Category: Crime Fiction

Wondrous Words

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Reading Agatha Christie’s books I often come across words or phrases that I’m either not sure what they mean but can get the gist of the meaning from the context, or have never come across before.

I found an example of each type whilst reading The Murder on the Links, an early Poirot mystery first published in 1923:

Traps as in this sentence: ‘I had made a somewhat hurried departure from the hotel and was busy assuring myself that I had duly collected all my traps, when the train started.‘ (page 5)

Captain Hastings is the narrator and is returning to London on the Calais train, so I thought he couldn’t be taking animal traps with him on the train and it was more likely to be his luggage. According to the Chambers Dictionary that is the meaning of the word: ‘personal luggage or belongings’. 

I didn’t know what the Bertillon system was. Poirot referred to it when talking about the lack of fingerprints on the murder weapon and remarked that ‘The veriest amateur of an English Mees knows it – thanks to the publicity the Bertillon system has been given in Paris.’ (page 35)

The Bertillon system is described in Wikipedia in the article on Anthropometry. Simple put it is a system for identifying criminals based on a series of their physical measurements introduced by Alphonse Bertillon in 1883. In 1894 England had adopted the system and had added the partial use of fingerprints. By 1900 England relied on finger prints alone.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

Wondrous Words Wednesday is hosted by Kathy at Bermuda Onion.

The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

I’m taking part in the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge. I couldn’t wait until I’d got them all in the order she wrote them so I’ve been reading them as I come across them. Some of her earlier books have been hard to find, but on a recent trip to Barter Books in Alnwick I was able to fill in some of my gaps.

I’ve read 34 of her books before finding her third book,The Murder on the Links, originally published in 1923. This is the second book featuring Hercule Poirot.  There have been many editions published since then and my copy is a paperback, published in 1960 by Pan Books.

Agatha Christie had the idea for the book after reading newspaper reports of a murder in France, in which masked men had broken into a house, killed the owner and left his wife bound and gagged. From these facts she then invented her plot, setting the book in the fictional French town of Merlinville ( midway between Boulogne and Calais), at the Villa Genevieve, next to a golf course and overlooking the sea. The owner of the villa, Mr Renauld, a South American millionaire had written to Poirot asking for his help as he feared his life was in danger.

When Poirot and Hastings arrive they are too late to help him as the night before their arrival he was found dead, lying face down in an open grave, stabbed in the back. As they are in France, Inspector Japp does not appear, instead there is a young French detective, M. Giraud, who thinks very little of Poirot’s methods and disagrees with his findings. This is very much a mystery puzzle book, with many clues and several red herrings.

In her Autobiography, Agatha Christie describes how she was writing

… in the Sherlock Holmes tradition – eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrange-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp – and I now added a ‘human foxhound’, Inspector Giraud, of the French police. Giraud despises Poirot as being old and passé. (page 290)

And it was then that she realised that she had made a mistake in starting with Poirot so old. She would have preferred to have abandoned him after her first three or four books and begun again with someone much younger, but she was stuck with him.

It is rather a melodramatic tale, but still enjoyable as Poirot unravels the mystery. An interesting subplot involves a love interest for Hastings, when he mets a young lady calling herself Cinderella. There is a hint at the end of the book that he will marry her and move to South America. Agatha Christie was stuck with Poirot, but she felt she could get rid of Hastings – she was getting rather tired of him. She didn’t write him out completely and he does reappear in later novels, visiting Poirot from his home in Argentina. I like Hastings, who in this book shares rooms with Poirot and is a ‘sort of private secretary to an MP.’

Her Autobiogaphy also reveals that Agatha Christie was not pleased with the jacket cover her publishers had designed as she felt it didn’t reflect the plot. In fact she was ‘really furious and it was agreed that in future she should see the jacket first and approve of it.’

She thought The Murder on the Links was ‘a moderately good example of its kind‘ and I liked it. My rating: 3/5.

Best new-to-me authors – January to March 2012

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise has started a new meme. The idea is to write a post about the best new-to-you crime fiction authors (or all) you’ve read so far this year, 2012. The books don’t necessarily need to be newly published. The meme will run at the end of June, September and December this year.

So far this year I’ve read 10 books by ‘new-to-me’ authors, but only 2 of those are crime fiction. They are:

The Bones of Avalon by Phil Rickman, which I read it in January on my Kindle and didn’t have time to write about it. Phil Rickman is not a new author, of course. I had heard of him but had never read any of his books. He has written several books – 11 in the Merrily Watkins series, 6 other novels, including The Bones of Avalon, and a non-fiction book.

The Bones of Avalon set in 1560, is however, Rickman’s first historical crime fiction novel, a genre I particularly like. It has everything, mystery, murder,and witchcraft as Dr John Dee (one of my favourite historical characters – I really enjoyed Peter Ackroyd’s The House of Dr Dee) sets out to discover the whereabouts of King Arthur’s bones. His search takes him to Glastonbury and into danger. Phil Rickman writes on his website: This novel is actually the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I think he pulled it off very well and I hope to read some of his other books.

The second new-to-me crime fiction author is Alanna Knight, another well established writer whose work I haven’t come across before. There is a Kindle edition of The Inspector’s Daughter, but I found a copy in my local library.

I wrote a a Book Beginnings post about it and a short account of it earlier – see here. For more details of Alanna Knight’s many books see her website.

I rated both of these books 3.5/5 and both Alanna Knight and Phil Rickman are now on my list of authors to look out for.

The other ‘new-to-me’ authors are (with links to my posts) :

Books I read in March 2012

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I read some good books in March, four of them are crime fiction, indicated below by *, and one is a memoir (Testament of Youth). The others are all fiction. (The links are to my posts on the books).

My Book of the Month has to be Pride and Prejudice and my Crime Fiction Book of the Month is a close call between the books rated 4/5, but on balance I think Peter Robinson’s Before the Poison comes out on top.

 

So far this month I’ve read 24 books, 22 of them fiction (12 of which are crime fiction), and  2 non-fiction. I’ve been making inroads into my TBR books, with 10 of the 24 books being books I’ve owned since before January 2012.

  1. The Labours of Hercules* by Agatha Christie 4/5
  2. Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain 4/5 (from TBR books)
  3. The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski 3/5 (library book)
  4. The Messenger of Athens* by Anne Zouroudi 4/5 (Kindle from TBR bks)
  5. Before the Poison* by Peter Robinson 4/5 (library book)
  6. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 5/5 (re-read)
  7. The Inspector’s Daughter* by Alanna Knight 3.5/5 (library book)
  8. The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier 3.5/5 (from TBR bks)
  9. Daphne by Justine Picardie 4/5 (from TBR bks)

Recent Reading

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I’ve read some books recently and haven’t written about them – ‘real life’ keeps getting in the way! So here are a few brief notes on three of the books I’ve read this month:

  • The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi 4/5 – the first in the Hermes Diaktoros, Greek detective series, set on a remote Greek island. Hermes investigates the death of a young woman. It’s great on location and characters, but a bit slow in parts. Each of the books in the series features one of the Seven Deadly Sins – in this one it is the sin of lust. I’ve read the third book in the series – The Doctor of Thessaly – and have the fifth one, The Whispers of Nemesis. I just need to find the second and fourth books to complete the series.
  • Before the Poison by Peter Robinson 4/5. This is a stand-alone book, about Chris Lowndes, a widower who has bought a house in the Yorkshire Dales. Sixty years earlier a man had died there and his wife Grace was convicted of his murder and hanged. Chris wants to discover whether she really was guilty. This is a convincing mystery, told alternating between the present day and the past. Another book well grounded in its locality and with great characterisation.
  • The Inspector’s Daughter by Alanna Knight 3.5/5 – the first in the Rose McQuinn Mystery series. Set in Edinburgh in 1895, Rose, recently returned from America’s Wild West, steps into the shoes of her father, DI Faro (another series of books features this detective). Her friend Alice ask her to investigate her husband’s strange behaviour as she is convinced he’s having an affair. Meanwhile there is also the mystery of the brutal murder of a servant girl to solve. Rose lives in an isolated house at the foot of Arthur’s Seat and is helped by a wild deerhound who appears just when she needs him. An interesting historical murder mystery, convincingly set in the late 19th century, when Edinburgh was developing and the Forth Railway Bridge had just been opened.

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

Kerrie’s community meme – The Alphabet in Crime Fiction – is back for 2012 – for full details see her blog, which includes a schedule showing the date that the week’s page will be posted and the letter of the week. It begins on May 21, with, of course, the letter A. Could that be a post about Agatha Christie, or one of her books, I wonder?

The rules are that each Friday you write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.

Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book’s title, the first letter of an author’s first name, or the first letter of the author’s surname, or even maybe a crime fiction “topic”. But above all, it has to be crime fiction. It is ok to skip a week.

I’ve signed up and will be posting each week where possible – some letters are always tricky!