Category: Book Reviews

Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

I found it wasn’t too difficult to work out who the murderer was in Agatha  Christie’s Dumb Witness, because there is a rather obvious clue at one point, but that didn’t spoil my enjoyment of this book. In fact I felt it added to my satisfaction and there was a further development which I hadn’t thought of at the end, which surprised me.

From the back cover:

Everyone blamed Emily’s accident on a rubber ball left on the stairs by her frisky terrier. But the more she thought about her fall, the more convinced she became that one of her relatives was trying to kill her. On April 17th she wrote her suspicions in a letter to Hercule Poirot. Mysteriously he didn’t receive the letter until June 28th … by which time Emily was already dead!

Dumb Witness is set in the small country town of Market Basing (a fictional name) where Miss Emily Arundell lived in Littlegreen House. Part of Poirot’s problem is that he doesn’t actually have a murder to investigate because Miss Arundell’s death was certified by her doctor as a death from natural causes from a long standing medical condition. But he thought he was under an obligation from Miss Arundell to investigate. He uses subterfuge to find out more information, pretending to be writing a biography of General Arundell, Emily’s father. And from some very slender facts he reconstructs the sequence of events leading up to her death.

As usual there are a number of suspects, mostly the members of her family, her nephew and niece Charles and Theresa Arundell and her married niece Bella and her husband Doctor Tanios. Then there is her companion, the rather ineffectual Miss Wilhelmina Lawson, and the servants. Poirot considers each one in turn. He also considers the character of the murderer, as he explains to Captain Hastings, the narrator, who is completely baffled as he assists Poirot in looking at the evidence:

‘Since at the moment, it is only suspicion and there is no definite proof, I think I must leave you to draw your own deductions, Hastings. And do not neglect the psychology – that is important. The character of the murderer – that is an essential clue to the crime.’

‘I can’t consider the character of the murderer if I don’t know who the murderer is!’

‘No, no, you have not paid attention to what I have just said. If you reflect sufficiently on the character – the necessary character of the murder – then you will realize who the murderer is!’ (page 184)

The ‘dumb witness’of the title is Bob, Emily’s wire-haired terrier in what is described as ‘the incident of the dog’s ball.’ Agatha Christie dedicated Dumb Witness to her wire-haired terrier, Peter, describing him as ‘most faithful of friends and dearest companion, a dog in a thousand‘. Bob plays an important part in the plot and indeed Agatha Christie gives him some dialogue!

I didn’t think I knew anything about Dumb Witness before I read it – I didn’t even know the title. But after I read it I checked the entry in wikipedia and found that Dumb Witness  had been adapted for television in 1996 as one of the episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot with David Suchet playing the role of Hercule Poirot. I then remembered watching it and being surprised because it was set in the Lake District, which I thought was most unusual for an Agatha Christie book.  Now I’ve read the book I can see that the TV adaptation differed considerably from the original story. As I hadn’t read it when I watched the adaptation that didn’t bother me in the slightest. It would have done the other way round!

NB: take care reading because if you haven’t read earlier books featuring Poirot, in chapter 18 he gives away the names of the murderers in four of his earlier cases.

First published in Great Britain in 1937
published in the US as Poirot Loses a Client, also known as Mystery at Littlegreen House or Murder at Little Green House.
This edition published by Harper Collins 1994
ISBN: 9780006168089
251 pages
Source: My own copy

The Cosy Knave by Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Last week I read The Cosy Knave: A Gershwin and Penrose Mystery by fellow blogger Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen. I always find her blog fresh and interesting and as I expected her book also has those same qualities. It is, as the title suggests, a ‘cosy’ mystery and it’s an easy, fun read. But it’s not as simple as it seems for I was completely baffled about who the killer could be until very near the end. I swayed towards one character and another until I realised that’s who did it. And then there was a final revelation that I hadn’t foreseen at all!

The book is set in the Yorkshire village of Knavesborough and begins with the return of Colonel Baldwin’s son, Mark. This causes quite a stir because Mark has bought Netherdale Manor. He had become a famous violinist and was now calling himself Sir Marco Bellini.

The FIFA World Cup has just started and a group of locals, including Sir Marco are gathered at Ye Cosy Knave, the village tearoom to watch the England/Germany match on Tuxford Wensleydale’s new flat screen TV.  During the match nosey-parker Rose Walnut-Whip was stabbed to death and no one heard or saw anything. It’s down to Constable Archibald Penrose to discover who killed her, helped by his fiancée, the enthusiastic vicar’s daughter, Rhapsody Gershwin. More crimes and another murder follow before Rhapsody and Archie uncover the murderer.

The Cosy Knave is peopled with whimsically-named characters, including the retired headmistress Miss Olivia Cadbury-Flake, the Kickinbottom family and Rhapsody’s sisters, Psalmonella and Harmonia. It’s the relationship between the characters that holds the key to the mystery. It’s not often that I enjoy humorous crime fiction, but with this book Dorte has gone a long way to convert me. It’s a most entertaining mystery.

The book is available from Smashwords in a variety of eBook formats and here’s a coupon code, provided by the author, which brings the price down to $2.99US: PN22N

The Tinder Box by Minette Walters: Book Review

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I really enjoyed this novella by Minette Walters. Being a short mystery it is succinctly written and yet I could still imagine the characters and settings from the descriptions. The Tinder Box is aptly named – about a situation set to burst into flames at any moment.

Description from the book cover:

In the small Hampshire village of Sowerbridge, Irish labourer Patrick O’Riordan has been arrested for the brutal murder of elderly Lavinia Fanshaw and her live-in nurse, Dorothy Jenkins. As shock turns to fury, the village residents form a united front against Patrick’s parents and cousin, who report incidents of vicious threats and violence.

But friend and neighbour Siobhan Lavenham remains convinced that Patrick has fallen victim to a prejudiced investigation and, putting her own position within the bigoted community in serious jeopardy, stands firmly by his family in defence of the O’Riordan name.

Days before the trial, terrible secrets about the O’Riordans’ past are revealed to Siobhan, and the family’s only supporter is forced to question her loyalties. Could Patrick be capable of murder after all? Could his parents’ tales of attacks be devious fabrications? And if so, what other lies lurk beneath the surface of their world?

As the truth rapidly unfurls, it seems that Sowerbridge residents need to be very afraid. For beneath a cunning façade, someone’s chilling ambition is about to ignite . . .

My thoughts:

In some ways this is a theme-heavy book, dwelling as it does on prejudice, incitement to violence and vigilantism as the inhabitants of the village unite in their dislike of the O’Riordan family living in their midst. As the story unfolds it becomes clear that misunderstanding and ignorance are really the problem. I liked the way Minette Walters has structured The Tinder Box using flashbacks,  moving between events that lead up to Patrick’s arrest and the aftermath.

For such a short book it is remarkably complex and layered and the ending with its alternative scenarios is excellent. I think I enjoyed it so much because it is so condensed – it made a refreshing change from the long and detailed books I’ve been reading recently.

  • Hardcover: 128 pages
  • Publisher: Macmillan (14 Jun 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1405048557
  • ISBN-13: 978-1405048552
  • Source: Library book

 

The Bell by Iris Murdoch: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

I first read The Bell years ago and it remained in my memory as an excellent book, but this time round I think my reading tastes have changed because, although I still liked it, I no longer found it so enchanting. Iris Murdoch wrote beautiful English, with detailed descriptions of the location – Imber Court, Imber Abbey and the lake and woods around them. But I just couldn’t work out the layout and that is actually relevant in this book. There was also too much detail about the thoughts and feelings of one of the characters – Michael Meade – for my liking, and yet for all the description he didn’t seem a real person, but more a mouthpiece for Murdoch’s philosophical thoughts. In fact most of the characters, with the exception of Dora, come across more as stereotypes than real people.

A lay community lives next to an enclosed order of nuns, a new bell is being installed and then the old bell, a legendary symbol of religion and magic  is retrieved from the bottom of the lake. The legend of the bell is that it fell into the lake after a 14th century Bishop had cursed the Abbey when a nun was discovered to have a lover and had drowned herself. The various characters include Dora Greenfield who is staying at Imber Court whilst her husband Paul is researching the Abbey archives. Paul is thirteen years older and is an art historian. Dora had left him six months earlier because she was afraid of him and was returning for the same reason. She is a young woman, a rather silly young woman who thinks one thing and immediately says the opposite, but Paul is probably the most obnoxious character in the book – he is a manipulative bully. The other residents at Imber Court are a mixed-up bunch, there for both religious and other reasons. As the date for the installation of the new bell approaches their weaknesses begin to be exposed.

Much of the book is taken up with discussions and examining the thoughts of the characters about the relationship of goodness to power. On the surface everything appeared to Dora to be peaceful, but underneath stresses and strains are causing the community to diverge into two parties. It’s not just a matter of organisation but also of morals and there is an impending sense of evil and menace.  Bearing in mind that The Bell was first published in 1958 this must have been quite a shocking book at the time – about the relationship between religion and sex and the angst and self-denial that it depicts.

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage Classics; New Ed edition (2 July 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0099470489
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099470489
  • Source: I bought this book

For a rather more positive view of The Bell see The Senior Common Room.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

Murder on the Orient Express must be one of Agatha Christie’s most well known books. It was first published in 1934 and it was first filmed in 1974, starring Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, and most recently in 2010 with David Suchet as Poirot. I’ve seen both films and so knew the plot, but I’d never read the book until now.

Poirot is on the Orient Express, on a three-days journey across Europe. But after midnight the train comes to a halt, stuck in a snowdrift. In the morning the millionaire Simon Ratchett is found dead in his compartment his body stabbed a dozen times and his door locked from the inside. It is obvious from the lack of tracks in the snow that no-one has left the train and by a process of elimination Poirot establishes that one of the passengers in the Athens to Paris coach is the murderer.

Poirot interviews the passengers and the Wagon Lit conductors, none of whom appear to have a motive for killing Ratchett or to have any connection with him or each other. Poirot decides that this

… is a crime very carefully planned and staged. It is a far-sighted, long-headed crime. It is not – how shall I express it? – a Latin crime. It is a crime that shows traces of a cool, resourceful, deliberate brain – I think an Anglo-Saxon brain. (page 193)

Having interviewed all the suspects Poirot draws up a list of questions about things that need explaining. This leads him to speculation and re-interviewing some of the suspects and eventually he arrives at the truth. It’s hard to know whether I would have arrived at the same conclusion if I hadn’t seen the films, but watching the first one it did become obvious before the denouement.

I liked this book enormously. I like the way Agatha Christie divided it into three sections – The Facts, the Evidence and Hercule Poirot Sits Back and Thinks. I liked the characterisation and all the, now so non-pc, comments about nationalities, highlighting class and racial prejudice. I like the problem-solving and ingenuity of the plot.

  • Paperback: 240 pages
  • Publisher: Harper; Masterpiece edition (Reissue) edition (3 Sep 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0007119313
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007119318
  • Source: Library book because I can’t find my own copy!

Gently by the Shore by Alan Hunter: Book Review

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Gently by the Shore is the second Inspector Gently book by Alan Hunter. George Gently is called in to investigate a murder in Starmouth, a British seaside holiday resort. An unidentified body was found on the beach. The victim was naked, punctured with stab wounds. Gently summarises it:

He had wandered into town, this enigmatical foreigner, he had taken lodgings, he had found a cafe to his taste and a prostitute to his taste; and then he had been, in a short space of time, kidnapped, tortured, murdered and introduced into the sea, his room ransacked and plundered of something of value. There was a ruthlessness about that … it bore the stamp of organization. But there was no other handle. The organization persisted in a strict anonymity. (page 92)

All Gently has to go on is his intuition. This man had been in disguise, no one seemed to know him or why he was in Starmouth. Gently by the Shore was first published in 1956 and reflects that period of time. Gently smokes a pipe and puffs his way through the investigate often in a haze of smoke when questioning suspects who also smoke. The account of a British holiday scene in the fifties brought back memories of childhood holidays (without any murders!) of sunny days on the beach, wet days in amusement arcades on the penny slot machines, the end-of-piers shows, beach cafes, deckchairs, and staying in Guest Houses, where you had bed, breakfast and an evening meal but weren’t expected to stay in your room during the day, the change-over on a Saturday with a mass exodus of one set of holiday makers before the next lot arrived.

It has a very ‘English’ feel about it:

Exceeding Sunday-white lay the Albion Pier under mid-morning sun. Its two square towers, each capped with gold, notched firmly into an azure sky and its peak-roofed pavilion, home of Poppa Pickle’s Pierrots, notched equally firmly into a green-and-amethyst sea. Its gates were closed. They were not open until  half past two. The brightly dressed strollers, each infected in some degree by the prevailing Sundayness, were constrained to the languid buying of ice-cream, the indifferent booking of seats or the bored contemplation of Poppa Pickle’s Pierrots’ pics. They didn’t complain. They knew it was their lot. Being English, one was never at a loss for a moral attitude. (page 145)

The fifties were also the period where the death sentence was still in force and Gently and the main suspect discuss the ethics of killing comparing a hired killer with the hangman. Gently maintains that the death penalty is an ideal – ‘to protect people on their lawful occasions’, and that his duty is to catch the criminal. The case is complicated by the involvement of secret agents, at which point I thought the plot became too contrived, and Gently is faced with solving:

… a planned execution, the details of which have been efficiently erased. (page 189)

But, solve it, he does!

My verdict is that this book doesn’t live up to the promise of the first one, Gently Does It, but I enjoyed the setting, the ethical discussions and the problem-solving aspects.