Agatha Christie Reading Challenge – Page 17

Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie: Book Review

Published on May 7, 2009April 25, 2018 by Margaret6 Comments

Years ago I read as many of Agatha Christie’s books as I could find, but I don’t remember ever reading Dead Man’s Folly before. This one features Hercule Poirot and Mrs Ariadne Oliver. There is of course a murder with a most unlikely victim. It kept me guessing to the end as there is such a misleading tangle of evidence.

Mrs Ariadne Oliver has devised a Murder Hunt for Sir George Stubbs at the Fete to be held at Nasse House, a big white Georgian house looking out over the river (based on Agatha’s own house Greenway in Devon). She has a feeling that something is wrong and summons Hercule Poirot to join her, ostensibly to present the prizes.

I did find the number of characters a bit bewildering – there are so many, including the bluff Sir George and his exotic and beautiful, if simple wife, Hattie; Miss Brewis (Sir George’s secretary); Mrs Folliat whose ancestors had lived at Nasse House for generations; a Member of Parliament and his wife; an atomic physicist and his wife; an architect; the butler; Lady Stubbs’s cousin; and a couple of girl hitch hikers in shorts who cause Poirot to shut his eyes in pain and reflect

… that seen from the back, shorts were becoming to very few of the female sex. Why, oh why, must young women array themselves thus? Those scarlet thighs were singularly unattractive!

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The Murder Hunt goes badly wrong when the young Girl Guide, Marlene playing the part of the murder victim, is discovered in the boat house garotted with a piece of clothes line. Just who could possibly have a motive for killing Marlene? And what is the significance of the little white “Folly”, set high in the woods above the river?

The police have no idea and even Poirot is baffled for a while. The chief constable thinks he may have been “a little Belgian wizard in his day – but surely, man, his day’s over. He’s what age?”

In the end, of course, it is Poirot who makes sense of it all. I didn’t think this was as good as some of Agatha Christie’s other books, but it was still enjoyable.

To read more reviews of Agatha Christie’s books visit Kerrie’s Agatha Christie Reading Carnival.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Published on April 6, 2009October 30, 2019 by Margaret8 Comments

This is the first novel by Agatha Christie, written in 1916 and first published in 1920. In it she created Hercule Poirot, the famous Belgian detective and introduced Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Old Mrs Inglethorp is found dying in her bedroom and although by the end of the book I guessed who had murdered her, I was completely bamboozled most of the way through the book by all the clues and false trails.

The novel is set during the First World War I at Styles Court, a country house in Essex, owned by the very wealthy Mrs Inglethorp, who had shocked her family by marrying Alfred Inglethorp, 20 years her junior. Captain Hastings had been invalided home from the Front and was invited to stay at Styles, the home of a friend, John Cavendish, Mrs Inglethorp’s son. When she dies from strychnine poisoning there are plenty of suspects. Captain Hastings enlists the help of Poirot, who is living in Styles St Mary with other Belgian refugees, to investigate the matter.

I am so used to seeing David Suchet as Poirot and was delighted to find his portrayal of Poirot is so accurate:

Poirot was an extraordinary-looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was verys tiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound.

This is a most ingenious and intricately plotted book, with plenty of suspects to exercise those “little grey cells”. I do enjoy those detective stories where you’re given the clues that have been dropped into the narrative throughout the book in a seemingly haphazard way and then are reorganised at the end as Poirot does in this one to explain how and why the murder was committed. So in this book we have a shattered coffee cup, a splash of candle grease, a bed of begonias, a charred fragment of a will, a fragment of green material, an overheard argument, a tilting table, a locked purple dispatch-case and so on and so on. Helpfully the book includes diagrams of the house and the murder scene.

The only other thing I’ll say about who-did-it is that it’s the person I first thought of and then was fooled into changing my mind!

Click here to read more reviews of Agatha Christie’s books.

This is the 10th library book I’ve read this year. I’m well on target for reading 25 library books in 2009 for the Support Your Library Challenge.

The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side

Published on April 3, 2009July 18, 2024 by Margaret5 Comments

The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side by Agatha Christie first published 1962.

Miss Marple was feeling rather down and a bit weak after an attack of bronchitis. Her doctor prescribes ” a nice juicy murder” for her to unravel and not long after the ideal opportunity arose with the death of Heather Badcock. Heather had gone to a fete at Gossington Hall held by her idol, the glamorous movie star Marina Gregg. She died after drinking a poisoned cocktail, just after meeting Marina. The title is taken from Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalot, a convincing image of Marina’s reaction on meeting Heather – “… ‘the curse has come upon me’, cried the Lady of Shalott.” Heather was the sort of person no-one would want to murder, she was a very kind woman who always did things for other people. Her trouble was that she was sure she knew the best thing to do and she was only really interested in herself. Such people Miss Marple observed “live dangerously – though they don’t know it themselves.” So why was she killed and was Marina really the intended victim?

I remember seeing the TV adaptation of this book with my favourite Miss Marple – Joan Hickson – and although I did remember who had committed the murder I didn’t remember the motive, nor how it had happened. As I read on it all came back to me – just what the curse was. As usual with Agatha Christie’s books,which are so deceptively easy to read, all is not straight forward and there are many complications and twists before the denoument.

There was lots to enjoy in this book – not just the puzzle of the murder, but also the setting and the characterisation. The setting is St Mary Mead, once an idyllic English village, now threatened by the “Development” of rows of new houses which at first didn’t seem real to Miss Marple – it “was like a neat model built with child’s bricks” and the people looked unreal to her. She thought it all looked “terribly depraved”. Then she realised that although everything and everyone looked and sounded different the human beings were the same as they always had been. It’s from her understanding of human nature that she is able to solve the crime.

I also liked the characterisation of Miss Marple, now an old lady thought incapable of looking after herself and the neat way she handles Miss Knight her live-in companion who talks to her as though she is a child. In fact all the characters have that touch of reality that brought them alive. Their idiosyncracies are what makes them seem real people.

For more reviews of Agatha Christie’s books have a look at the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Carnival.

This is the ninth library book I’ve read this year so I’m well on target to read at least 25 library books by the end of December. Click on the logo for links to other bloggers reviews of library books.