Murder is Easy by Agatha Christie

But solving them isn’t…

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

As he travels to London by train, Luke Fitzwilliams finds himself sharing a carriage with an elderly lady who reminds him of his favourite aunt. Miss Pinkerton chatters in the way elderly people do (in Christie books, anyway), and Luke listens with half an ear as young men do (ditto). She tells him that she’s going to London to visit Scotland Yard, and then shocks him by saying she’s going to report a series of murders in her village of Wychwood. He doesn’t believe her, of course, but encourages her to go to the Yard anyway since he thinks they probably know how to deal with dotty old dears with vivid imaginations. A couple of days later he is sad to read in the paper a notice of her death, killed by a car on that day in London. But then a couple of weeks later he reads another death notice, this time of Dr Humbleby in Wychwood, the man Miss Pinkerton had mentioned as being the murderer’s next intended victim. So Luke decides to go to Wychwood to investigate…

Luke is an ex-policeman of the colonial kind, so investigation is something he’s used to. He manages to get an invite to stay with the local bigwig, Lord Whitfield, by pretending to be the cousin of Lord Whitfield’s fiancée, Bridget Conway, who happens to be the cousin of a friend of his. Complications ensue when he immediately falls for Bridget. He soon tells her the real reason he’s there and she helps him with local knowledge and introductions to the various people who might have been in Miss Pinkerton’s social circle. Because the whole story is so nebulous he doesn’t contact the police till quite late on, at which point Superintendent Battle plays a very small role. In the way publishers do at the moment, this is now listed as one of the “Superintendent Battle series”, but it really isn’t – it’s a standalone and Luke is the central character. Both Luke and Bridget are enjoyable leads, and there are lots of interesting secondary characters, many of them acting suspiciously in one way or another.

Agatha Christie

The plot is up there with her best, fair-play but still baffling, and with a great motivation for the murderer who, as Miss Pinkerton promises in Chapter 1, is “just the last person anyone would suspect”! There are two different kinds of pleasure for me when re-reading Christie. Either I’ve forgotten the plot and the solution, so have the fun of being baffled all over again, or I remember whodunit so have the pleasure of spotting the clues as I go, and admiring the way Christie deploys them. This was one of the latter for me, and it has some of her very best clues! In fact, the crucial clue almost equals the brilliance of the one in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd which I have often declared to be my favourite piece of misdirection of all time. It’s right there, in front of the reader’s face, and yet not only does the poor reader miss the significance, it actually sends her off in completely the wrong direction. I don’t know any other writer who can do that with the apparent ease of Ms Christie – it truly is a joy to see such skill in action.

Great stuff, and Hugh Fraser’s narration of the audiobook is as wonderful as always. Pleasure guaranteed!

Audible UK Link

P.S. I’m running dramatically behind this week – will catch up with all your posts and comments over the weekend. Apologies!

 

Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie

Did he fall or was he pushed?

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Bobby Jones, fourth son of the vicar of Marchbolt in Wales, is playing a round of golf on the links near the Vicarage when a stray ball leads him off the course towards the cliff. As he looks over for his lost ball he sees the crumpled body of a man. He and his golf partner, who is the local doctor, rush to help but the doctor sees quickly that there is no hope – the man will soon be dead. The doctor goes off to seek help, and Bobby stands vigil with the dying man. Just before the end, the man recovers consciousness briefly and utters one phrase, “Why didn’t they ask Evans?” Bobby and his friend, Lady Frances Derwent, soon find reason to doubt the coroner’s verdict of accidental death, and set off to find our more about the dead man and what brought him to Marchbolt. And incidentally to find out the meaning of the dying man’s last words…

This is a lovely romp, half mystery, half thriller, with a delightful pair of amateur sleuths that are very like my favourites Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. The plot gets progressively more convoluted as time goes on, with murders and forgeries and impersonations and drugs gangs and women in peril and sinister men and… and… and… But Christie, at the height of her powers in 1934, never loses control of it for one moment, and the pace never lets up so that the reader is carried merrily through all the complications along with Bobby and Frankie, chasing down each red herring but gradually getting closer to the truth.

As often in her thrillers, there’s a romantic element in this and it’s clear from the start that Bobby and Frankie are destined for one another. However, like any good lovers, they will have to negotiate obstacles before they can realise their destiny! Bobby is ex-Navy and currently unemployed, looking out for an opening. He feels he is too lowly to aspire to the aristocratic Lady Frances. She is more egalitarian – in theory – but Bobby is probably right that in reality she wouldn’t be exactly happy in the very reduced circumstances which are all he could offer. So as well as the central mystery, there’s the equally absorbing question of how Christie will find a way to bridge this social gap for them. Just to mess things up even further, both of them are attracted along the way to other characters, not seriously, but enough to make each other amusingly jealous. They are a lot of fun, and again like Tommy and Tuppence, Frankie is spunky and daring, and as often as not Bobby is following her lead.

Agatha Christie

Despite the fact that it’s primarily light entertainment and full of humour, the plot is actually quite good, and the eventual answer to the question of why didn’t they ask Evans is another of Christie’s excellent clues! It had been so many years since I last read it I really couldn’t remember the plot at all, and Christie was able to baffle me all over again. I’m not sure it could be described as fair play exactly since the crucial clue isn’t given till very late on, but I did get to the solution a little before Frankie and Bobby, though not much, and the ending is nicely thrillerish. Will Frankie and Bobby find their happy-ever-after, though? You’ll have to read it to find out! Great fun!

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, HarperCollins.

Amazon UK Link

Bookish selfie…

A snapshot of my recent reading in quotes…

….If anything, she was more worried about her daughter than her husband. Peter knew that his reaction was daft. Okay, he still went ahead, but he knew. Rosie, by contrast, had reacted to the news of Uncle Andy’s coma with apparent indifference. When Ellie had gently tried to ensure she understood the seriousness of the situation, she had reversed the roles and with the patience of mature experience addressing childish uncertainty, replied, “Uncle Andy will wake up when he wants to, don’t you see?”
….Ellie had promised herself when Rosie was born that she would never be anything but completely honest with her daughter. Often her resolution had been strained close to breaking point, but she’d always tried. Now she nodded and said, “Let’s hope so, love, let’s hope so. But he is very ill and we’ve got to face it. Maybe he’s so ill that he wouldn’t want to wake up. And he’ll just die. I’m sorry.”
….Her words clanged dully in her own ears, but Rosie’s expression didn’t change.
….“That doesn’t matter. He’ll still wake up when he’s needed.”
….Like King Arthur, you mean, thought Ellie. Or perhaps, more aptly, the Kraken.

~ The Death of Dalziel by Reginald Hill

* * * * *

….The expert, on the other hand, would note certain tell-tale features that distinguish this group’s niche in the ecology of the university. There is the predominance of suede shoes. There is the brightness of the ties, some of which are made of silk. There is also the unusual length of hair, which in several cases approaches (scandalously, perilously) the collar. Such are the unmistakable marks of the Aesthete. These specimens are not fully fledged, being only first-year students, but later some of the more committed will come into their full plumage, sporting broad-brimmed hats, flowing trousers and jackets of unusual cut and provenance. Statistically at least one is likely to start wearing scent.
….Most will, if they persist, have their rooms trashed and their flowing trousers forcibly removed by Athletes. The Athlete is the Aesthete’s natural predator. Aestheticism is seen by him as a kind of illness, sign of moral and mental degeneracy. Debagging and room-trashing is a reasonable response to such evidence of decline, a sort of social shot across the bows intended to warm the Aesthete to spend more time on the rugger pitch and less reading Huysmans.

~ The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru

* * * * *

….Think back. The signs were there. What were they?
….They all asked themselves the same questions afterwards. How did it come to this? Could we have stopped it?
….That was the key one, Aaron Falk knew. And the answer was probably yes. Even with no warning – and there were warnings – the answer was almost always yes. A million decisions paved the road to a single act, and a single act could be derailed in any one of a million ways. But choices had been made – some conscious and considered, some less so – and of all the million paths that had lain ahead, this was the one they found themselves on.

~ Exiles by Jane Harper

* * * * *

….They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide. All morning under a milky sky the waters in the bay had swelled and swelled, rising to unheard-of heights, the small waves creeping over parched sand that for years had known no wetting save for rain and lapping the very bases of the dunes. The rusted hulk of the freighter that had run aground at the far end of the bay longer ago than any of us could remember must have thought it was being granted a relaunch. I would not swim again, after that day. The sea birds mewled and swooped, unnerved, it seemed, by the spectacle of that vast bowl of water bulging like a blister, lead-blue and malignantly agleam. They looked unnaturally white, that day, those birds. The waves were depositing a fringe of soiled yellow foam along the waterline. No sail marred the high horizon. I would not swim, no, not ever again.
….Someone has just walked over my grave. Someone.

(FF says: Best first paragraphs I’ve read in years!)

~ The Sea by John Banville

* * * * *

….“The thing is – what to do next,” she said. “It seems to me we’ve got three angles of attack.”
….“Go on, Sherlock.”
….“The first is you. They’ve made one attempt on your life. They’ll probably try again. This time we might get what they call ‘a line’ on them. Using you as a decoy, I mean.”
….“No thank you, Frankie,” said Bobby with feeling. “I’ve been very lucky this time, but I mightn’t be so lucky again if they changed the attack to a blunt instrument. I was thinking of taking a great deal of care of myself in the future. The decoy idea can be washed out.”
….“I was afraid you’d say that,” said Frankie with a sigh. “Young men are sadly degenerate nowadays. Father says so. They don’t enjoy being uncomfortable and doing dangerous and unpleasant things any longer. It’s a pity.”
….“A great pity,” said Bobby, but he spoke with firmness.

~ Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie

* * * * *

So… are you tempted?

Sinister Spring by Agatha Christie

Watching the detectives…

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Over the last few years, HarperCollins have been bringing out a series of lovely hardback collections of Agatha Christie short stories. Some have been reprints of existing collections, like The Tuesday Club Murders (aka The Thirteen Problems) or The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, while others are a mix of stories culled from various collections and put together to create a seasonal theme, such as Midsummer Mysteries and Midwinter Murder (which I haven’t read). This is their latest and, as you can tell from the title, it’s perfect for this time of year (unless you’re on the upside down half of the world!). If you’ve read a lot of Christie collections you may well find you’ve come across most of the stories before, but I always enjoy reading them again anyway and there are usually two or three in each collection that are new to me. Because these are taken from various other collections, there’s a real mix of detectives – Poirot and Miss Marple, of course, but also Tommy and Tuppence, Parker Pyne and Harley Quin, plus a couple of stories that don’t star one of her recurring ‘tecs.

There are twelve stories in this one, and since regular Christie readers might want to know whether there are enough unfamiliar stories to tempt them, here’s a list of all twelve with tiny synopses that hopefully will be enough to let you know if it rings bells. My rating is in brackets:

The Market Basing Mystery (4) – Poirot, Hastings and Japp are on a little break in Market Basing when a man is found dead. It looks like he’s shot himself, but the doctor thinks this isn’t possible. A man is arrested and it’s up to our three sleuths to determine whether he is guilty or innocent.

The Case of the Missing Lady (5) – A Tommy and Tuppence story from Partners in Crime. In this one, Tommy is playing Holmes. An adventurer returns from the North Pole to find that his fiancée is missing. Can T&T track her down? Manages to be both tense and humorous – delightful twist!

The Herb of Death (4½) – One from The Tuesday Club Murders, I think. (I’m basing all these references to original sources on my unreliable memory, so forgive errors and omissions!) Mrs Bantry tells of a house party where foxglove got mixed in with the sage. All the guests recovered but one – a young girl called Sylvia. Was it bad luck or deliberate murder, and if so, why? Miss Marple will soon tell us…

How Does Your Garden Grow? (4) – Poirot receives a letter from an old lady requesting his help in an unspecified matter, but before he sees her, she dies. With the help of Miss Lemon, he starts quietly investigating her household to see if her death was suspicious or merely convenient. Rather reminiscent of the plot of one of her novels.

Swan Song (4) – An unexpected death during a performance of Tosca kicks off this dark and well-told revenge tragedy – a standalone with none of the usual ‘tecs.

Miss Marple Tells a Story (5) – From Miss Marple’s Final Cases. A woman is murdered while sleeping in a hotel bedroom. Her husband is accused, and his lawyer turns to his old friend Miss Marple for help. She soon works out why it seems no one noticed the murderer enter the room. An excellent howdunit!

Have You Got Everything You Want? (5) – Parker Pyne is on a train journey to Venice when a fellow passenger asks for his advice. She is travelling to meet her husband, but before she left she saw a message on his blotting pad which has left her fearful that something is planned to happen just before they reach Venice. Well-told and quite humorous, especially the ending!

The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan (4) – A howdunit about a woman whose priceless necklace is stolen while she and her husband are dining with Poirot. Another one where the plot is overly familiar to provide much in the way of surprise.

Ingots of Gold (4½) – Another Tuesday Club one, I think, this time told by Miss Marple’s nephew Raymond. It’s quite convoluted for a short story, involving two lots of missing bullion – one from Spanish Armada days, and one from a recent shipwreck. Set in Cornwall, it’s well told and entertaining.

The Soul of the Croupier (5) – The story of an ageing Countess, past lover of many rich men who showered her with jewels. But now her charms are beginning to fade, and she’s desperate for money, having long ago turned all those jewels to paste. While there is a mystery starring Harley Quin, it’s really the oddly sympathetic depiction of the Countess that raises this one above the average.

The Girl in the Train (5) – Light Wodehousian romp as our young hero, George Rowland, gets mixed up in the elopement of a Balkan Princess, plus a spy ring, and falls in love. Silly, but fun!

Greenshaw’s Folly (5) – Greenshaw’s Folly is a house built by a rich man, long dead. His elderly granddaughter now owns the place, and she has been dropping hints to various people that she intends to leave them the house in her will. When the old lady is murdered, Miss Marple becomes involved! An excellent story, taken from The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding.

As you can see, all the stories rated between 4 and 5 for me – it is Christie after all! So unless you’re already familiar with most of the stories, this would be a great way to sample her range of detectives. And the hardback editions all have lovely bright designs which make them an attractive gift idea for the Christie fan in your life!

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, HarperCollins.

Amazon UK Link

Bookish selfie…

A snapshot of my recent reading in quotes…

Hear me, then, all of you: the padri preach that their Yezu rose to Heaven and because he rose to Heaven, he shall return. They say that the sky will then turn red, that the lightning will spare no one, the mountains will crumble, deafening trumpets will sound in the clouds as with the soldiers on the Belgians’ holiday. The padri say all this, but I said to Akayezu: Who will you believe? What the padri say, or what your mother relates in the evening after dark? And you women, who should you believe: what they taught you in Catechism or what the spirit of Kibogo has revealed to me? For this I tell you: Kibogo has risen to Heaven, and he shall return. He has risen to Heaven from our mountain, and he shall return on our mountain. And where the lightning struck him to carry him beyond the clouds, there the lightning shall set him down. All the thunder’s drums shall acclaim Kibogo and Kibogo shall proclaim, ‘I am your mwami, the one who has come to save Rwanda,’ and all the drums shall rumble without being beaten and all the people shall clap their hands together: ‘Ganza umwami! Ganza Kibogo! Long rule the king! Long rule Kibogo!”

~ Kibogo by Scholastique Mukasonga

* * * * *

The 1983 election had been a watershed for Labour. With the SDP-Liberal alliance splitting the progressive vote, not only had the Conservatives increased their majority to 144 seats, despite a slight decrease in their popular share, but Labour had come within an inch of falling to third place in votes cast. Michael Foot’s parliamentary party was down to 209, the lowest number of Labour MPs since 1935. The campaign, as I remarked at the time, had started badly – and then fallen away. The manifesto – a prolix 22,000-word document described by Gerald Kaufman as ‘the longest suicide note in history’ – was read only to seek out the nuggets of political disaster. The manifesto slogan ‘Think Positively’ elicited a negative response. The message was reminiscent of the Latin American finance minister who is said to have told his Cabinet that ‘past policies have brought us to the edge of the abyss, and now it is time for a bold step forward’.

~ My Life, Our Times by Gordon Brown

* * * * *

….“He has always struck me as rather a stupid man,” said Miss Marple. “The kind of man who gets the wrong idea into his head and is obstinate about it. Do you remember Joe Bucknell who used to keep the Blue Boar? Such a to-do about his daughter carrying on with young Bailey. And all the time it was that minx of a wife of his.”
….She was looking full at Griselda as she spoke, and I suddenly felt a wild surge of anger. ….“Don’t you think, Miss Marple,” I said, “that we’re all inclined to let our tongues run away with us too much. Charity thinketh no evil, you know. Inestimable harm may be done by foolish wagging of tongues in ill-natured gossip.”
….“Dear Vicar,” said Miss Marple, “You are so unworldly. I’m afraid that observing human nature for as long as I have done, one gets not to expect very much from it. I dare say idle tittle-tattle is very wrong and unkind, but it is so often true, isn’t it?”
….That last Parthian shot went home.

~ The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

* * * * *

….Inside the palanquin it is hot and close, the smells of food and stale sweat and rosewater mingling with another smell, sharp and bitter. Once again Amrita’s hand reaches out for the little sandalwood box of pills. She watches the hand as she would a snake sliding across a flagstone floor, with detachment and an edge of revulsion. Yes, it is her hand, but only for now, only for a while. Amrita knows that she is not her body. This crab-like object, fiddling with box and key and pellets of sticky black resin, belongs to her only as does a shawl or a piece of jewellery.
….A bump. They have stopped. Outside there are voices. Amrita rejoices. At nineteen years old, this will be her last journey, and any delay is cause for celebration. She swallows another opium pellet, tasting the bitter resin on her tongue.

~ The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru

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So… are you tempted?

TBR Thursday 369…

Episode 369

I seem to be in a bit of a reading slump at the moment – too much politics going on in my neck of the woods! So the TBR has increased again, but only very slightly – up 1, to 170! I’m sure the bounce will only be temporary though…

Here’s a few more that should bounce off my list soon… 

Fiction

The Sea by John Banville

One that I’ve dug out from the deep recesses of the TBR, on the grounds that it would be suitable for Cathy’s Reading Ireland challenge. That is, if I finish it in time to review it this month, and if I enjoy it – I’ve had a somewhat mixed experience with John Banville to date…

The Blurb says: WINNER OF THE 2005 MAN BOOKER PRIZE

When art historian Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he once spent a childhood holiday, he is both escaping from a recent loss and confronting a distant trauma.

The Grace family had appeared that long-ago summer as if from another world. Mr and Mrs Grace, with their worldly ease and candour, were unlike any adults he had met before. But it was his contemporaries, the Grace twins Myles and Chloe, who most fascinated Max. He grew to know them intricately, even intimately, and what ensued would haunt him for the rest of his years and shape everything that was to follow.

Vintage Crime

The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

Courtesy of HarperCollins. As I’ve mentioned before, HarperCollins sometimes randomly send me an Agatha Christie novel, and it’s always a pleasure to go back to reading a paper copy every now and again as opposed to my beloved Hugh Fraser and Joan Hickson audiobooks. I won’t be reviewing this one because I’ve reviewed it already on the blog, but since it’s one of my all time favourites I’m looking forward to yet another re-read!

The Blurb says: ‘Anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe,’ declared the parson, brandishing a carving knife above a joint of roast beef, ‘would be doing the world at large a favour!’ It was a careless remark for a man of the cloth. And one which was to come back and haunt the clergyman just a few hours later – when the colonel was found shot dead in the clergyman’s study. But as Miss Marple soon discovers, the whole village seems to have had a motive to kill Colonel Protheroe.

* * * * *

Crime 

Exiles by Jane Harper

Courtesy of Macmillan via NetGalley. A new Jane Harper is always an anticipated treat, and it’s good to see that this one stars Aaron Falk, the detective from her earlier books…

The Blurb says: A mother disappears from a busy festival on a warm spring night. Her baby lies alone in the pram, her mother’s possessions surrounding her, waiting for a return which never comes. A year later, Kim Gillespie’s absence still casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather to welcome a new addition to the family.

Joining the celebrations on a rare break from work is federal investigator Aaron Falk, who begins to suspect that all is not as it seems. As he looks into Kim’s case, long-held secrets and resentments begin to come to the fore, secrets that show that her community is not as close as it appears.

Falk will have to tread carefully if he is to expose the dark fractures at its heart, but sometimes it takes an outsider to get to the truth…

* * * * *

Vintage Crime on Audio

A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh read by Philip Franks

Having recently very much enjoyed my first re-visit in a very long time to an old favourite, Ngaio Marsh, I’m looking forward to listening to more of them. This is the first in her long-running Inspector Alleyn series…

The Blurb says: At Sir Hubert Handesley’s country house party, five guests have gathered for the uproarious parlor game of “Murder.” Yet no one is laughing when the lights come up on an actual corpse, the good-looking and mysterious Charles Rankin. Scotland Yard’s Inspector Roderick Alleyn arrives to find a complete collection of alibis, a missing butler, and an intricate puzzle of betrayal and sedition in the search for the key player in this deadly game.

* * * * *

Historical Fiction on Audio

Rizzio by Denise Mina read by Katie Leung

I’ve called this historical fiction, but it might be truer to say it’s a fictionalised account of a real event. It’s novella length, and is part of a newish series called Darkland Tales from Polygon, an imprint of independent Scottish publisher, Birlinn. The publishers say: “In Darkland Tales, the best modern Scottish authors offer dramatic retellings of stories from the nation’s history, myth and legend. These are landmark moments from the past, viewed through a modern lens and alive to modern sensibilities. Each Darkland Tale is sharp, provocative and darkly comic, mining that seam of sedition and psychological drama that has always featured in the best of Scottish literature.” Sounds intriguing, and if this one is a success I look forward to investigating the others in the series so far…

The Blurb says: From the multi-award-winning master of crime, Denise Mina delivers a radical new take on one of the darkest episodes in Scottish history—the bloody assassination of David Rizzio  private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, in the queen’s chambers in Holyrood Palace.

On the evening of March 9th, 1566, David Rizzio, the private secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots, was brutally murdered. Dragged from the chamber of the heavily pregnant Mary, Rizzio was stabbed fifty six times by a party of assassins. This breathtakingly tense novella dramatises the events that led up to that night, telling the infamous story as it has never been told before.

A dark tale of sex, secrets and lies, Rizzio looks at a shocking historical murder through a modern lens—and explores the lengths that men and women will go to in their search for love and power.

Rizzio is nothing less than a provocative and thrilling new literary masterpiece.

* * * * *

NB All blurbs and covers taken from Goodreads, Amazon UK or Audible UK.

* * * * *

So…what do you think? Are you tempted?

The Murder on the Links (Poirot) by Agatha Christie

Poirot and the foxhound…

😀 😀 😀 😀 🙂

On his way home from Paris, the ever-susceptible Hastings is charmed by a girl who shares his carriage on the train to Calais. As they part he asks her name and, laughing, she replies “Cinderella”. He never expects to see her again, but of course he does! The next day Poirot receives a letter begging him to come to Merlinville-sur-Mer, a small resort midway between Boulogne and Calais, to look into an urgent matter for a M. Renauld. Renauld says he is in imminent fear for his life, and though Poirot and Hastings travel there as quickly as they can, alas, too late! Renauld is dead, stabbed in the back and tipped into a shallow open grave on the golf course that borders his property. Poirot feels he owes it to his would-be client to work with the French authorities to find his killer…

Christie’s third book and only the second Poirot novel, she still at this stage hasn’t quite settled into the style that would eventually become her trademark, but in terms of plotting this is a big step up from her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Hastings too has settled into the character with which we are familiar. Poirot is still rather different – he’s much more physically active than in the later books, and although there are mentions of things like his passion for order, his eccentricities are not yet so much in evidence. There are odd little things that stand out, like his moustache being described as “military” rather than the later “luxurious” and so on, but he’s closer to his final characterisation than he was in Styles. His relationship with the French police detective, Giraud, is much more of a rivalry than the collaborative approach he has with the police inspectors he works with in later books – his attitude to Giraud, and Giraud’s to him, reminded me much more of Holmes’ sarcastic superiority than Poirot’s later affectionate mockery.

The plot is nicely complicated, with plenty of shifts and twists along the way. On the night before Poirot and Hastings arrive, Renauld and his wife were woken in the night by two masked men, who proceeded to tie up and gag Mme Renauld, and then demanded that Renauld tell them the “secret”. When he refused, they dragged him out of the room, and he wasn’t seen alive again. What was the secret they were after? Renauld had mentioned Santiago in his letter to Poirot, and it transpired he had business dealings there. His son, Jack, was about to set off to Santiago on his father’s instructions, but M Renauld hadn’t told him why, simply that he would send further instructions later. But there are odd things closer to home too. Why has Renauld had several meetings with a neighbour, Mme Daubreuil? Were they having an affair? Why does Mme Daubreuil’s lovely daughter Marthe have anxious eyes? Who is the mysterious Bella Duveen, a letter from whom is found in Renauld’s overcoat pocket? And what has Cinderella to do with the whole thing? And just when things seem complicated enough, another dead body is found…

Agatha Christie

Giraud is the “foxhound” style of detective, minutely poring over the ground in search of physical clues, like the match that appears to be of a kind more common in South America. Poirot is more thoughtfully observant, as likely to spot what should be there but isn’t as to obsess about what is there. While Giraud hides behind bushes to eavesdrop, Poirot simply listens to what people tell him, and uses his little grey cells to spot the tiny inconsistencies that will lead him to the truth. I did work out part of the howdunit aspect of the plot, but was still taken by surprise by the solution to the whodunit.

My memory of this was that it was quite a weak one which is why it’s so long since I revisited it. But I was wrong – it’s a good plot, an interesting story and there’s plenty of fun along the way, plus a touch of romance for our Hastings. It’s also enjoyable for seeing how Christie was continuing to develop her style and her characters. Not one of her very best, but as always with Christie, even her second tier novels are better than most people’s best. Well worth reading!

Book 12 of 12

This was the People’s Choice for December. You were very kind, People, to pick me a Christie – always a sure-fire winner! 😀

Amazon UK Link

Shorts & Abandonments October 2022…

A Bunch of Minis…

Regulars will know I’ve been bemoaning my backlog of reviews for ages now. Reluctantly, I’ve decided I need to take drastic action to clear the decks a bit, by giving mini-reviews to many books that really deserve better. So here’s another little batch of books I loved and books I didn’t…

On Beulah Height (Dalziel and Pascoe 17)
by Reginald Hill

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Years ago when Dalziel was a young detective, three little girls went missing from the village of Dendale. Their bodies were never found and no one was ever charged with the crime, although the locals felt they had a good idea of who had murdered them. Shortly after, Dendale was “drowned” as part of the development of a new reservoir. Now a long summer drought has emptied the reservoir so that the old village is re-emerging; and another little girl has gone missing…

This is Hill at the absolute peak of his considerable powers. The imagery of the drowned village gives a kind of mythical air to the story, which is magnified by the use of a children’s story about the Nix, a local legend involving a creature who steals children. Pascoe’s little daughter Rosie is seriously ill in hospital for most of the story, and her dreams and delirium add to this somewhat dark, otherwordly atmosphere.

The other aspect that makes this one stand out is Hill’s wonderful use of Yorkshire dialect. Not only for the characters when they’re speaking, but he has one of them translate Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) into the Yorkshire vernacular, and he does it brilliantly. All these things together lift this way beyond being an excellent example of a police procedural, though it is that, into the realms of first-class literary fiction as a meditation on lost children and the grief of those who loved them. I challenge you not to cry, not to laugh, not to find yourself stopping now and again just to admire the superb writing. I have long said that, for me, this is the best crime fiction novel of all time, and my re-read has done nothing to change my opinion.

* * * * *

Honoré de Balzac: My Reading by Peter Brooks

😦

Since I have included my first Balzac, Père Goriot, on my Classics Club list, I thought it might be fun and even useful to read this short book first, since the blurb promises “This volume shows readers how to read, and to love reading, Balzac, and how to engage with his vast work.” I fear this is misleading – in fact what Brooks appears to have done is write out lengthy plot summaries of his favourite books, including endings, and point out all the sexy bits. To be fair I only made it to page 43. At that point, I was eight pages into a ten-page plot summary of A Murky Business and decided to skip finding out the ending, in case the unlikely event ever arises of me wanting to read the actual book. I say unlikely because Mr Brooks has succeeded not only in making me abandon this book – I can read plot summaries on wikipedia if I ever want to pretend I’ve read a classic – but also in making me reluctant to ever read Balzac, who, from what I gather from those 43 pages, seems to be obsessed by sex, the phallus, androgyny, homosexuality, incest and bestiality. Sounds like a barrel of laughs. Think I’ll put Père Goriot back on the shelf for a few years…

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Oxford University Press.

* * * * *

The Colony by Audrey Magee

😦

How to win a Booker…

Pick a subject, any subject, and hide it beneath a ton
of
quirky
style
and lots of lists of words thrown
randomly
red blue
together
fried fish
meaningfully
or meaninglessly, perhaps.
Don’t forget to entirely omit the conventions of grammar and punctuation that have stood generations of great and immortal writers in good stead. Instead of “quotation marks”, for example, why not simply indent the start of the sentence every time anyone is
cabbages
turnips
….speaking?
And to ensure that your readers remember that your character is an artist, as well as randomly listing colours,
beige
fluorescent orange
pink polka-dots
you could have a little quirk like having the character imagine himself ironically as a series of self-portraits.

Self-portrait I: rolling eyes at what passes for literature these days. 🙄

And there you go! Longlisted for sure, almost a certainty for shortlisting and, it being the Booker, quite probably the winner.*

Abandoned at 10%.

* I wrote this before the shortlist was announced. Hallelujah! The successful books surely can’t be worse than this… can they??

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Faber & Faber via NetGalley.

* * * * *

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

When Dolly Bantry is woken by her hysterical maid one morning with the startling news that there’s a dead body in the library, at first she feels it must be a dream. It’s simply so unlikely! While waiting for the police to arrive, she phones her old friend Miss Marple who, when she and Mrs Bantry sneak into the library to look at the body, agrees that the dead girl doesn’t at all match her surroundings. The first job is to identify her, and news soon comes of a missing girl – young Ruby Keene, a dance hostess at a hotel in the nearby resort of Danemouth. Mrs Bantry persuades Miss Marple to accompany her to the hotel to do a little digging, for as she says…

“What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one’s house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.”

But it soon becomes clear to Dolly that unless the murder is quickly solved, popular sentiment will attribute the crime to Colonel Bantry; and he won’t be able to bear such a stain on his reputation…

How I love this book! I have no idea how often I’ve read it, but it must easily be in the double figures. Dolly Bantry is one of my favourite recurring characters in Christie’s novels and this is the one where she gets most space. The plot is great with some wonderful clues that you will almost certainly miss or misinterpret, but Miss Marple will see their significance! It touches on class issues, the changes in society that were already beginning in 1940s Britain, the loneliness that can affect the elderly as their young relatives make lives for themselves, the destructive nature of rumour and gossip, the vulnerability of the young to flattery. And Miss Marple is at her best, using her knowledge of human nature in the pursuit of justice for a dead girl that no one else seems to care much about. Wonderful stuff! If you want to try Miss Marple for the first time, this would be a great place to start!

NB This new edition of the book was provided for review by the publisher, HarperCollins.

* * * * *

Win some, lose some! 😉

TBR Thursday 352…

Episode 352

No drop in the TBR this week, but no increase either – stuck on 168! I feel like I’m spinning on the spot…

Here are a few more that should slide my way soon…

Winner of the People’s Choice

The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie

Poirot and Maigret slugged it out for the top spot this week, staying neck and neck for so long I thought I might have to exercise my casting vote! However, Poirot sneaked in a couple of late votes at the end proving once again that the Brits are better than the French that Ms Christie is the Queen of Crime! Excellent choice, People! Since I like to run three months ahead with these polls, the winner will be a December read…

The Blurb says: Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is summoned to France after receiving a distressing letter with a urgent cry for help. Upon his arrival in Merlinville-sur-Mer, the investigator finds the man who penned the letter, the South American millionaire Monsieur Renauld, stabbed to death and his body flung into a freshly dug open grave on the golf course adjoining the property. Meanwhile the millionaire’s wife is found bound and gagged in her room. Apparently, it seems that Renauld and his wife were victims of a failed break-in, resulting in Renauld’s kidnapping and death.

There’s no lack of suspects: his wife, whose dagger served as the weapon; his embittered son, who would have killed for independence; and his mistress, who refused to be ignored – and each felt deserving of the dead man’s fortune. The police think they’ve found the culprit. But Poirot has his doubts. Why is the dead man wearing an overcoat that is too big for him? And who was the impassioned love-letter in the pocket for? Before Poirot can answer these questions, the case is turned upside down by the discovery of a second, identically murdered corpse…

* * * * *

Classic in Translation

Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

One from my Classics Club list. I feel I’ve probably read this before – I certainly feel as if I know the story but it’s possible I’ve only seen the film…

The Blurb says: Professor Liedenbrock and his nephew Axel travel across Iceland, and then down through an extinct crater toward a sunless sea where they enter a living past and are confronted with the origins of man. Exploring the prehistory of the globe, this novel can also be read as a psychological quest, for the journey itself is as important as arrival or discovery. Verne’s distinctive combination of realism and Romanticism has marked figures as diverse as Sartre and Tournier, Mark Twain and Conan Doyle.

* * * * *

Vintage Horror

The Night Wire edited by Aaron Worth

Courtesy of the British Library. Another anthology in their great Tales of the Weird series, and I’m always glad to see Aaron Worth’s name pop up as editor, since he was my original guide into the world of weird fiction…

The Blurb says: A mysterious radio signal reports cosmic doom from an otherworldly location. Photography and X-ray evidence suggests there may be some truth to a sculptor’s claim that he has created a god. A spectral projection sows terror amid the flickering light of the cinema. From the whispering wires of the telegraph and ghostly images of the daguerreotype to the disembodied voices of the phonograph and radio, the new technologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave their users miraculous new powers – and new nightmares. After all, if Graham Bell’s magical device could connect us with loved ones a half a world away, what was to stop it from reaching out and touching the dead – or something worse?

Tracing this fiction of fear from the 1890s to the 1950s, this new collection brings together the best tales of haunted or uncanny media from classic – and unjustly neglected – writers of the supernatural.

* * * * *

Trollope on Audio

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope read by Timothy West 

Having loved Timothy West’s reading of The Warden, I couldn’t resist going on to this second book in the Barchester Chronicles. There’s something utterly relaxing about having a great narrator read a much-loved classic aloud to you…

The Blurb says: Barchester Towers is the second of six in the series known as Chronicles of Barsetshire. Narrator Timothy West brings life to the story, begun in The Warden, of Mr. Harding and his daughter Eleanor. It chronicles the struggle for control of the English diocese of Barchester after one Bishop dies and a new one is selected.

The rather incompetent new Bishop, Dr. Proudie, led by his formidable wife, and ambitious chaplain, Mr. Slope, begin to create turmoil with their desire to shake up the church establishment in Barchester with new policies and practices. However, the established clergy of Barchester, led by Archdeacon Grantly, the son of the previous Bishop, are equally determined to keep things just as they’ve always been. Archdeacon Grantly declares ‘War, war, internecine war!’ on Bishop Proudie, but who will win the battle between the archdeacon, the bishop, Mr. Slope, and Mrs. Proudie?

The Guardian included Barchester Towers in its list of ‘1000 novels everyone must read’. Full of humour and extraordinary characters, it is no wonder it continues to be Trollope’s best-loved work.

* * * * *

NB All blurbs and covers taken from Goodreads, Amazon UK or Audible UK.

* * * * *

So…what do you think? Are you tempted?

By the Pricking of My Thumbs (Tommy and Tuppence) by Agatha Christie

“Was it your poor child?”

😀 😀 😀 😀 🙂

When Tommy and Tuppence visit Tommy’s elderly Aunt Ada in the Sunny Ridge nursing home, Tuppence falls into conversation with a sweet but rather confused old lady called Mrs Lancaster. As Tuppence, in a thoughtful moment, gazes at the fireplace, she is startled when Mrs Lancaster asks, “Was it your poor child?” The way she asks sends a shiver down Tuppence’s spine (and mine). A few weeks later Aunt Ada dies and when they return to the home to collect her belongings, Tuppence determines to speak to Mrs Lancaster again. But they discover Mrs Lancaster has gone – collected by her relatives. Tuppence, with nothing but her instincts to go on, finds this puzzling and worrying, and decides to track Mrs Lancaster down. She meets with a brick wall, however, of lawyers and bankers none of whom seem to know exactly where Mrs Lancaster might be…

This is a late Christie, published in 1968, and as with many of the later books the plotting isn’t as tight as when she was at her peak. But although it all gets a bit rambly in the middle, it has a wonderfully spooky atmosphere. From Mrs Lancaster’s spine-shivering question, Tuppence finds herself entering a maze of old rumours and gossip, much of them about murdered or missing children. People are very willing to talk, but memories are vague and Tuppence finds it impossible to pin down hard facts or dates.

All she has to go on is a painting that Mrs Lancaster had given to Aunt Ada, of a house by a canal that Tuppence feels sure she has seen once before, perhaps from a car or a train. So while Tommy is off at a hush-hush conference with his old colleagues from his days in the Secret Service, Tuppence digs out train timetables and old diaries, and sets out to repeat any journeys she has made over the last few years in the hope of spotting the house again. But it seems that someone doesn’t want Mrs Lancaster to be found, and Tuppence soon finds herself in danger. Will Tommy find her in time?

Book 20 of 20

Tommy and Tuppence are the only detectives of Christie who age in real time, so in this book they are now in their sixties. Between this and the nursing home theme, there’s quite a bit of musing on ageing in the book, both on the physical limitations it brings and on the mental decline that faces some elderly people. Christie, herself ageing of course, does this rather well. Tommy and Tuppence still spar as much as they always have, but Tommy perhaps worries about his wife a little more now, feeling that Tuppence should recognise that she’s not a young adventurer any more and should take more care for her safety. But that wouldn’t be Tuppence’s style at all! Once she gets her teeth into a thing she doesn’t let go, no matter where it leads her.

Hugh Fraser

Hugh Fraser really is a fantastic narrator! He always brings out the humour in the books, but in this one he also creates the spooky atmosphere brilliantly, never over-acting but knowing exactly how to chill the reader. He copes with a range of elderly lady voices beautifully, bringing out all the fun of Aunt Ada’s rudeness and the pathos of Mrs Lancaster’s confusion. He differentiates the characters with a different voice for each and never slips, so that it’s always easy to tell who’s speaking even when several people are conversing together. And he does a great job with Tuppence’s character, making her just as enjoyable as she is on the page!

Despite the woolliness in the mid-section, the basic plot is strong and the unsettling atmosphere lasts all the way through to the chilling ending. A great way to finish the #20(Audio)BooksOfSummer challenge!

Audible UK Link

Shorts August 2022…

A Bunch of Minis…

I’m storming through the books at such an alarming rate at the moment that my reviewing is continually behind. So another little batch of three, all for the #20(Audio)BooksOfSummer challenge…

Books 13, 14 and 15

A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie

Read by Joan Hickson

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

When Rex Fortescue is poisoned the list of suspects includes most of his family and several others who either want to inherit his money or who may have been hurt by his dodgy business practices in the past. The suspect list is soon reduced by one, when another member of the family becomes the next victim. But what brings Miss Marple into the investigation is the third murder, of the maid Gladys. Gladys had grown up in the local orphanage and Miss Marple had trained her for domestic service, so she feels a sense of responsibility towards this young woman who has no one else to care about her. And Miss Marple feels that aspects of her death were particularly cruel, showing that the murderer treated her with a kind of mocking contempt. So, like an avenging angel with knitting needles, Miss Marple descends on the household at Yew Tree Lodge to find justice for Gladys…

This is one of my favourites. (I know, I say that about so many of them, but it’s true!) It makes great use of the nursery rhyme referenced in the title, but without allowing the constraints of sticking to the rhyme to make the story feel at all contrived. But what makes it stand out most is Miss Marple’s righteous anger over the murder of Gladys. One of my regular criticisms of Golden Age authors, including Christie, is that domestic servants are often despatched as second or third victims with barely a second’s thought or a moment’s recognition, merely as a convenient way to move the plot forward. So it’s refreshing to see Miss Marple really care about Gladys’ murder, possibly more than Rex Fortescue’s own family care about his. And the mystery itself is good – not perhaps quite as fair-play as some of her books, but the suspect list is full of intriguing characters, most of whom are unsympathetic enough for the reader to happily contemplate their fictional hanging! Read superbly by the wonderful Joan Hickson – a treat!

* * * * *

Cover Her Face by PD James

Read by Daniel Weyman

🙂 🙂 😐

The servant problem has become so acute post-war that the Maxies of Martingale are reduced to taking on a “delinquent” as housemaid – Sally Jupp, a young woman with an illegitimate child. But Sally refuses to be as humble, penitent and grateful as a fallen woman should be, and various members of the household soon have reasons to resent her presence. So when she is found strangled in her room one morning, the field of suspects is wide. Enter Inspector Adam Dalgleish – full-time policeman and part-time poet…

I mentioned when I put this on my reading list that I used to love PD James but had found her last few books a struggle because it had felt to me that her style had dated badly. I hoped by going back to the beginning of her long-running Dalgleish series that my love might be revived, but I fear not. Sadly her class snobbery is too much for me to take now. It’s odd – I can put up with snobbery and other ’isms in the older authors of the Golden Age much better than from post-war authors. I suspect I feel they should have known better, although my own love for this series back in the day suggests I didn’t know better myself at that time! Whatever, I find I now have no tolerance for passages in post-war novels like the following, describing an elderly maid…

Dagleish had met a number of Marthas in his time and had never supposed them to be complicated people. They were concerned with the comfort of the body, the cooking of food, the unending menial tasks which someone must carry out before the life of the mind can have any true validity. Their own undemanding emotional needs found fulfilment in service. They were loyal, hardworking and truthful and made good witnesses because they lacked both the imagination and the practice necessary for successful lying. They could be a nuisance if they decided to shield those who had gained their loyalty but this was an overt danger which could be anticipated. He expected no difficulty with Martha.

I shall remain grateful to PD James for the enjoyment her books once gave me, but sometimes it’s best to leave the past undisturbed.

* * * * *

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome

Read by Ian Carmichael

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

I’ve reviewed this one previously, and my dear little cat Tuppence also once told us why it was her favourite book, so I shall merely remind you all that it’s the funniest book ever written. Ian Carmichael is the perfect narrator for it, and I laughed and chuckled and guffawed my way through the audiobook – if you can get hold of his narration, I highly recommend you do so! In lieu of a review, then, have an extract…

….I knew a young fellow once, who was studying to play the bagpipes, and you would be surprised at the amount of opposition he had to contend with. Why, not even from the members of his own family did he receive what you could call active encouragement. His father was dead against the business from the beginning, and spoke quite unfeelingly on the subject.
….My friend used to get up early in the morning to practise, but he had to give that plan up, because of his sister. She was somewhat religiously inclined, and she said it seemed such an awful thing to begin the day like that.
….So he sat up at night instead, and played after the family had gone to bed, but that did not do, as it got the house such a bad name. People, going home late, would stop outside to listen, and then put it about all over the town, the next morning, that a fearful murder had been committed at Mr. Jefferson’s the night before; and would describe how they had heard the victim’s shrieks and the brutal oaths and curses of the murderer, followed by the prayer for mercy, and the last dying gurgle of the corpse.
….So they let him practise in the day-time, in the back-kitchen with all the doors shut; but his more successful passages could generally be heard in the sitting-room, in spite of these precautions, and would affect his mother almost to tears.
….She said it put her in mind of her poor father (he had been swallowed by a shark, poor man, while bathing off the coast of New Guinea – where the connection came in, she could not explain).

* * * * *

Two out of three ain’t bad! 😉

TBR Thursday 346…

Episode 346

A big drop in the TBR this week – down 3 to 172! I might even get below the magic 170 soon, if I don’t fall at the last hurdle…

Here are a few more I should run into soon…

Crime

Blacklands by Belinda Bauer

My Looking Forward posts have made me thoroughly ashamed of all the books lingering on my TBR that I acquired because I’d enjoyed the author before. So I’m going to try my hardest to fit some of them into my reading schedule, starting with this one from Belinda Bauer, which I acquired in 2015!

The Blurb says: Twelve-year-old Steven Lamb digs holes on Exmoor, hoping to find a body. Every day after school, while his classmates swap football stickers, Steven goes digging to lay to rest the ghost of the uncle he never knew, who disappeared aged eleven and is assumed to have fallen victim to the notorious serial killer Arnold Avery.

Only Steven’s Nan is not convinced her son is dead. She still waits for him to come home, standing bitter guard at the front window while her family fragments around her. Steven is determined to heal the widening cracks between them before it’s too late. And if that means presenting his grandmother with the bones of her murdered son, he’ll do it.

So the boy takes the next logical step, carefully crafting a letter to Arnold Avery in prison. And there begins a dangerous cat-and-mouse game between a desperate child and a bored serial killer . . .

* * * * *

Maigret on Audio

The Misty Harbour by Georges Simenon read by Gareth Armstrong

The last three for the #20(Audio)BooksOfSummer challenge. Having unexpectedly raced through the longest book left on my list over last weekend, it’s now looking possible that I might actually finish the challenge on time! First up, another admirably short Maigret, read as usual by the excellent Gareth Armstrong…

The Blurb says: A new translation of Georges Simenon’s gripping tale of lost identity. A man picked up for wandering in obvious distress among the cars and buses on the Grands Boulevards. Questioned in French, he remains mute… A madman?

In Maigret’s office, he is searched. His suit is new, his underwear is new, his shoes are new. All identifying labels have been removed. No identification papers. No wallet. Five crisp thousand-franc bills have been slipped into one of his pockets.

Answers lead Maigret to a small harbour town, whose quiet citizens conceal a poisonous malice.

* * * * *

Greene on Audio

The Quiet American by Graham Greene read by Simon Cadell

One I haven’t read before from Graham Greene. It was the narrator as much as the book that made me choose this one as an audiobook – I have fond memories of the late Simon Cadell as an actor. The blurb sounds interesting too, though, and I’m intrigued to find out what it is that makes it “controversial”…

The Blurb says: “I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused,” Graham Greene’s narrator Fowler remarks of Alden Pyle, the eponymous “Quiet American” of what is perhaps the most controversial novel of his career. Pyle is the brash young idealist sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission to Saigon, where the French Army struggles against the Vietminh guerrillas. As young Pyle’s well-intentioned policies blunder into bloodshed, Fowler, a seasoned and cynical British reporter, finds it impossible to stand safely aside as an observer. But Fowler’s motives for intervening are suspect, both to the police and himself, for Pyle has stolen Fowler’s beautiful Vietnamese mistress.

Originally published in 1956 and twice adapted to film, The Quiet American remains a terrifiying and prescient portrait of innocence at large. 

* * * * *

Christie on Audio

By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie read by Hugh Fraser

What better incentive to get to the end of the challenge than a Christie/Fraser/Tommy and Tuppence mystery! There are aspects of creepiness in this one that shiver my spine whenever I think of them…

The Blurb says: While visiting Tommy’s Aunt Ada at Sunny Ridge Nursing Home, Tuppence encounters some odd residents including Mrs. Lancaster who mystifies her with talk about “your poor child” and “something behind the fireplace”.

When Aunt Ada dies a few weeks later, she leaves Tommy and Tuppence a painting featuring a house, which Tuppence is sure she has seen before. This realization leads her on a dangerous adventure involving a missing tombstone, diamond smuggling and a horrible discovery of what Mrs. Lancaster was talking about.

* * * * *

NB All blurbs and covers taken from Goodreads, Amazon UK or Audible UK.

* * * * *

So…what do you think? Are you tempted?

TBR Thursday 342…

Episode 342

Phew! A little flurry of finished books and no new arrivals means the TBR has fallen this week, down 2 to 177!

Here are a few more that are reaching the top of the heap…

Winner of the People’s Choice

It became even more exciting than usual this month when the poll suddenly stopped working halfway through! Happily, although they weren’t showing up on the blog the votes were being recorded on Crowdsignal’s site, the poll host, where I was also able to delete the myriad of multiple votes from people who’d tried several times to get their vote to record. So I think the final result is accurate! Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper put up a very strong performance but in the end it was pipped at the post by just one vote. The winner is…

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Blurb says: Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it.

Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.

Good choice, People! It’ll be an October read.

* * * * *

Fiction

Dr. B. by Daniel Birbaum

Courtesy of 4th Estate via NetGalley. I picked this one purely on the basis of the blurb, but sadly it’s getting pretty negative ratings on Goodreads. However given my track record of disagreeing with the majority on books, maybe that means I’ll love it! Maybe. 

The Blurb says: In 1933, after Hitler and the Nazi Party consolidated power in Germany, Immanuel Birnbaum, a German Jewish journalist based in Warsaw, is forbidden from writing for newspapers in his homeland. Six years later, just months before the German invasion of Poland that ignites World War II, Immanuel escapes to Sweden with his wife and two young sons.

Living as a refugee in Stockholm, Immanuel continues to write, contributing articles to a liberal Swiss newspaper in Basel under the name Dr. B. He also begins working as an editor for the legendary German publisher S. Fischer Verlag. Gottfried Bermann Fischer had established an office in Stockholm to evade German censorship, publishing celebrated German writers such as Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig.

Immanuel also becomes entangled with British intelligence agents who produce and distribute anti-Nazi propaganda in Stockholm. On orders from Winston Churchill, the Allied spies plan several acts of sabotage. But when the Swedish postal service picks up a letter written in invisible ink, the plotters are exposed. The letter, long a mystery in military history accounts, was in fact written by Dr. B. But why would a Jew living in exile and targeted for death by the Nazis have wanted to tip them off?

* * * * *

Queen of Crime

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie

Courtesy of HarperCollins. Sometimes out of the blue HarperCollins send me a couple of Christies. I don’t know why – they don’t seem to be new editions. New print-runs maybe? Anyway, whatever the reason I always enjoy getting them – nice covers! This one has always been a favourite – how could it not be, with such an iconic title? 

The Blurb says: When the Bantrys wake to find the body of a beautiful, young stranger in their library, Dolly Bantry knows there’s only one person to call: her old friend Miss Marple.

Who was the young girl? What was she doing in the library? And is there a connection with another dead girl, whose charred remains are discovered in an abandoned quarry?

Miss Marple must solve the mystery, before tongues start to wag, and the murderer strikes again.

* * * * *

Jerome on Audio

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome read by Ian Carmichael

Another couple for the #20(Audio)BooksOfSummer challenge! First, one of my favourite books of all time. I’ve read it so often I practically know it by heart but it still makes me cry with laughter and even at one point – the same point every time – actually cry. Ian Carmichael, who was once a wonderful Bertie Wooster, seems like a very appropriate choice for narrator…

The Blurb says: A comic masterpiece that has never been out of print since it was first published in 1889.

Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit them to a ‘T’. But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead with tow-ropes, unreliable weather forecasts and tins of pineapple chunks – not to mention the devastation left in the wake of J.’s small fox-terrier Montmorency. Three Men in a Boat was an instant success when it appeared in 1889, and, with its benign escapism, authorial discursions and wonderful evocation of the late-Victorian ‘clerking classes’, it hilariously captured the spirit of its age.

* * * * *

Forster on Audio

Howard’s End by EM Forster read by Edward Petherbridge

Why have I never read or seen Howard’s End? Baffling. Since Breakfast at Tiffany’s and I didn’t get along, I abandoned it and am swapping this one in to replace it. This one is on my Classics Club list. I fell in love with Edward Petherbridge many years ago, when he played a wonderful Newman Noggs in a fabulous RSC stage production of Nicholas Nickleby which was filmed for TV – a very rare event back in 1982. So I’m looking forward to his narration as much as to the book – fingers crossed!

The Blurb says: Howards End is the story of the liberal Schlegel sisters and their struggle to come to terms with social class and their German heritage in Edwardian England. Their lives are intertwined with those of the wealthy and pragmatic Wilcox family and their country house, Howards End, as well as the lower-middle-class Basts.

When Helen Schlegel and Paul Wilcox’s brief romance ends badly the Schlegels hope to never see the Wilcoxes again. However, the family moves from their country estate, Howards End, to a flat across the road from them. When Helen befriends Leonard Bast, a man of lower status, the political and cultural differences between the families are exacerbated and brought to a fatal confrontation at Howard’s End.

Considered by some to be Forster’s masterpiece it is a story about social conventions, codes of conduct, and personal relationships in turn-of-the-century England.

* * * * *

NB All blurbs and covers taken from Goodreads, Amazon UK or Audible UK.

* * * * *

So…what do you think? Are you tempted?

N or M? (Tommy and Tuppence 3) by Agatha Christie

Careless talk costs lives…

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

It’s 1940, and Tommy and Tuppence are desperate to help the war effort in any way they can. But they’re in their forties now, and Tommy is seen as too old for the armed services while Tuppence’s old skills from her days as a nurse in WW1 don’t seem to be in demand either. Tommy gets in touch with Mr Carter, now retired from the Secret Service, and asks if he can pull any strings. And then a Mr Grant shows up, ostensibly offering Tommy a dull but useful clerical role in Scotland. But when Tuppence leaves the room, Mr Grant tells Tommy this is a cover story – really the Secret Service want him to go undercover to a boarding house in the South of England from where they believe a top Nazi spy is operating. But they don’t know who – all they know is that it’s one of two people known only by their code initials, one male, one female – N or M. It’s vital the spy should be uncovered – the whole war depends on it! The operation is top secret and no one must know he’s going, not even Tuppence. So off Tommy goes, but when he gets there he’s in for a big surprise when he meets one of his fellow guests – Mrs Blenkinsop, who bears an uncanny resemblance to his eavesdropping wife…

I’m afraid when Ms Christie gets into espionage plots they become so convoluted and unlikely that I’m always left feeling if this was the best the Nazis could do the only wonder is they didn’t lose more quickly! But I don’t care – Tommy and Tuppence, especially Tuppence, are so much fun to spend time with that the plot can be as silly as it likes and I’ll still love the book! And there’s so much in it about the anxieties that would have been forefront in the minds of people on the Home Front that I expect it didn’t seem nearly so unbelievable when it was published in 1941 – Fifth Columnists, parachuting spies, those perfidious Irish, Nazi sympathisers, German refugees who might be spies… and all while Britain was standing alone against the mighty Nazi war machine, and victory was far from certain. As would have been the case for so many people too old to serve, Tommy and Tuppence’s two children – adults now – are in the forces, and both doing jobs requiring a lot of secrecy so that their parents don’t even know where they are much of the time. It’s partly to take their minds off this constant worry that makes them both so keen to be doing something – anything – to help.

Book 3 of 20

The boarding house is filled with a variety of characters who all look innocent enough, but equally could all be N or M. There’s the retired military man who seems to despair of democratic Britain and feels the Nazis are doing quite a good job of running Germany – but is he really a Nazi sympathiser or just a grumpy old man? Is the Irishwoman loyal to Britain despite her husband’s Irish nationalism during WW1? Is the young German really a refugee from a regime he hates, or is he an infiltrator? What about the hypochondriacal man and his put-upon wife – are they what they seem? Surely the mother evacuated from London with her young child must be just what she claims? That was what made the idea of the Fifth Column so frightening – once you accept the idea as possible, then anyone could be a Nazi spy. And so every careless word could lead to death or disaster for our troops. Christie captures this feeling of paranoia very well.

Despite all this serious stuff, there’s also enough humour in it to stop the tone from becoming too dark. The banter between Tommy and Tuppence is always entertaining, and here there’s an added element in that we see how their children treat them as if they were ancient and past it, while Tommy and Tuppence in reality are doing a far more important and secret job than either of them. Albert makes an appearance, and while it’s always fun to see him, sadly he follows in the tradition of Lord Wimsey’s Bunter or Campion’s Lugg – the comedy working class character who adores and idolises his master or mistress. Albert actually refers to Tommy as his master, for goodness sake! So I’m glad he plays a fairly minor role, and am devoutly thankful that neither Poirot nor Miss Marple saw the need for a working class sidekick.

Hugh Fraser

Hugh Fraser is as wonderful as always. Here he gets the chance to play loads of different characters, from grumpy old men to beautiful, moody young women, not to mention the toddler who speaks mostly in baby language and gurgles, and he handles them all brilliantly! So, despite my niggles with the plot, this is a hugely enjoyable listening experience, and Tommy and Tuppence are as much fun as ever!

Audible UK Link

Shorts & Abandonments June 2022…

A Bunch of Minis…

I’m still running far behind with reviews, so here’s another batch of minis to help me catch up – two abandonments and two I loved…

Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda

Unpleasant twaddle…

😦

We meet our narrator on the day his father who is not his father dies by having concrete poured ritually down his gullet, as you do. Our narrator, who is either a madman in an asylum or should be, then recounts at what seems like great length but is only a novella the customs in his insanely imagined village, which he presents as if it were real and where all is cruelty and fever-dream horror.

I gave up at 45%. This book is either so profound it’s far beyond my meagre intellectual powers to grasp, or it’s a load of nonsense. It might be an allegory (of something), or it might just be an author dumping bits of her unfortunate imagination all over the unsuspecting reader. Some thoughts are better left unexpressed.

In short, not recommended unless you want to read about horrible people being horrible to other people and to animals and insects, in a story that isn’t a story about a village that doesn’t exist.

(This was supposed to be for my Spanish Civil War Challenge but I refuse to add it to my list.)

* * * * *

A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine

Hanged by the neck…

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Vera Hillyard was hanged for murder. Many years later her niece, Faith, is approached by a journalist who is planning to write a book about Vera’s crime and punishment, and wants Faith to tell him what she remembers of the events, and of the people who were involved. Faith takes the reader back to when she was a young girl and sent to live with Vera and her sister to escape the bombing of London. From that point, she gradually leads us through her own coming of age, and we see how her perceptions of her aunts change as she matures. Slowly the looming tragedy unfolds, and now, as an adult looking back, Faith realises the meaning of things her younger self had not understood, so that she comes to comprehend why Vera did what she did…

I loved this, but it got caught up in my backlog with the result that I’ve left it too long to be able to write a full review – bookish details don’t remain in my memory for long, I fear! However it kept me fully absorbed throughout, aided by the narration of the wonderful Harriet Walter. It was my first Barbara Vine and I’ll certainly go on to read more of her books, and highly recommend this one if you are one of the three people left in the world who haven’t already read it!

* * * * *

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

Badly written twaddle…

😦

I look at the many thousands of glowing reviews for this and can only assume there are two versions of the book, and unfortunately I got the bad one. The writing would shame a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl – short, simplistic sentences one after the other, all tell, tell, tell with no show. The characterisation is terrible – she gives us little potted biographies of each in turn, rather than allowing them to reveal themselves. On the rare occasions her characters are allowed to act or speak they do so with complete banality, or behave in ways that nothing we know about them makes credible. The historical “facts”, which again are dumped on the reader rather than woven into the story, sound as if they are quoted straight from a middle-grade history book – a bad one, that thinks the Republicans were actually a properly constituted democratic government, and the Nationalists were evil rebels staging a coup. No nuance, no suggestion that the situation may have been considerably more complex and less clear-cut than that. It’s more like propaganda than historical fiction.

I chose the book because I was interested in learning more about the Chilean part of the story – the Allende regime, and so on. But given my contempt for her biased, unnuanced picture of the Spanish Civil War, how could I trust her to give anything approaching a balanced picture of a period of history which touches her even more closely? And how could I put up with more of her truly abysmal writing style? My first experience of Allende, and my last – abandoned at 20%.

(Another failure for my SCW Challenge – it is not going well!)

* * * * *

Three-Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie

All very dramatic, darlings!

😀 😀 😀 😀 🙂

When famous actor Sir Charles Cartwright gives a dinner party, one of the guests dies suddenly after drinking a cocktail. Hercule Poirot is there that evening, and of course suspects foul play. But no poison is found in the glass and it appears that no one could have had a reason to murder the dead man. Then a few months later another death occurs in very similar circumstances, at another dinner party where many of the same people are guests. Poirot sets out to investigate, and so does Sir Charles and his young friend Egg.

This isn’t one of Christie’s very best plots, though it has plenty of points of interest and a very original motive for the first murder. However I find it one of her most enjoyable books because I’m very fond of young Egg as a character, and I like the way Christie portrays the May-to-December romance developing between her and the considerably older Sir Charles. Mr Satterthwaite is also involved – a character who turns up occasionally in the Poirot novels and also in the Harley Quinn stories. I prefer him in Poirot where his rather dry lawyerly approach to investigations makes him an excellent sidekick for Poirot, though I still miss Hastings who isn’t in this one. To a large extent Poirot takes a back seat, and allows Sir Charles and Egg to do most of the detecting, but of course it’s Poirot’s little grey cells that work it all out in the end!

Great fun and, as always, enhanced by Hugh Fraser’s wonderful narration.

* * * * *

Half fab, half flop – pretty much the story of my life! 😉

Have a Great Weekend!

Christie Week: Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie

A menagerie of murderers…

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Mr Shaitana loves to collect things – jewels, weapons, Egyptian artefacts, objects from the mysterious Far East, etc. One of his stranger collections is of uncaught murderers and when he meets the famous detective Hercule Poirot, he can’t stop himself from boasting about them. Almost against his better judgement Poirot is intrigued, so when Shaitana invites him to a little party to meet his murderers, he accepts. When he arrives, he finds there are eight guests including himself, three of whom he knows – Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard, Colonel Race, whose career included intelligence work, and Ariadne Oliver, detective novelist, who believes that more crimes would be solved if only there were a woman at the head of Scotland Yard. [FF muses: Hmm! Wonder what she’d have thought of Cressida Dick! 😉 ]. It’s obvious, then, that the other four guests must be Shaitana’s murderers. And when later in the evening Shaitana is stabbed to death, it’s equally obvious that one of these four must have done the deed. It’s up to Poirot and the other three detectives to work out whodunit, but first they must look into the backgrounds of the four suspects to find out if Shaitana was right that they had each successfully committed a murder before…

….“He played the part of the devil too successfully. But he was not the devil. Au fond, he was a stupid man. And so – he died.”
….“Because he was stupid?”
….“It is the sin that is never forgiven and always punished, madame.”

I love this one but I have two tiny reservations, so let me get them out of the way first. There are some unfortunate racial slurs in this and some attitudes to foreigners which were perfectly normal back then, but which may jar today. My other issue is that Christie assumes that her readers will understand the intricacies of the card game of bridge, which the suspects were playing at the time of the murder. Poirot uses the bidding and scores as a method to understand the personalities of the four players. Back then I’d imagine the vast majority of her readers did play bridge, or at least knew the rules. I, however, only have the sketchiest understanding of it so most of that was lost on me and I found my eyes glazing over during some of the rather lengthy dissections of the game.

However, there’s so much good stuff in it that these small points don’t spoil the overall enjoyment. Ariadne Oliver is always a favourite of mine when she turns up in a Poirot mystery, and in this one she’s especially fun as she explains to another star-struck character what being a mystery novelist is like – the hard work that comes between thinking up a plot and having a finished book, the pressure of publishing deadlines, and so on. She also discusses with Poirot how it’s possible to re-use plots so long as you disguise them well enough. I always feel Mrs Oliver gives us a real insight to Christie’s own writing life, and she does it with so much humour and such a complete lack of pomposity that it makes me like her even more!

“As a matter of fact I don’t care two pins about accuracy. Who is accurate? Nobody nowadays. If a reporter writes that a beautiful girl of twenty-two dies by turning on the gas after looking out over the sea and kissing her favourite Labrador, Bob, goodbye, does anybody make a fuss because the girl was twenty-six, the room faced inland, and the dog was a Sealyham terrier called Bonnie? If a journalist can do that sort of thing I don’t see that it matters if I mix up police ranks and say a revolver when I mean an automatic and a dictograph when I mean a phonograph, and use a poison that just allows you to gasp one dying sentence and no more. What really matters is plenty of bodies! If the thing’s getting a little dull, some more blood cheers it up.”

Zoe Wanamaker as Ariadne Oliver in the Suchet adaptation

Superintendent Battle and Colonel Race are occasional recurring characters too so it’s fun to have all of them working together. The four suspects each provide interesting stories. Young Anne Meredith (called after one of Christie’s fellow mystery novelists) seems too naive and innocent to be a murderer, but is she what she seems? Dr Roberts has all the opportunities given to him by his profession – has he bumped off one or two patients in his career? Major Despard has had an adventurous life in some of the far-flung corners of Empire, where dark deeds (and dead bodies) can easily be buried. And Mrs Lorrimer – she’s an enigma: ultra-respectable, it seems, and lives for her bridge. Can she possibly have murdered anyone? Shaitana thought so. Each of the four detectives brings their different expertise to bear – Poirot working on the psychology of the suspects, Race using his intelligence contacts to learn about Despard’s career, Mrs Oliver gossiping with Anne Meredith and her friend Rhoda, and Superintendent Battle doing all the painstaking police work. And each of them contributes valuable information, although of course it will be up to Poirot to solve the case in the end.

….“But I don’t doubt it will be essentially the same type of crime. The details may be different, but the essentials underlying them will be the same. It’s odd, but a criminal gives himself away every time by that. Man is an unoriginal animal,” said Hercule Poirot.
….“Women,” said Mrs. Oliver, ” are capable of infinite variation. I should never commit the same type of murder twice running.”
….“Don’t you ever write the same plot twice running?” asked Battle.”

The solution is particularly good, with Christie misdirecting the poor reader (and most of the detectives) all over the place. It is fair play, I’d say, but with each of the suspects being suspected of other murders there’s the added element of solving all those mysteries too, and that adds hugely to the interest. One of her best, I think – one of many!

I listened to Hugh Fraser narrating the audiobook and as always he does a wonderful job of giving each of the characters their own voice and persona.

Audible UK Link

Hope you enjoyed Christie Week – I’ve loved chatting Christie with you all!

Christie Week: TBR Thursday 320…

Episode 320

Well, due to current events my reading has fallen away to nothing again this week, but fortunately book arrivals also seemed to have stalled, so the TBR remains static on 178.

To tie in with this week’s Christie theme, here are a few of the books patiently waiting in my Audible library. Don’t know exactly when I’ll get to them, but given the levels of stress I feel every time I watch the news I don’t think it will be long!

Miss Marple

A Pocketful of Rye narrated by Joan Hickson

This is one of my favourites so I know the story inside out, but that never stops me enjoying it! And Joan Hickson is the perfect narrator for the Miss Marple books… 

The Blurb says: A handful of grain is found in the pocket of a murdered businessman! Rex Fortescue, king of a financial empire, was sipping tea in his ‘counting house’ when he suffered an agonising and sudden death. On later inspection, the pockets of the deceased were found to contain traces of cereals. Yet, it was the incident in the parlour which confirmed Miss Marple’s suspicion that here she was looking at a case of crime by rhyme!

* * * * *

Standalone

Endless Night narrated by Hugh Fraser

It’s so long since I last read this I remember almost nothing about it, but the reviews suggest it’s quite a spooky one…

The Blurb says: Gipsy’s Acre was a truly beautiful upland site with views out to sea, and in Michael Rogers it stirred a child-like fantasy. There, amongst the dark fir trees, he planned to build a house, find a girl, and live happily ever after. But as he left the village, a shadow of menace hung over the land, for this was the place where accidents happened. Perhaps Michael should have heeded the locals’ warnings: “There’s no luck for them as meddles with Gipsy’s Acre.” Michael Rogers is a man who is about to learn the true meaning of the old saying “In my end is my beginning”.

* * * * *

Tommy & Tuppence

N or M? narrated by Hugh Fraser

I’ve always had a soft spot for Christie’s lesser known ‘tecs and have read most of the T&T books several times over the years. But for some reason not this one – I think I’ve only read it once, long, long ago when the world was young…

The Blurb says: It is World War II, and while the RAF struggles to keep the Luftwaffe at bay, Britain faces an even more sinister threat from “the enemy within”: Nazis posing as ordinary citizens.

With pressure mounting, the Intelligence service appoints two unlikely spies, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. Their mission: to seek out a man and a woman from among the colourful guests at Sans Souci, a seaside hotel. But this assignment is no stroll along the promenade. After all, N and M have just murdered Britain’s finest agent.

* * * * *

Hercule Poirot

Three Act Tragedy narrated by Hugh Fraser

Another favourite of mine, although that’s partly because there’s a cheesy but fun adaptation of it (called Murder in Three Acts) that I love because it stars Peter Ustinov outrageously over-acting as Poirot, Tony Curtis, who was one of my earliest heart-throbs, Emma Samms, who at that time was best known for starring in Dynasty (yes, I did love Dynasty – sue me! 😉 ), and Jonathan Cecil as Hastings (now my favourite narrator of the Jeeves and Wooster books)!

The Blurb says: At an apparently respectable dinner party, a vicar is the first to die…

Thirteen guests arrived at dinner at the actor’s house. It was to be a particularly unlucky evening for the mild-mannered Reverend Stephen Babbington, who choked on his cocktail, went into convulsions and died. But when his martini glass was sent for chemical analysis, there was no trace of poison — just as Poirot had predicted. Even more troubling for the great detective, there was absolutely no motive!

* * * * *

NB All blurbs and covers taken from Goodreads or Audible UK.

* * * * *

So…what do you think? Are you tempted?

Christie Week: Partners in Crime (Tommy and Tuppence 2) by Agatha Christie

Elementary, my dear Tuppence…

😀 😀 😀 😀

Although very happily married to Tommy, Tuppence Beresford is finding life rather monotonous, so when their old friend Mr Carter of the Intelligence Services puts a proposition to them, the young couple jump at the chance. Mr Carter believes a private detective agency is being used to pass messages in some kind of shady espionage plot. The owner has been arrested and Mr Carter wants Tommy to impersonate him and pass on information about any odd contacts he gets. Thus Tommy becomes Mr Blunt of Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives and, having no intention of being left out, Tuppence is transformed into Miss Robinson, his confidential secretary. While they wait to be contacted by the spy ring, they investigate the various cases brought to them by troubled clients…

“I can look after her all right, sir,” said Tommy, at exactly the same minute as Tuppence said, “I can take care of myself.”

This is a bit of light-hearted fun from Christie, in which she shows her love for the mystery fiction world of which she was such a shining light. The book is in the form of short stories, each an individual case, with the background espionage plot only really appearing once or twice throughout. Tommy and Tuppence, having no experience of detecting, decide to learn the craft from the masters, so in each case they take on the personas of a different fictional detective and his sidekick.

I’m pretty sure when I first read this long, long ago, I’d have recognised a couple of the most famous, and assumed all the rest of the fictional ‘tecs were simply names made up by Christie. But after being steeped in Golden Age mysteries for the last few years, I now realise they’re all real – well, real in the sense that they are all based on fictional detectives or on the style of authors who would have been well known to Christie’s contemporary readers. Inspector French is there, and Inspector Hanaud, Father Brown, The Old Man in the Corner, Roger Sheringham, Dr Thorndyke, Reggie Fortune, Edgar Wallace, and a few I still don’t recognise. Holmes, of course, and Christie even includes Poirot himself! She doesn’t go overboard with the references – she name-checks the ‘tecs and makes a few amusing observations about their style or mannerisms, but when the cases get underway Tommy and Tuppence revert to being themselves.

….As the visitor left the office, Tuppence grabbed the violin and putting it in the cupboard turned the key in the lock.
….“If you must be Sherlock Holmes,” she observed, “I’ll get you a nice little syringe and a bottle labelled Cocaine, but for God’s sake leave that violin alone.”

Agatha Christie

The cases themselves are quite slight and vary in quality and style. Some are humorous, some more serious, up to and including murder. A couple have a slightly spooky edge – something Christie always does well. T&T are a great partnership, though the format of this tends to mean that Tommy gets to be the lead more often, since he’s playing Blunt and all of the fictional ‘tecs are men. But Tuppence uses her ingenuity and intuition, not to mention using her social skills to mingle with the people involved in the cases and pick up bits of gossip. Albert, their usual assistant, is in it too, but only makes a real contribution to a couple of the stories.

….“Shall I neglect you a little?” suggested Tommy. “Take other women about to night clubs. That sort of thing.”
….“Useless,” said Tuppence. “You would only meet me there with other men. And I should know perfectly well that you didn’t care for the other women, whereas you would never be quite sure that I didn’t care for the other men. Women are so much more thorough.”
….“It’s only in modesty that men score top marks,” murmured her husband.

Truthfully, I’m not sure how much appeal this collection would have to anyone who didn’t already know and love Tommy and Tuppence from their first appearance in The Secret Adversary, but for fans it’s an entertaining addition to the full-length T&T novels, and the references to the other Golden Age ‘tecs is an added bonus for vintage crime enthusiasts, giving an insight into Christie’s own reading tastes. Hugh Fraser’s narration is, as usual, wonderful, and the format of lots of short stories gives him the opportunity to portray a vast selection of characters, from society women to foreign spies, all of which he does with great gusto. Lots of fun!

* * * * *

The fictional ‘tecs I still haven’t come across are…

Malcolm Sage created by Herbert George Jenkins

Francis and Desmond Okewood created by Valentine Williams

Tommy McCarty and Denis Riordan created by Isabel Ostrander

Thornley Colton created by Clinton H Stagg

A new challenge? Hmm… no!! Not another one!! Although it’s tempting… 😉 Have you read any of these? Are they worth hunting down?

Audible UK Link

Christie Week: Bookish Selfie. . .

A snapshot of my Christie reading in quotes…

(One of the problems with audiobooks as opposed to paper books is that I find trying to highlight quotes too distracting, so my audio reviews rarely contain quotes. However, I’ve collected a few along the way, so here’s a little retrospective of some that I think show Ms Christie’s wit and style, her underrated characterisation and her occasional but very effective forays into spookiness… )

….“‘Two young adventurers for hire. Willing to do anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good. No unreasonable offer refused.’ How would that strike you if you read it?”
….“It would strike me as either being a hoax, or else written by a lunatic.”
….“It’s not half so insane as a thing I read this morning beginning ‘Petunia’ and signed ‘Best Boy.’” She tore out the leaf and handed it to Tommy. “There you are. Times, I think. Reply to Box so-and-so. I expect it will be about five shillings. Here’s half a crown for my share.”
….Tommy was holding the paper thoughtfully. His face burned a deeper red.
….“Shall we really try it?” he said at last. “Shall we, Tuppence? Just for the fun of the thing?”
….“Tommy, you’re a sport! I knew you would be! Let’s drink to success.” She poured some cold dregs of tea into the two cups.
….“Here’s to our joint venture, and may it prosper!”
….“The Young Adventurers, Ltd!” responded Tommy.

~ Tommy and Tuppence in The Secret Adversary

* * * * *

….“She’s suffered a great deal in her life. A large part of the suffering has been her own fault, but some of it hasn’t. None of her marriages has been happy except, I’d say, this last one. She’s married to a man now who loves her dearly and who’s loved her for years. She’s sheltering in that love, and she’s happy in it. At least, at the moment she’s happy in it. One can’t say how long all that will last. The trouble with her is that either she thinks that at last she’s got to that spot or place or that moment in her life where everything’s like a fairy tale come true, that nothing can go wrong, that she’ll never be unhappy again; or else she’s down in the dumps, a woman whose life is ruined, who’s never known love and happiness and who never will again.”
….He added dryly, “If she could only stop halfway between the two it’d be wonderful for her, and the world would lose a fine actress.”

~ The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

* * * * *

The others went upstairs, a slow unwilling procession. If this had been an old house, with creaking wood, and dark shadows, and heavily panelled walls, there might have been an eerie feeling. But this house was the essence of modernity. There were no dark corners – no possible sliding panels – it was flooded with electric light – everything was new and bright and shining. There was nothing hidden in this house, nothing concealed. It had no atmosphere about it. Somehow, that was the most frightening thing of all. They exchanged good-nights on the upper landing. Each of them went into his or her own room, and each of them automatically, almost without conscious thought, locked the door…

~ And Then There Were None

* * * * *

….“Please, sir, can we see the body?”
….“No, you can’t,” said Inspector Bacon… “Have you ever seen a blonde woman wearing a light-coloured dyed squirrel coat anywhere about the place?”
….“Well, I can’t remember exactly,” said Alexander astutely. “If I were to have a look…”
….“Take ’em in, Sanders,” said Inspector Bacon to the constable who was standing by the barn door. “One’s only young once!”
….“Oh, sir, thank you, sir.” Both boys were vociferous. “It’s very kind of you, sir.”

~ 4:50 from Paddington

* * * * *

Mystery writer Mrs. Oliver discussing her own fictional detective…

“How do I know?” said Mrs. Oliver crossly. “How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man? I must have been mad! Why a Finn when I know nothing about Finland? Why a vegetarian? Why all the idiotic mannerisms he’s got? These things just happen. You try something – and people seem to like it – and then you go on – and before you know where you are, you’ve got someone like that maddening Sven Hjerson tied to you for life. And people even write and say how fond you must be of him. Fond of him? If I met that bony gangling vegetable eating Finn in real life, I’d do a better murder than any I’ve ever invented.”

~ Mrs McGinty’s Dead

* * * * *

“I’ve never been an advocate of teetotalism. A little strong drink is always advisable on the premises in case there is a shock or an accident. Invaluable at such times. Or, of course, if a gentleman should arrive suddenly.”

~ Miss Marple quoted in Murder, She Said

* * * * *

The curtains of the alcove seemed to have been pulled back a little, the medium’s figure was just visible through the opening, her head fallen forward on her breast. Suddenly Madame Exe drew in her breath sharply. A ribbon-like stream of mist was issuing from the medium’s mouth. It condensed and began gradually to assume a shape, the shape of a little child.

~ The Last Séance from the collection The Hound Of Death  

* * * * *

She paused, then, her agreeable husky voice deepening, she said venomously, “I loathe the sight of you, you bloody little bourgeois detective.”
….She swept away from him in a swirl of expensive, model drapery. Hercule Poirot remained, his eyes very wide open, his eyebrows raised, and his hand thoughtfully caressing his moustaches. The epithet ‘bourgeois’ was, he admitted, well applied to him. His outlook on life was essentially bourgeois and always had been. But the employment of it as an epithet of contempt by the exquisitely turned out Jane Olivera gave him, as he expressed it to himself, furiously to think.

~ One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

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So… have you a quote to add?

Christie Week: Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie

Best days of our lives?

😀 😀 😀 😀

(These Christie audiobooks narrated by either Joan Hickson or Hugh Fraser have become my stress relievers, and as we all know, life has been pretty stressful recently! I usually hold my reviews of them back, to have something to post when I run out of other reviews. But that hasn’t happened for ages, and some of the unposted Christie reviews are getting so old they’re going yellow round the edges. So join me for Christie week! A whole week of posts about the unrivalled Queen of Crime! 😀 Just a word on star ratings: for favourite authors – Christie, Dickens, Austen, Hill – I only rate them against their own best work, not other people’s. So a four-star Christie is still head and shoulders above most five-stars from other people. I know, it doesn’t make sense, but there’s no law says it has to… 😉 )

It is the start of term and parents are arriving to drop their daughters off at the elite Meadowbank school, where the headmistress, Miss Bulstrode, has built a reputation for excellence. There are several new girls: Jennifer and Julia who are destined to become best friends, and Princess Shaista, a member of the ruling family in Ramat, a middle-Eastern nation that has just undergone a coup. Flashback a few weeks to Ramat, and we meet Bob Rawlinson, friend to Prince Ali Yusuf, the soon to be deposed ruler. Ali, aware of his likely fate, entrusts something of immense value to Bob and asks him to get it out of the kingdom. These two very different scenarios will soon cross into each other, bringing murder to the ultra-respectable Meadowbank.

Although this has never been one of my top favourite Poirots, it has lots of good things that place it high in the second tier. When I was younger Meadowbank seemed like a wonderful place, though now I find I hate the elitism of it and see no real signs of why it should be considered so remarkable – the girls we get to know seem a rather mediocre bunch on the whole, and are there exclusively because of their parents’ wealth and social position. Christie does address this through a conversation between a couple of her characters, but not convincingly.

The characterisation of the teachers is very well done. Miss Bulstrode is an inspirational leader (though she doesn’t seem terribly good at selecting staff!) while her long-time friend, Miss Chadwick, is one of these rather pitiable characters Christie does so well – a little lonely, loyal to a fault, often overlooked by stronger personalities. She reminds me of Bunny in A Murder is Announced. Miss Vansittart is the one considered likely to succeed Miss Bulstrode when she retires, although Miss Bulstrode is having doubts about her suitability. There are some new members of staff this term, each of whom may or may not be what she seems. It is one of these, Miss Springer the gamesmistress, who turns up dead in the new Sports Pavilion.

(FF muses: Hugh Fraser pronounces Miss Vansittart with the emphasis on “sit”. In my head it’s always had the emphasis on ‘Van’ – to rhyme with Fancy Tart. Hmm, that should pile the views in from Google searches from men who will be very disappointed to discover that my Fancy Tart is not at all what they’re searching for… 😉 )

The two girls we get to know best are fun. Jennifer is an unimaginative and unobservant child, devoted to her tennis, while Julia is quite the reverse – sensible, but curious and with lots of intelligence and initiative. As happens often in Christie novels, the children are far less fazed by the murder and mayhem going on around them than the adults. She shows them as partly excited and partly too self-absorbed in their own affairs to be frightened. Personally I find this more credible than if they were all having screaming hysterics all the time.

Agatha Christie

There are a few reasons I don’t rate this quite as highly as some of the other Poirots, but none of these should be seen as major criticisms, simply observations. Poirot doesn’t appear until very late in the novel, and I miss him! Written quite late in Christie’s career, 1959, it shows a little of the weakness in plotting that became a feature of some of her final books. Well, perhaps not in plotting exactly, but in the presentation of the plot to the reader – I don’t think it could quite be classed as fair play, and Poirot seems to rather pluck the solution out of the air rather than build up to it by solid investigation. I’m never so keen on Christie’s occasional ventures into the world of international espionage – I don’t think she does it nearly as believably as her more domestic plots, and it does tend to mean there’s an awful lot of that British superciliousness towards foreigners that grates more with each passing year, although it’s clear from this one that Christie had herself moved on quite a bit from the worst of the colonial attitudes she showed in some of her earliest books.

(FF muses: One of the things I always remember about it from my first reading long, long ago is that, while all this is happening at Meadowbank, Julia’s mother is travelling to Anatolia on a bus, which seemed so exotic and adventurous to young FF, especially since I had no idea where Anatolia is. Now I know, and I also know we could get there in a few hours by plane and meet the 5 zillion other British tourists who’d all gone there too, and we could all pop out and have a Big Mac if we wanted, and I wonder if all our advances haven’t simply taken the romance out of life… but I digress!)

Despite my minor criticisms, this is a very enjoyable read, and as always Hugh Fraser’s narration is excellent. A great way to spend a few hours!

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