Category: Crime Fiction

Mrs McGinty's Dead by Agatha Christie

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Mrs McGinty 001

I think Agatha Christie enjoyed herself writing Mrs McGinty’s Dead, especially the character of the crime novelist, Ariadne Oliver. It was first published in 1952 and written not long after the end of the Second World War, reflecting the difficulties of finding employment and the changes for the post-war impoverished middle classes.

Hercule Poirot is rather bored, missing his friend Hastings and finding that his days are revolving around his meals: ‘One can only eat three times a day. And in between there are gaps.’ Even a newspaper report about the result of the McGinty trial doesn’t interest him: ‘It had not been an interesting murder. Some wretched old woman knocked on the head for a few pounds. All part of the senseless brutality of these days.‘

It is only when Superintendent Spence comes to him for help, convinced of the innocence of James Bentley, convicted of the murder and under sentence of death that Poirot agrees to reinvestigate the case. And so it is that he goes to the village of Broadhinny, treating it as a ‘challenge to the little grey cells of my brain.’

He investigates in his usual way, with method and logic, first of all by considering the motive and then looking at the characters of Mrs McGinty and James Bradley. He decides that the answer is to be found in the personality of the murderer.There is a sense of urgency, as the death penalty was still in force and there is little time left before James Bentley is due to be hanged. Poirot talks to Mrs McGinty’s neighbours and the people she worked for as a charlady and eventually solves the mystery, but not without a second murder and nearly getting killed himself.

It’s a lively book, the characters and dialogue moving the plot along smoothly. There are plenty of surprises and a lot of misdirection before the killer is revealed. The clues are all there and although I did pick up on the main clue, I picked the wrong person as the murderer.

As always, for me, there is more to the book than the puzzle of the murders, and in Mrs McGinty’s Dead there are several things, including the view Agatha Christie paints of life in an English village not long after the war (usually the setting for a Miss Marple mystery), the mix of characters, working class and middle class, the very amusing picture of the dreadful Bed and Breakfast, run by Major Summerhayes and his wife, Maureen, where Poirot stays in Broadhinny, and then there is Ariadne Oliver.

In portraying Ariadne I think Agatha Christie is revealing her feelings about writing about Poirot, a character she described in her Autobiography as ‘hanging round my neck, firmly attached there like the old man of the sea.’ Ariadne’s detective is a Finn, Sven Hjerson and she has been writing about him for thirty years:

 How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man? Why a Finn when I know nothing about Finland? Why a vegetarian? Why all the  idiotic mannerisms he’s got? …

And people even write and say how fond of him you must be. 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 invented. (page 201)

She also reveals her feelings about playwrights adapting her plays (and about money for her books!):

So far it’s pure agony. Why I ever let myself in for it I don’t know. My books bring me quite enough money – that is to say the bloodsuckers take most of it, and if I made more, they’d take more. But you have no idea of the agony of having your characters taken and made to say things that they never would have said, and do things that they never would have done. And if you protest, all they say is that it’s “good theatre”. (page 125)

She also wrote in her Autobiography about the ‘terrible suffering you go through with plays, owing to the alterations made in them.'(page 448). I find it reassuring that she didn’t like the way dramatisations changed her books, because I don’t either, although I do like David Suchet as Poirot and Joan Hickson as Miss Marple.

There are references to real life murder cases. On the Sunday before her death, Mrs McGinty had been reading the Sunday Comet, which had an article on women victims of tragedies from the past. Poirot looks at these in detail, concluding that one of the women might have been in Broadhinny when the murder took place.

A short while ago I wrote a guest post for Alyce’s blog At Home With Books about the best and the worst of Agatha Christie’s works. Trying to decide between her numerous novels which one is the best is an impossible task, but I think that Mrs McGinty’s Dead is up there amongst the best of them.

Best new-to-me crime fiction authors: a meme: January to March 2013

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New to meKerrie at Mysteries in Paradise has set up this meme. To participate just write a post about the best new-to-you crime fiction authors (or all) you’ve read in the period of January to March 2013. After writing your post link HERE and visit the links posted by other participants to discover even more books to read.

So far this year I’ve read crime fiction books by 2 new-to-me authors, both books being the first in a series:

  •  The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by Shona MacLean  – a fantastic book, historical crime fiction, full of atmosphere and well-drawn characters. A book with the power to transport me to another time and place. I hope to read more of MacLean’s books. I found this book by accident, as it were, in my local library.
  • Death at Wentwater Court by Carola Dunn –  the first in the Daisy Dalrymple series.  It’s a quick and easy read, a mix of Agatha Christie and PG Wodehouse, set in 1923 at the Earl of Wentwater’s country mansion, Wentwater Court. I first came across the Daisy Dalrymple books in other book blogs. This is an enjoyable book, but not one to overtax the brain, but interesting enough to get me reading more in the series.

Books Read in March 2013

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After a slow start to the year I read 10 books in March, so doubling the total for the year. The books I enjoyed the most are The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell and The Glass Room by Ann Cleeves.

The full list is (with links to my posts on the books):

  1. Wildwood: a Journey Through Trees by Roger Deakin (Non Fiction)
  2. The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell
  3. Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain (review copy) (Non Fiction)
  4. The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas
  5. The Sleeping Policeman* by Andrew Taylor (library book)
  6. Small Kindnesses by Fiona Robyn (Kindle) (from TBR books)
  7. Airs and Graces by Erica James (borrowed
  8. The Glass Room* by Ann Cleeves (library book)
  9. The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien (Kindle) (from TBR books)
  10. Mrs McGinty’s Dead* by Agatha Christie (library book)

Of the 10 books, just 3 are crime fiction (marked with *) and of these my Crime Fiction Book of the Month is The Glass Room by Ann Cleeves.

Notes on the books without reviews:

  •  The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas – romantic historical fiction set in the 1940s and the present day with a predictable ending. Mair Ellis goes to Kashmir to find more about a shawl found in her grandmother’s belongings. The story switches between Mair’s journey and that of Nerys Watkins, her grandmother, a missionary’s wife, living in India during the Second World War .
  • Small Kindnesses by Fiona Robyn – an interesting gentle book, full of reminiscences as Leonard Mutch, a widower discovers his wife had a secret she kept from him for forty years. 
  • Airs and Graces by Erica James – romantic fiction, a predictable story that doesn’t tax the brain.  Ellen, a divorcee struggles to decide who she should marry Duncan, a wealthy lawyer or Matthew an artist.

The Glass Room by Ann Cleeves

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The Glass Room is the fifth book in Ann Cleeves’s Vera Stanhope series.

It’s going to be a contender for my best book of the year, because I loved it. It has everything I like in a crime fiction novel – setting, characters and a cleverly constructed plot. I didn’t guess who the murderer was but realised afterwards that all the clues had been there, skilfully woven into the narrative, hidden among the dead-ends and red herrings, so that I’d read on without realising their significance.

Set in the Northumberland countryside in an isolated country house, a number of aspiring authors are gathered at the Writers’ House, run by Miranda Barton, to work on their novels. It’s an old fortified farmhouse close to the sea, sheltered on the landward side by trees. DI Vera Stanhope’s neighbour, Joanna has gone missing and her husband, Jack is frantic to find her, so Vera, having tracked her down to the Writers’ House goes to see her, only to find that one of the visiting tutors, Professor Tony Ferdinand has been murdered in the conservatory, stabbed with a kitchen knife. And Joanna is the chief suspect.

If you’ve seen the TV series Vera, maybe you’ll have a vision of Brenda Blethyn as Vera, but that image gradually faded as I read this book. Vera is bigger, fatter, and ruder than the TV version, but above all she is a truly convincing character, exasperating and opinionated, and she can be a nightmare boss. She has no compunctions about breaking the rules, or doing things in her own way and she acknowledges that if any of the other detectives went freelance, playing the private eye, as she is doing in looking for Joanna, she’d give them ‘such a bollocking’. She cares deeply about her job and she does have a soft side, even if it is touched with cynicism:

And why had she agreed to do as Jack asked and chase around the countryside looking for Joanna? Because I’m soft as clarts. Because I like happy endings and want to bring the couple together again, like I’m some great fat Cupid in wellies. Because it would be bloody inconvenient living here without them next door. (page 10)

The interplay between the Vera and Sergeant Joe Ashworth is excellent. Joe isn’t as easily managed as Vera would want him to be and yet she likes that in him. And her relationship with the rest of her team leaves much to be desired, but she is human – and she gets results.

Alongside the mystery Ann Cleeves includes a commentary on writing and writers and on creative writing weekend retreats. This particular course shows the writing world in rather a bad light, as a place of people with huge egos, selfish and self- absorbed and with aspiring, insecure would-be-writers:

Writers were like parasites, preying on other people’s stress and misery. Objective observers like spies or detectives  (page 98)

All in all, this is a book I thoroughly enjoyed and one that kept me guessing to the end.

The Sleeping Policeman by Andrew Taylor

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Tragedy is a word that has come to have several meanings. By most definitions, the Hanslope case had elements of tragedy. Afterwards, Dougal remembered that tragedy derives from two Greek words which can be translated as goat song.

And that was appropriate too, because in one sense of the word Graham Hanslope was undoubtedly a goat. Hanslope’s goat song ended in discord on the southbound platform of the Bakerloo Line at Paddington Station. It ended with the arrival of a tube train at a few minutes after ten o’clock on the morning of Saturday 16 February. It ended, as tragedies so often end, with death and the destruction of hope. (page 1)

I borrowed The Sleeping Policeman from my local library because I’ve read and liked some of Andrew Taylor’s other books. This book is the seventh novel in the William Dougal series. I haven’t read any of the earlier books, but I don’t think it made any difference; William Dougal, himself, has just a small, but important part in the book. (The sleeping policeman in question is not a police officer – it’s a speed bump!)

Dougal, a private investigator, is hired by Hanslope, a GP, to discover who is blackmailing him after had started an affair with one of his patients. But that isn’t the whole story because Hanslope has omitted to tell Dougal all the facts and has lied to him. What follows is a tense, taut mystery, resulting in a murder, which Dougal eventually solves.

None of the characters are very likeable, in fact some of them are downright nasty, but each one of them is a well-drawn cameo. There’s a reckless hit and run, corruption in the police ranks, a series of petty thefts, hostility between two families whose teenage daughters are too friendly for their parents’ liking and a journalist whose garden is filled with gnomes. I liked it immensely and am looking out for the other William Dougal books:

(Details copied from Fantastic Fiction)
Caroline MinusculeWaiting for the End of the WorldOur Fathers' LiesAn Old School Tie
Freelance DeathBlood RelationThe Sleeping PolicemanOdd Man Out

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie

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I’ve read about half of Agatha Christie’s books ranging from her first books in the 1920s to the later ones in the 1970s and the quality of her writing does change, with some of the later books being rather loosely plotted and meandering. Cat Among the Pigeons is one of her later books, first published in 1959 and it’s one of the best of these later novels.

It’s set mainly in an exclusive and expensive girls’ school, Meadowbank, in England, said to be based on her daughter Rosalind’s school. The summer term has just started and there are some new members of staff as well as some new pupils, including Princess Shaista from Ramat, a small and rich Arab state in the Middle East, which has just suffered a revolution. Her fiancé Prince Ali Yusuf the Hereditary Sheik, has been murdered and his family jewels have disappeared.

The success of the school is down to Miss Bulstrode, the headmistress and founder of Meadowbank, but she is thinking of retiring. Miss Chadwick, who had helped Miss Bulstrode to found Meadowbank would like to be her successor, but Miss Bulstrode has other ideas. Will it be Miss Vansittart, who is her second in command, or one of the other teachers who would be able to develop the school in line with modern educational thinking? Miss Bulstrode is not sure. She is busy greeting one of the parents when her attention is distracted by one of the mothers approaching clearly in a state of advanced intoxication, so she misses something else that could very well be important. And although she feels uneasy:

There was nothing to tell her that within a few weeks Meadowbank would be plunged into a sea of trouble; that disorder, confusion and murder would reign there, that already certain events had been set in motion … (page 27)

The new staff members are not all fitting in very well. There is Miss Springer, the new Games Mistress, who is not popular with the girls and asks too many personal questions, Mlle Angele Blanche, the new French teacher, whose teaching leaves much to be desired, Ann Shapland, Miss Bulstrode’s new and efficient secretary, and last but not least Adam Goodman, the handsome young new gardener, who is good at his job and has other talents too.

As well as Princess Shaista, Jennifer Sutcliffe is new to the school this term. She’s an uncomplicated character who lives mainly for tennis. She makes friends with Julia Upjohn, who is a much more thoughtful, observant character. So when Miss Springer is found shot dead in the new Sports Pavilion, followed not long after by the murder of Miss Vansittart, it’s Julia who decides to contact Hercules Poirot.

There are several possible motives and suspects and Agatha Christie combines the murder stories with a thriller element by introducing Colonel Pikeaway, who it is hinted is in charge of British Intelligence – ‘We know all about things here. That’s what we’re for.‘ (page 46) and the mysterious Mr Robinson, who is most decidedly not an Englishman although his voice was English with no trace of an accent.

Poirot, of course, although arriving very late in the investigations, works it all out and explains what had happened. But Julia also has worked it out and without giving too much away I’m quoting this passage where she is writing an essay on the contrasting attitudes of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to murder:

Macbeth, Julia had written, liked the idea of murder and had been thinking of it a lot, but he needed a push to get him started. Once he got started he enjoyed murdering people and had no more qualms or fears. Lady Macbeth was just greedy and ambitious. She thought she didn’t mind what she did to get what she wanted. But once she’d done it, she found she didn’t like it after all. (page 239)

There in a nutshell are the motives for the murder – a ruthless disregard of the value of life and greed and ambition.