. Single parents and their children were widely shunned. Writer Catherine Cookson was illegitimate. In her autobiography she recalls that as a child, she was sneered at and forbidden to attend a friend's birthday party because her parents were not married. In the 1920s crime writer Dorothy L Sayers had an illegitimate son, John Anthony. She kept her pregnancy secret and gave birth under a false name, arranging for the baby to be fostered by a friend within a few days of his birth. She kept his existence secret even from her closest friends and family. Such was the prejudice against unmarried mothers that, if the truth had come out, she would have lost her job and been evicted from her flat.

Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was known as the 'King of Thrillers'. Born in London, he worked for many years as a journalist before turning to novel writing. His big break came in 1905, when he self published The Four Just Men, a locked room mystery which offered a £500 prize to any reader who could guess the solution. Financially the book was a disaster - too many readers solved the mystery. But it became a best seller and spawned several sequels. Wallace went on to write over 90 books, plus numerous plays and short stories. He became one of Britain's best known and best selling crime writers. His work was melodramatic and often featured gangsters, secret passages and people with dual identities. No wonder that the cynical Colonel Johnson describes Sir Bartholomew Strange's secret passage as 'Edgar Wallace stuff' and is amazed to discover that such a passage actually exists.

Tennyson's Lancelot and Elaine is one of the great romantic poems of the Victorian era. It tells the story of the beautiful Elaine, the 'lily maid of Astolat', who fell in love with Sir Lancelot, the bravest of King Arthur's knights. Her love was unrequited and she died of grief. Her body was taken to Camelot by boat, with a love letter to Sir Lancelot clutched in her lifeless hand. The story was a favourite for Victorian painters, many of whom painted pictures of Elaine on the boat. Lancelot and Elaine is one of a series of Tennyson's poems based on the Arthurian legends, which were published under the title Idylls of the King. Tennyson told another version of Elaine's story in a shorter and much better known poem, The Lady of Shalott, which AC quotes in The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side.

In TAT Mr Satterthwaite refers to 'the arrow poison of the South American Indians'. He was mostly likely alluding to curare (or woorari), a plant extract that South American natives developed for hunting. The name 'curare' is a blend of two Tupi Indian words, meaning 'bird' and 'to kill'. Although recipes vary between Indian tribes, the main ingredient is the curare plant, a woody vine found in the Amazon. Plant extracts, liana bark and sometimes snake or frog venom, are boiled together for as long as two days, then strained and dried to form a paste. Natives dipped arrows and darts in the paste, creating a very effective hunting tool. Curare is not a toxin, but rather an extremely potent muscle relaxant. Once it enters the bloodstream, the victim loses control of their skeletal muscles, causing paralysis and eventually asphyxia. Since so many animals live high up in the Amazon's canopy, curare-tipped darts succeed in paralysing their muscles so that they fall
down to the ground. Alexander von Humboldt, a Prussian explorer, was the first European to eyewitness the preparation of curare. Since then 20thC scientists have synthesised a similar compound that has been used as a muscle relaxant for medical operations.

Mr Satterthwaite feels that the unobtrusive but observant Muriel Wills embodies Robert Burns' famous line 'A chiel's amang ye takin' notes'. The line is from a poem called On Captain Grose's Peregrinations Through Scotland and warns people to be careful of what they say, because they never know who might be listening. The relevant verse runs:

If there's a hole in a' your coats,
I rede ye tent it;
A chiel's amang ye takin' notes,
And, faith, he'll prent it.

'Rede' means 'advise'. 'Tent' means 'attend to'. A 'chiel' is a Scots dialect word meaning 'fellow'. 'Prent' means 'print'.

The 'chiel' Burns had in mind was Francis Grose, a London based writer and engraver who was touring Scotland collecting material for a book on Scottish antiquities. One of Burns' best known poems, Tam O'Shanter, was written to accompany an engraving of Alloway Kirk which Grose published in his book's second volume in 1791.

Body count: Three bodies. One in each act: Act 1 - Reverend Babbington is poisoned (nicotine in the cocktail), Act 2 - Dr. Bartholomew Strange is poisoned (nicotine in his port), Act 3 - Mental patient Mrs. de Rushbridger is poisoned(nicotine in her chocolates). (See? Nicotine does kill)

Detective/Sleuth: Meeting of two minds: Hercule Poirot and Mr. Satterthwaite (who is a kind of more observant Hastings in this novel)

Rating: The novel is good but the first half plods a bit and over all, it's dialogue heavy. I give it 3.75 out of 5 poisoned martinis.

Commentary:

Parker Pyne Investigates

2008-05-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1934

Summary: Parker Pyne uses this advertisement to attract clients:
Applying a life of work in a statistics office, Pyne is able to figure people out quickly and identify the source of unhappiness. He must do pretty well at it too because in the second half he is traveling about the Middle East and Europe staying in nice hotels and touring about. He is sometimes compared to Sherlock Holmes' brother Mycroft and is connected to Poirot because they share the same secretary and are friends with the same mystery writer. Beyond this, there is no connection. It is unclear if Christie, deciding not to use the character of Pyne anymore, decided to salvage the two secondary characters and incorporate them into subsequent Poirot novels.

Body count: Not really a murder heavy collection. Here we have:
-A neglected, middle-aged wife longing for romance
-A bored soldier who needs adventure
-A distressed lady who stole a diamond
-A discontented husband whose wife wants a divorce
-A city clerk who wants his 15 minutes of fame
-A rich woman who learns the value of a pound
-A suspicious wife
-A murdered RAF officer
-An English recluse who has a German admirer
-A woman whose pearl is stolen
-A nasty wife who suspect she's being poisoned. She is. She dies.
-A mother whose attachment to her boring son is tested when he is kidnapped

Detective/Sleuth: Parker Pyne with Miss Felicity Lemon (Get the first name?) and Ariadne Oliver (another interesting first name - consort to Dionysus and woman who aided Theseus in overcoming the minotaur)

Rating: A fantastic collection of stories centered around the theme of happiness. Some may feel the second half strays from this theme, but I like it. I give it 4 out of 5 paste jewels.

Commentary:

Murder on the Orient Express

2008-05-11T19:33:00.001-07:00

Publication date: 1934

Summary: Thirteen passengers and Hercule Poirot are on the Orient Express heading to Calais from Istanbul in a three-day journey. On the second day, an American named Rachett is found stabbed to death in his compartment. Poirot, with the help of the director of the train line (Mr. Bouc) and a Greek doctor (Dr. Constantine) interview the passengers in turn and by the end of the day have solved the crime. Some of the important clues include:
-A button from the tunic of a Wagon Lit conductor
-The tunic itself
-A scarlet kimono
-A handkerchief with the initial H embroidered on it
-A pipe cleaner
-Two brands of burnt matches
-A burnt piece of paper
-A blood-stained dagger
-A grease spot on a passport
-A smashed watch

Body count: 1 murder - a man responsible for murdering a child is stabbed 12 times. In retrospect: 1 kidnapped and murdered girl (with an implication that she was tortured), the mother, who died from grief after giving birth to a stillborn child, the suicide of her husband, and the suicide of the family maid after she came under suspicion for murder.

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot sans Hastings or Japp

Rating: I give it 6 fatal stab wounds out of 5 - of the already brilliant collection of Christie I've read, this is by far the strongest.

Commentary:

And for those of you who want to see a fantastic adaptation of the novel, here is the opening to the film:

Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

2008-05-10T08:56:00.002-07:00

Publication date: 1933

Summary: When Bobby Jones finds a man who's apparently fallen over a cliff while hiking, he stands watch over the body long enough to hear the man's last words, "Why didn't they ask Evans?" He also discovers the photograph of a beautiful, frightened woman in the man's pocket. Later, after writing to the dead man's sister to tell her of the man's last words, two attempts are made to get rid of Bobby. First, he's offered a job in South America. Later, someone puts poison in his beer. With the help of rich buddy Lady Francis Derwent (a.k.a. Frankie) he goes about trying to discover the context of the question and then the answer to it.

Body count: One man is pushed over a cliff, another man is found dead from a gun shot to the head, the victim of an apparent suicide. Several attempts on certain character's lives.

Detective/Sleuth: No detectives. Bobby Jones and Frankie Derwent are the amateur sleuths.

Rating: I really enjoy the plot structure here. I give it 4 bottles of poisoned beer out of 5.

Commentary:

Lord Edgware Dies

2008-04-18T18:40:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1933

Summary: An actress, after wishing someone would bump off her husband, gets her wish when 24 hours later, he's found stabbed in the base of the neck. Lord Edgware's butler and secretary both swear to having seen Lady Edgware enter the house on the night of the murder, but the butler was new and hadn't ever seen much of her and the secretary was on the landing and could only see the top of a large hat. Lucky for lady Edgware, she was at a dinner party with twelve other people who could vouch for her. When another actress, Carlotta Adams, who does spot-on impersonations turns up dead in her flat after an overdose of veronal, the case seems clear. Unfortunately too many people hated Lord Edgware - he traumatized his daughter, he kicked out his nephew and heir, and he angered an actor enamored by Lady Edgware. Even Carlotta didn't like him. This is a story in which Poirot does not necessarily arrive at the whole truth early on.

I must say there is again an element of anti-semitism that occurs at one point in the novel. The young heir to Lord Edgware's title goes to the opera with a young Jewish lady and her family. He mentions both the size of her nose and her family's inability to pass up the chance of making a buck. While this young man isn't a particularly likable character at the beginning and Christie may be making him even less so because of his anti-semitism, it still strikes me as odd that Christie keeps making these kinds of statements in her works. She seems not to know how to make sense of her own prejudice. Her Jewish characters are often attractive, artistic and cultured, but she still allows her characters to make some really disturbing comments. One possibility is that this is the 1930s and anti-semitism was a reality across Europe. I still can't figure out if she's showing types of people who are prejudice, or if it's her own.

Body count: Three: two men stabbed in the base of the neck and one woman who apparently overdoses on veronal

Detective/Sleuth: Poirot, joined by Japp and Hastings

Rating: The plot is at once complex and simple and the denouement is fantastic with a corker of a last line. I give it five pince-nez out of five.

Commentary:

The Hound of Death and Other Stories

2008-04-07T17:52:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1933

Summary: This collection of 12 stories is largely to do with spiritualism, the supernatural and the occult. Only three stories qualify as your more typical Christie-style mystery. Whereas in many prior published stories, spiritualism is merely a diversionary tactic used by a murderer, thief or detective to achieve their end, in most of these stories, the spiritual forces at work are real. Many of these stories were written well before 1933 and probably reflect a youthful fascination with the occult. But the real showcase piece here is "Witness for the Prosecution" which is probably Christie's best known story. This story plays out the idea of women's identity and role flexibility as we've discussed before. I'm not saying as much here because I give a brief synopsis of each story in the video review.

Body count: Loads! Those who die or are murdered include: A German army, an uncle, a doctor, a nun, another uncle, a husband, a consumptive woman whose personality must be murdered by the woman who has subsumed it, a man undergoing surgery, a gypsy-like woman, a boy starved to death, another sickly boy, a woman who longs to be reunited with her husband, a lonely rich woman, a grey cat, a man in a subway, and a medium channelling a dead girl.

Detective/Sleuth: No detective, but plenty of ghosts and supernatural powers.

Rating: This collection is so different from her other works and pretty melancholy in tone that I have to give it marks for originality. A couple of the stories are a bit weak, but given the fact that out of this collection comes arguably Christie's best story, I have to give it 4 red signals out of 5. As a stand-alone story, I give "Witness for the Prosecution" 5 lurid love letters out of 5.

Commentary:

The Thirteen Problems

2008-03-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1932

Summary: Book jacket description: "The appearance of Miss Marple in Murder at the Vicarage provided detective fiction with a new and distinctive character. Miss Marple, that delightfully clever village spinster who solves the most amazing mysteries quietyly and unobtrusively from her chair by the fireside, appears in each of the stories comprising The Thirteen Problems. Each story is a little masterpiece of detection, clever and ingenious, with just that added twist that only Agatha Christie can give."

The fact that Marple solves each of the propounded mysteries in this collection just sitting in a room, without any active investigation creates a relationship to Poirot and Tommy and Tuppence. Each of these sleuths solve at least one mystery by just sitting and thinking through the facts. This collection gives us an excellent opportunity to see how Miss Marple's mind works and how everything for her is relative - People behave consistently, in patterns.

Body count: I'll just go through the stories one by one:
1. "The Tuesday Night Club" - Miss Marple, Raymond West, Joyce Lempriere, Sir Henry Clithering, Doctor Pender and Mr. Petherick decided to meet every Tuesday at Miss Marple's and each propound a mystery for the others to solve. Sir Henry Clithering describes the story of a traveling businessman who's wife dies mysteriously, apparently after eating tinned lobster.

2. "The Idol House of Astarte" - Dr. Pender tells the story of a house party in which a woman dressed as the goddess Astarte apparently strikes one of the guests dead from ten feet away, but the knife in his heart tells a different story.

3. "Ingots of Gold" - Raymond West describes an atmospheric tale of pirates, sunken treasure and smuggling on the Cornish coast.

4. "The Blood-Stained Pavement" - Joyce Lempriere inadvertently paints bloodstains on the pavement in the background of her paintings but when she goes to investigate, the stains are gone - days later, a woman's body washes up on the beach.

5. "Motive v. Opportunity" - Mr. Petherick describes how a foolish old invalid plans to disinherit his family in favor of gold-digging medium.

6. "The Thumb Mark of St. Peter" - Miss Marple tells about a young woman who's husband dies mysteriously and how she is now shunned by the town. Hmmm ... I guess she shouldn't have bought that arsenic the day before the old man died.

7. "The Blue Geranium" - Colonel Bantry tells a spiritualistic story about a superstitious invalid whose wallpaper flowers keep changing colors - omens of death. Guess what? She dies!

8. "The Companion" - Dr. Lloyd tells a story about a rich woman and her companion who go out swimming. The companion drowns as the rich woman tries to save her. Except a Spanish woman watching swears the woman was intentionally pushing her companion's head under the water.

9. "The Four Suspects" - Sir Henry muses over the way implied guilt can ruin innocent people as he tells the story of a retired spy who is pushed down the stairs and the four people suspected of killing him.

10. "A Christmas Tragedy" - Miss Marple witnesses a man "accidentally" pushing his wife down the stairs on a tram and onto the street and decides he's trying to kill her.

11. "The Herb of Death" - Dolly Bantry - lover of gardening, tells the story of an evening meal where sage was the herb of choice. Everyone got sick and a young woman die. Too bad that very woman had picked foxglove leaves along with the sage.

12. "The Affair at the Bungalow" - Jane Helier describes the story of a playwright lured to her bungalow with the promise of a script read, only to find that he is drugged, dumped on the roadside and arrested for burglary.

13. "Death by Drowning" - When a young woman discover's she's pregnant and is found dead in the river one evening, everyone thinks she took her own life, but Miss Marple knows better. She writes the name of the murderer down on a piece of paper and asks Sir Henry Clithering to investigate. He does, and she was right.

Detective/Sleuth: Jane Marple (featuring Sir Henry Clithering, Colonel Melchett, Raymond West, Joyce Lepriere, Arthur and Dolly Bantry, with a passing mention of Dr. Haydock - of Vicarage fame)

Rating: This is a tight collection of intriguing mysteries with a nice framing device. I give it 5 thumb marks out of 5.

Commentary:

Peril at End House

2008-03-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1932

Summary: Miss Nick Buckley who lives at End House in the seaside town of St. Loo in the south of England (the term loo for toilet was beginning to be used in the 1930s, could this be a deliberate word choice?), has been having several near death experiences - a heavy painting nearly falls on her head, her breaks go out on her car, a boulder from a cliff above nearly hits her, and a bullet whizzes past her head and leaves a hole in the brim of her hat. Finally tragedy occurs when a woman in a black dress is found dead in the garden of End House on the night of the fireworks display. She's wearing Nick's red shawl - apparently the murderer mistook Maggie Buckley, Nick's cousin, for her. Poirot and Hastings are staying at a nearby hotel and agree to take on the case. Japp who is on holiday, joins in on the tail end of the case. This is a case where we get to see a great deal of Poirot's method. Unlike many of his other cases where he figures out fairly early on who the murderer is, in this one, it is not until near the end of the novel when Poirot finally figures things out (as he builds a house of cards).

Body count: One young woman shot through the head as well as another shooting. There is also a nasty overdoes of cocaine.

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot, Captain Arthur Hastings, and Chief Inspector Japp

Rating: The plot is tight, the characters are enjoyable and the novel is well paced. While it isn't quite as good as some of her other Poirot masterpieces, I give this one four jeweled wristwatches out of five.

Commentary:

Murder at Hazelmoor

2008-03-18T18:30:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1931

Summary: Summary from my book cover: "It was only a parlor game intended to while away the hours on a bitter winter night. But when the psychic table turning pronounced Captain Trevelyan "dead," the guests at Sittaford House became nervous. And when, a few hours later, Major Burnaby discovers the body, the game becomes an eerie and baffling murder case. Inspector Narracott for the police and Miss Emily Trefusis, Hoping to clear her fiancé, delve deep into the spirt world - to find a very human murderer."

This is the first novel of Christie's to play with the supernatural (she does deal with it in short stories in Poirot Investigates, Partners in Crime and The Mysterious Mr. Quin). Like the Quin collection, this novel has an atmosphere about it. At first the scene of a small party gathered on a snowy night has a coziness about it, but after the table turning, the atmosphere changes to something more claustrophobic. For the first two days of the novel the people are immobilized by the snow - this feeling of being stuck or shut in will be played out to greater effect in the short story "Three Blind Mice" and the novel And Then There Were None. I think Emily Trefusis and Charles Enderby are the strong, engaging characters of the story. They are more mature and less given to silliness than Christie's more lighthearted couples of the twenties (Bundle Brent and Bill Eversleigh and Tommy and Tuppence Beresford for example). There is also a second denouement - following the murder, there is an obvious question as to whether Emily will stand by her man who has been in prison for practically the whole novel, or end up with Charles whom she's sleuthed with for most of the story. This solution was as much of a surprise as the solution to the murder.

Body count: One captain coshed on the head with a heavy weight used to keep the draft out.

Detective/Sleuth: Inspector Narracott, Emily Trefusis, Charles Enderby

Rating: It is hard to rate this one because, I'd listened to an adaptation of this years ago and knew the solution, so one clue stood out for me and I can't tell if it would have or not had I never known the plot. Still, I give this 3.75 raps from a spiritual presence out of five.

Commentary:

The Mysterious Mr. Quin

2008-03-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1930

Summary: A collection of 12 atmospheric mystery stories usually centering around the theme of love. Christie introduces two of her favorite characters. I suppose she only included a couple more stories with them because she enjoyed keeping the shroud of mystery around them. Mr. Satterthwaite is an aging, effeminate, society bachelor who moves around in the best sets - both upper crust and artistic. His hobby is observing human drama. Whenever things start getting interesting his acquaintance, Mr. Harley Quin (get the name?) appears out of nowhere and passively offers suggestions and nudging to Satterthwaite so he can put memories into perspective and solve crimes, resolve mysteries, reunite lovers, or prevent tragedy. Each story is heavily cloaked in enjoyable atmosphere. They are enigmatic little puzzlers that are less about figuring out a solution yourself and more about being caught up in the atmosphere created.

Body count: Here's a run down of the stories:
-A New Year's Eve party, a remembered suicide which by looking back over events turns out to have been murder.
-The face of a cavalier keeps turning up on a pane of glass (remember that scene in "Diabolque" where they see the face in the window? Or the scene in "The Innocents" where the ghost looks in on the governess? Of course you don't, silly, you haven't bothered to see those movies yet! A quick rental will remedy that situation) and two bodies are found shot in the garden.
-While waiting for his car to be repaired, Mr. Satterthwaite recounts to Mr. Quin the story of a husband who disappeared and the wife who was suspected of bumping him off. In 45 minutes the mystery is solved and an unhappy American millionaire will be in for a shock.
-An unhappy wife is shot in her room while her husband is away at a bridge game. Chief suspect - the young lover who took such a long time in getting home.
-Mr. Satterthwaite is cheated out of money at the roulette table in Monte Carlo but gains some understanding when a croupier tells a story of love and loss.
-A young woman must make a decision at a place that appears to be the world's end.
-A duchess worries about a daughter who has been hearing a ghostly voice, but it's the duchess who turns up dead.
-A woman with a face that could launch a 1000 ships gets engaged and is given a radio and a glass globe sculpture by a scorned lover.
-A painting depicting a harlequin looking through a window at a dead harlequin has people clamoring to buy it from Mr. Satterthwaite - does it depict an actual murder?
-A lovely young woman who plays a mean ukulele has apparently hanged herself in her room. But man, that mark on her neck looks more like wire than bed sheets.
-A woman watches her husband drown at sea and mourns the loss of a lover who fathered her son.
-A theatrical performance and dance featuring harlequin and Columbine and a lane that leads to a rubbish heap with a dead body.

Detective/Sleuth: Mr. Harley Quin & Mr. Satterthwaite

Rating: This is a great collection of moody, lonely stories. One really gets under the skin of the character of Satterthwaite and feels distanced from life in the way he is. I give it five lonely women singing mournful tunes on ukuleles out of five.

Commentary:

The Murder at the Vicarage

2008-03-09T21:11:00.000-07:00

Publication date: 1930

Summary: (from the first edition of the book) In the peaceful village of St. Mary Mead Nothing ever happens. So it seems almost in credible when Colonel Protheroe, the churchwarden, is discovered, shot through the head in the vicarage study.
Everybody thinks they know who has done it - including Miss Marple, the real old maid of the village who knows everything and sees everything and hears everything! She declares that at least seven people have reasons for wishing Colonel Protheroe out of the way!
Excitement dies down when somebody confesses to having committed the crime. But that is not the end, for almost immediately somebody quite different also confesses! And there is a third confession through the telephone!
But who really killed Colonel Protheroe?

(I love these first edition facsimile copies!)

Body count: One boorish colonel shot through the head in the vicarage study.

Detective/Sleuth: Miss Jane Marple (also introduced, recurring characters Colonel Melchett, Raymond West and the exasperating Inspector Slack. The Clements (the vicar and his wife are alluded to in other Marple novels as well, I believe).

Rating: The plot is interesting, the narrative moves along and really sparkles nicely with humor. I give it five tennis racquets out of five.

Commentary:

Here's a clip from the BBC version of Murder at the Vicarage with Joan Hickson as Miss Marple. This lady is my favorite actress in this part.

Giant's Bread

2008-03-06T20:24:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1930

Summary: Vernon Deyre is a moody, artistic, thoughtful man who inherits his father's propensity to follow his attractions and who disdains his cloying mother. After seeing a piano being moved through a forest to a small cottage as a young child, he develops a fear of music. Once overcome, however, it becomes his master. He grows up with Josephine (Joe), a Jewish friend named Sebastian who goes on to be a successful producer of all things artistic, and Nell who is boring at first but grows up to be quite a looker. Vernon becomes your typical tortured artist, plagued with self-doubt. He meets Jane Harding whose brutal honesty with everyone is disarming and frightening to Nell and Vernon. There is a fairly realistic love triangle that develops between Nell, Vernon and Jane. Vernon wants Nell. Nell wants Vernon. Nell also wants money. Vernon wants his music and his childhood home as much as he wants Nell. Jane doesn't give a damn but proceeds to give both Vernon and Nell advice which makes Nell insecure and endears Jane to Vernon. Jane is a singer but has also been a model for a sculptor. Vernon sees the sculpture of Jane's body and goes to her flat and grabs her breasts (this is literally about as steamy as Christie has ever been - there is no breast grabbing to be had in the world of Miss. Marple).

The story doesn't really reach it's climax until the fourth section when the war breaks out. Vernon is thought dead, Nell marries for comfort and money. But Vernon is not dead. He's just been hit by a lorry in Amsterdam at the end of the war and lost his memory. He shows up back in England the chauffeur to a rich American. But the secondary and more real climax occurs on a transatlantic crossing where Vernon must make the most critical decision of his life.

Body count: not a mystery, so no dead bodies but lots of lovers

Detective/Sleuth: n/a

Rating: This over-long novel is a very psychologically driven "romance" in the old outdated meaning of the word. I enjoyed the psychology and depth of the characters. I felt the pacing is what bogged the book down. Nevertheless I give it four standing ovations out of five.

Commentary:

Partners in Crime

2008-02-19T19:48:00.000-08:00

"These books are detective stories by the leading masters of the art. I intend to try different styles, and compare results."

"H'm," said Tuppence. "I often wonder how those detectives would have got on in real life."

Publication date: 1929 (stories appeared in magazines in 1924)

Summary: This engaging collection has Tommy and Tuppence Beresford running a detective agency with the help of their office boy, Albert. In each story they emulate a well-known fictional detective of their day. While all but a few are now recognizable, the mysteries are still clever, sometimes lighthearted and filled with great banter between husband and wife. Since these were written when Christie was still married to her first husband, perhaps they were a kind of idealization of their marriage. The characters are right out of Gatsby but are probably far more sympathetic.

Body count: (I'll summarize stories here)
-"A Fairy in the Flat" - a reintroduction to the Beresfords with a small reference to Conan Doyle's book The Coming of the Fairies which purports to have photographs of the mythical creatures.
-"A Pot of Tea" - the Beresfords decide to take on the job of running a detective agency.
-"The Affair of the Pink Pearl" - A valuable pearl is stolen from an American woman's necklace during a house party.
-"The Adventure of the Sinister Stranger" - Tommy and Tuppence's first run in with the gang they are trying to hunt down.
-"Finessing the King" & " The Gentleman Dressed in Newspaper" - an adulterous wife is stabbed to death at a costume ball.
-"The Case of the Missing Lady" - An explorer returns to England to find his fiancee has disappeared.
-"Blindman's Buff" - Run in number two with the gang and a highly electric floor.
-"The Man in the Mist" - An actress is killed in a house by a misty road where the ghost of a policeman is said to walk.
-"The Crackler" - The Beresfords mix with the nightclub/gambling set to try and uncover a gang of forgers.
-"The Sunningdale Mystery" - Tommy and Tuppence solve the murder of a respected businessman whose body is found on a famous golf course. They do this sitting in a booth at a cafe with only newspaper clippings to provide them with facts.
-"The House of Lurking Death" - A young heiress and her household are sent a box of poisoned chocolates.
-"The Unbreakable Alibi" - an Australian woman gives a suitor proof that she spent the evening in two distinct places at the same time and bets him he can't break her alibi.
-"The Clergyman's Daughter" and "The Red House" - a young woman is starting to believe that the house she and her mother have inherited is haunted.
-"The Ambassador's Boots" - The American ambassador hires the detective pair to look into an odd luggage mix up on a transatlantic ship.
-"The Man Who Was No. 16" - Tommy and Tuppence finally nab the leader of that pesky gang that's been hounding them.

Detective/Sleuth: Tommy and Tuppence Beresford (and Albert)

Rating: An excellent collection of stories. Clever, witty, varied. I give it five poison chocolates out of a box of five.

Commentary:
I've gotta lay off the bathtub gin.

In the 1980s the BBC filmed a great adaptation Partners in Crime starring James Warwick and Francesca Annis. Here's what the intro looked like:

The Seven Dials Mystery

2008-02-16T16:31:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1929

Summary: This novel is a sequel to The Secret of Chimneys and reintroduces the characters of Bundle Brent, Superintendent Battle, Bill Eversleigh, Lord Caterham and George Lomax. The Wodehousian characters and dialogue keep this story pretty light. There's plenty of humor to enjoy, particularly the conversations between Bundle and her father. While the points of the plot, which centers around the attempted robbery of a top secret formula, are well handled, the depiction of the secret society, the Seven Dials, is rather farfetched. There are seven members and each wears a mask with a clock face on it - one for every hour between one and seven. I'm not sure what secret societies were like back then, but I think the masks would be rather stuffy. Although, yesterday I was watching videos of the Unarian society and they wore some pretty unbelievable costumes to, so I guess I can't judge.

The character of Bundle is further developed in this story and she's a fairly vibrant, plucky young woman, driven to have adventures. Just like Hitchcock had his cool blondes, I think Christie has a certain type of heroine. Bundle is a lot like Tuppence Beresford and Anne Beddingfeld. These three are different from Katherine Grey of Blue Train however in that they actively seek adventure. Katherine is generally more of an observer around whom action takes place.

Body count: Two. One poisoned, one shot and almost run over.

Detective/Sleuth: Superintendent Battle, Bundle Brent

Rating: I liked the dialogue a lot in this story and even laughed out loud at a few passages, but overall, it's pretty lightweight for Christie. I give it 3.25 alarum clocks (It's actually spelled that way in the book!)

Commentary: This is my first blog video done without stinging clips together. Not sure why, but I didn't need to.

The Mystery of the Blue Train

2008-02-11T15:35:00.000-08:00

Publication date:1928

Summary: The murder of an American red head and heiress to a fortune on the Blue train bound for Nice may or may not have anything to do with the theft of a valuable ruby given to her by her millionaire father. A young woman named Katherine Grey who has recently come into a small fortune of her own finds her life as observer and listener challenged as she's thrust in the middle of this travel mystery, helping Poirot to find the killer. Not one of Christie's favorite novels, but I disagree; it's an engaging read and has some nice characterizations.

Body count: One woman strangled to death, her face beaten in beyond recognition.

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot

Rating: I give this one 3.75 red rubies out of five. The plot is solid, has many nice twists and the denouement completely surprised me.

Commentary:

addendum 02/16/08: I forgot to mention that this is the first novel to mention Poirot's perfect English butler, George (or Georges, if you are Poirot). He'll appear in subsequent books.
addendum 02/20/08: I further forgot to mention that Katherine Grey's home village is St. Mary Mead - the village that will comprise the center of Miss Marple's moral universe, for it is from there that she is able to learn so much about human nature.

The Big Four

2008-02-04T20:03:00.000-08:00

Publication date: 1927

Summary: An episodic novel in which Poirot and Hastings take on a powerful cartel composed of a Chinese man, a French woman, an American man and a British man. This novel, while not her strongest, does allow Christie to show us Poirot's approach a little more closely. His waiting and thinking is constantly contrasted with Hasting's desire always to act. Some of the chapters stand alone, but they mostly build upon each other as Poirot slowly begins to understand the type of person Number 4, "The Destroyer," is.

Body count: several: a man covered in mud is asphyxiated in Poirot's apartment, another man is found with his throat cut ear to ear, a man found head first in a roaring fire, his face burned beyond recognition, an American chess player who mysteriously falls over dead during a chess game, a peroxide blonde killed in a hit and run "accident," a Chinese servant dies in a hospital bed, and some people die in an explosion.

Detective/Sleuth: Poirot, Hastings and Japp, introduction of Countess Vera Rossakoff

Rating: 3.25 yellow jasmine flowers out of 5. The work is interesting, but not her strongest - this may in part be due to the breakdown of her marriage at the time of writing and her famous disappearance.

Commentary:

Best Preview for Murder of Roger Ackroyd - EVER

2008-02-02T16:04:00.000-08:00

I found this on YouTube. This awesome video will give you a good synopsis of the last book I read:

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

2008-01-29T19:08:00.001-08:00

Note: I tried some new things in this particular video blog. The result is a tad longer, but I hope you like the fun bits of audio/video manipulation.

Publication date: 1926

Summary: This story finds Poirot retired to the country living in a small cottage called the larches where he tends to his garden. Hastings has moved to Argentina. The story is narrated by Dr. Sheppard, Poirot's neighbor who stands in for Hastings in this mystery. This mystery is the one that first really set Agatha Christie apart. The cleverness of the plot, the more serious tone than her earlier works and the way that she is able to cast suspicion evenly over the entire cast of characters is brilliant. Here are some interesting items that may or may not be important to the solution of the mystery:
-A goose quill used to snort cocaine (Poirot calls the cocaine "snow" - the hip oldster!)
-A piece of bleached cambric
-A secret marriage
-A blackmailer
-Overheard conversations with the dead man
-An unwed mother
-A PYT ("Pretty Young Thief")
-A man named Kent who comes from Kent
-A housekeeper interested in drugs and poisons
-A busy body spinster who is always right
-A woman who overdoses
-A missing letter revealing the name of the blackmailer above
-A spirited game of Mah Jong
-A chair that has been moved
- A wedding ring
-Footprints on a window sill
-A telephone call
-A missing person who is number one suspect

Body count: One murder in retrospect, One overdose, one death by stabbing

Detective/Sleuth: Poirot accompanied this time, not by Hastings or Japp but by his neighbor, Doctor Sheppard.

Rating: This story moves along at a nice pace and gains serious momentum. As you get to the end, each chapter drives you on to the next. This by far is the most clever of the Christie novels I've read so far this year. Brilliant. I unhesitatingly give it 5 Mah Jong tiles out of 5.

Commentary:

The Secret of Chimneys

2008-01-25T15:57:00.001-08:00

Publication date: 1925

Summary: A lighthearted thriller in the style of P.G. Wodehouse (a friend of Christie's who wrote the Jeeves/Wooster stories). A young man, Anthony Cade, is sent to England on an errand for a friend to deliver an assassinated king's memoirs to a publisher. Most of the novel takes place at the fictitious British home, Chimneys. This is the home of Lord Caterham and his daughter Bundle Brent. Both of these characters as well as Bill Eversleigh and George Lomax will appear again in The Seven Dials Mystery. The most important recurring character to be introduced in this story is Superintendent Battle. Battle is a quiet, emotionless character - one of those still waters that run deep types - who will also appear in several subsequent novels.

Body Count: 3 - all shot

Detective/Sleuth: Superintendent Battle

Rating: It's a fun read and the dialogue is pretty humorous, still, all of the changes in identity get a bit much and the weight of the overall piece is pretty light - Christie-lite. I give it three bullets to the head out of five.

Commentary:

Poirot Investigates

2008-01-21T07:15:00.000-08:00

Original publication date: 1924

Summary: An enjoyable collection of 14 short stories narrated by Captain Hastings in which Poirot investigates murder, kidnapping, disappearance and robbery. Hastings takes quite a bit of criticism for his dimwittedness from Poirot in this collection. Also, Christie further explores Poirot's own methods of detection. In two of the stories, he discovers the truth without leaving his apartment - Hastings and Inspector Japp simply present him with the facts and he solves the puzzle. Most of the stories take place in England, but one has a quick jaunt to France, another takes place in Egypt and still another in Belgium. One of my favorite quotes in the book is said by Poirot as he discusses disappearances:

"Are disappearances classified and labeled, then?" I laughed

Japp smiled also. Poirot frowned at us both.

"But certainly the are! The fall into three categories. First, and most common, the voluntary disappearance. Second, the much abused 'loss of memory' case -- rare but occasionally genuine. Third, murder, and a more or less successful disposal of the body."

This quote is very interesting in light of the fact that just a year or two later, Christie herself disappeared for 11 days and when found at a resort spa in Harrogate claimed to have been suffering from amnesia.

Body Count: I'll just put a list of crimes here since not every story dealt in murder:
- One stolen diamond
- One husband who appears to have hemorrhaged
- One attempted assassination of a young couple
- One grizzly old uncle shot in the head
- One million dollars worth of liberty bonds, seemingly spirited off of an ocean liner.
- A heart attack, a suicide, a death by blood poisoning, a death from tetanus, one death by arsenic (all in 14 pages!)
- A stolen pearl necklace
- One kidnapped Prime Minister
- One disappearance of a financier
- One nobleman bludgeoned by a statuette
- One missing will (found)
- One stolen Chinese puzzle box containing an indiscrete letter and some valuable jewels - stolen by Poirot himself who, for this story, becomes a burglar.
- One wealthy Chinese gentleman murdered by the wharf.
- One anti-Catholic French deputy in Belgium whose taste for fine chocolates did not end well.

Detective/Sleuth: Poirot, joined once again by Hastings and Inspector Japp

Rating: I think her short stories are interesting and definitely fun to read. I enjoy short stories, but with Christie, I think her novels are more successful - she has more time to lay out a plot and cover her tracks. Still, this collection lets us in on more of Poirot's methods - and his unendurable pride. 3.75 little grey cells out of 5

Commentary:

The Man in the Brown Suit

2008-01-16T18:47:00.000-08:00

Original publication date: 1924

Summary: This novel has a two person narration. Most of it is narrated by Anne Beddingfeld, a young, penniless woman out for an adventure. The rest of it is taken from the diary of Sir Eustace Pedler, an older fellow who is a fellow passenger on a boat bound for South Africa. Anne's adventure begins when a nervous looking man in the London underground sees someone past her and falls backwards onto the electrified tracks of the subway and dies. When a man claiming to be a doctor drops a piece of paper he'd taken from the dead man's pocket, Anne is able to connect the death with the murder of a Russian dancer in a remote English manor. The romantic adventure is somewhat inspired by the cliffhanger silent films entitled "The Perils of Pauline" only here, Anne calls them "The Perils of Pamela." The heroine finds herself in predicament after predicament.

The story also has a framing device which is a discussion of cranial structure (Anne's father is an anthropologist). Early on, Anne describes a suspect as having a brachycephalic or short, broad skull. In the end when Anne is married and living a primitive life on an island, she receives a letter from a friend (Suzanne, who has shared much of the adventure) asking whether the skull of Anne's son is brachycephalic or dolichocephalic (long and narrow). Anne replies that it is playcephalic - in other words, flat on top like a chimpanzee. One wonders if the Darwinian discussion that happens throughout the novel culminates in a suggestion of regression rather than evolution.

The novel's heroine gets into many tight squeezes, there are characters in disguise, in drag and with false names, there are large, uncut diamonds from Kimberly that are missing, and plenty of humorous observations of Anne's fellow characters given both by Anne and Sir Eustace (who believes that Anne has the best looking legs of any of the women on the ship).

Body count: Two bodies, one strangled, one electrocuted

Detective/Sleuth: This is a one off sort of novel for Christie. Although the character of Colonel Race will appear in several subsequent novels as both a primary and secondary figure.

Rating: I think this is a more successful "gang-of-spies" adventure than The Secret Adversary partly because the character of Anne is so engaging - she is proposed to at three different times by three main male characters. The humor is very light and the numerous plot twists work successfully. I give it 4.5 platycephalic skulls.

Commentary (Now with musical underscore - thanks Mr. Reinhardt!):

The Murder on the Links

2008-01-10T13:43:00.000-08:00

Original publication date: 1923

Summary: Set in Merlinville-sur-Mer France, this third novel marks the second appearance of Monsieur Poirot and Captain Hastings. Again narrated by Hastings, this detective novel involves the discovery of a wealthy man Monsieur Renauld, stabbed in the back and wearing only his underwear and an overly long overcoat, in a newly dug sand trap of a new golf course near his villa. Back at his house, his wife is found gagged and bound in the bedroom. The wife, Madame Renauld, tells a wild story of two bearded assassins. Clues and red herrings include an overcoat that is too long, several identical knives, a piece of pipe, cigarette butts and South American matches, a smashed watch that continues to tell time but is two hours off, a love letter, and a murder in retrospect that bears a striking similarity to the current crime under investigation. Poirot's reputation is threatened by a young "foxhound" of a detective named Giraud who believes modern criminal detective methods produce far better results than Poirot's old-fashioned, psychology-based approach. Poirot bets Giraud 500 francs that he will discover the murderer before the young French sleuth. Suffice it to say, the last we hear of Giraud, he is away taking a break to treat nerves, and Poirot has a new small figurine of a foxhound on his mantle.

Body count: Three bodies, two with knives embedded in them.

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot

Rating: A solid, yet twisting, plot. The cast is primarily French and I think Christie almost views them as outsiders. This makes them a little less easy for me to identify with. Yet, they are engaging and the last third of the novel is exciting and extremely cunning. I give it 4 out of 5 thin daggers.

Commentary:

Addendum to the commentary: I forgot to mention the theme of heredity. In this story, Christie explores whether or not having a parent as a criminal will result in the child being a criminal. Given the outcome of this detective novel, I'd say her opinion was that people may behave in similar ways to their parents and be motivated by similar triggers, but that children have a choice.

Whodunit Factor: Despite having read the novel in my youth, I was unable to figure out who the murderer was and was completely surprised by the ending.

I made a mistake and said that Poirot Investigates is next. This is incorrect. The next book I'll be reading is The Man in the Brown Suit.

The Secret Adversary

2008-01-06T11:04:00.000-08:00

Francesca Annis as Tuppence in the BBC's adaptation

Original publication date: 1922

Summary: Tommy Beresford and Prudence (a.k.a. Tuppence) Cowley are two young adventurers trying to find a missing American girl (Jane Finn) who was handed top secret documents just before the Lusitania sank. Other characters include Jane's millionaire cousin, a couple of highly regarded parliamentary members, an apartment elevator boy named Albert, and a gang of international spies.

Body count: 2 deaths by poison

Detective/Sleuth: Tommy and Tuppence Beresford

Rating: Tommy and Tuppence novels are pretty light fare for Christie - charming, silly, not generally believable, but endearing and reflective of their era. They seem also reflective of the author as they share her age and grow old with her throughout the years unlike Poirot or Marple: 3.75 out of 5 Russian spies

Commentary:

Whodunit factor: This isn't really a whodunit, but it has some nice plot twists and surprises that keep you guessing at who the elusive Mr. Brown might be.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

2008-01-03T13:20:00.000-08:00

Original publication date: 1920

Summary: A "locked room" mystery set in England during the First World War. An aging philanthropist is poisoned with strychnine the night before she intends to alter her will. One of the guests, Arthur Hastings is convalescing at the home where the murder takes place and invites his old friend Hercule Poirot, a retired Belgian Police Officer and now refugee in England, to investigate the crime. Chief suspects include the victim's two step-sons by a previous marriage, her new husband, the wife of the elder step-son, a family friend who likes gardening and who is described as speaking like a telegram, and a young ward staying at the house and training to be a dispenser (pharmacist).

Body count: 1

Detective/Sleuth: Hercule Poirot

Rating: This was the author's debut novel, and while it may not be as good as some of her best-known works, she creates a solid plot, introduces her most famous detective, and nicely reinvents the Holmes/Watson model with Poirot and Hastings: 4 out of 5 small blue bottles of strychnine

Commentary:

Whodunit Factor: In spite of the fact that I had read this back in junior high school, I remembered little of it and was unable to determine who the murderer was until the very end.

My 2008 Reading List

2007-12-29T21:54:00.000-08:00

Agatha Christie's Novels and Short Story Collections in Chronological Order by Publishing Date

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
The Secret Adversary (1922)
Murder on the Links (1923)
The Man in the Brown Suit (1924)
Poirot Investigates (1924)
The Secret of Chimneys (1925)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
The Big Four (1927)
The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)
The Seven Dials Mystery (1929)
Partners in Crime (1929)
Giant's Bread (1930)
Murder at the Vicarage (1930)
The Mysterious Mr. Quin (1930)
Murder at Hazelmoor (1931)
Peril at End House (1932)
The Tuesday Club Murders (1932)
The Hound of Death (1933)
Thirteen at Dinner (1933)
Unfinished Portrait (1934)
The Boomerang Clue (1934)
Murder on the Orient Express (1934)
Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective (1934)
Murder in Three Acts (1935)
Death in the Air (1935)
The A.B.C. Murders (1935)
Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
Cards on the Table (1936)
Poirot Loses a Client (1937)
Death on the Nile (1937)
Dead Man's Mirror (1937)
Appointment with Death (1938)
Murder for Christmas (1938)
Easy to Kill (1939)
Ten Little Indians (1939)
The Regatta Mystery (1939)
Sad Cypress (1940)
The Patriotic Murders (1940)
Evil Under the Sun (1941)
N or M? (1941)
The Body in the Library (1942)
The Moving Finger (1942)
Murder in Retrospect (1943)
Absent in the Spring (1944)
Towards Zero (1944)
Death Comes As the End (1945)
Remembered Death (1945)
Come, Tell Me How You Live (1946)
Murder After Hours (1946)
The Labors of Hercules (1947)
The Rose and the Yew Tree (1948)
There is a Tide (1948)
Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories (1948)
Crooked House (1949)
The Mousetrap and Other Stories (1950)
A Murder is Announced (1950)
They Came to Baghdad (1951)
The Under Dog and Other Stories (1951)
A Daughter's a Daughter (1952)
Mrs. McGinty's Dead (1952)
Murder with Mirrors (1952)
A Pocket Full of Rye (1953)
Funerals Are Fatal (1953)
So Many Steps to Death (1954)
Hickory, Dickory, Death (1955)
The Burden (1956)
Dead Man's Folly (1956)
What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! (1957)
Ordeal by Innocence (1958)
Cat Among the Pigeons (1959)
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960)
Double Sin and Other Stories (1961)
The Pale Horse (1961)
The Mirror Crack'd (1962)
The Clocks (1963)
A Caribbean Mystery (1964)
At Bertram's Hotel (1965)
Third Girl (1966)
Endless Night (1967)
By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968)
Hallowe'en Party (1969)
Passenger to Frankfurt (1970)
The Golden Ball and Other Stories (1971)
Nemesis (1971)
Elephants Can Remember (1972)
Postern of Fate (1974)
Poirot's Early Cases (1974)
Curtain (1975)
Sleeping Murder (1976)
Agatha Christie: An Autobiography (1977)

Concept

2007-12-29T19:25:00.000-08:00

I was so impressed with Dodge's Blog and her commitment to reading and reviewing a certain number of books per year that I have decided on creating a similar project. Those of you who know me know that I make no secret of my love of Agatha Christie's mysteries. Since I've only read about half of them, I've decided to tackle them all in 2008. On this blog I want to not only review them but also explore common threads that run through them.

I've always thought Christie was fantastic at plots and while I never put her on the same level as Ishiguro, Walker or Austen, I do feel some resentment when people dismiss her as a writer of fluff. Her significant contribution to the development of the mystery novel is undeniable. I was encouraged when I discovered a serious reassessment of her significance in this blog article.

So every three or four days I'll be posting a summary (with no spoilers, unless absolutely necessary), major themes that run through the work, and my opinion of the work. If you want to read along with me, you are most welcome. I'll shortly put up a list of the novels (I'm reading them chronologically by publication date). If you have read the novel I am reviewing, I invite you to comment on it and provide your own take.