Tag: Agatha Christie

Top Ten Tuesday: Books Set in the 1950s

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog

Today the topic is a Freebie and I’ve chosen books Books Set in the 1950s.

Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd. The first in a sparkling new 1950s seaside mystery series, featuring sharp-eyed former nun Nora Breen.

After thirty years in a convent, Nora Breen has thrown off her habit and set her sights on the seaside town of Gore-on-Sea. Why there? Why now? Instinct tells her it’s better not to reveal her reasons straight away. She takes a room at Gulls Nest guest house and settles in to watch and listen.

I enjoyed this. It’s quirky with some odd characters. At times it feels like a cosy crime mystery, but it’s also rather dark and foreboding, whereas at other times there’s some humour and also a hint of a romance. The setting is good in a fictional 1950s British seaside town.

 Fludd by Hilary Mantel. I enjoyed this immensely – partly about religion and superstition, but also a fantasy, a fairy tale, told with wit and humour and with brilliant characterisation. It’s one of her earlier novels, set in Fetherhoughton, a drab, dreary town somewhere in a magical, half-real 1950s north England, a preserve of ignorance and superstition. The story centres on Fludd, a young priest who comes to the Church of St Thomas Aquinas to help Father Angwin, a cynical priest who has lost his faith. The Bishop, a modern man, is concerned about Father Angwin and wants to bring him and the Catholic community up to date – so the statues in the church have to go. This has a most disturbing effect on all concerned – not just the church and Father Angwin, but also the the nuns in the convent, and the school, both under the stern eye of Mother Perpetua.

An Air That Kills by Andrew Taylor, the first book in his Lydmouth crime series. The setting is Lydmouth, a small market town on the Welsh/English border in the early 1950s, just after the end of the Second World War. It begins as journalist, Jill Francis arrives to stay with her friends, Philip and Charlotte in Lydmouth, to recover from a bad experience.  Also new to the town is Inspector Richard Thornhill, who is finding it difficult to adjust to working in the local police force. Workmen digging out a drain discover a wooden box containing baby’s bones, an old brooch and some scraps of yellowed newspaper. When Major Harcutt, the local historian is consulted he found that there could be a connection to an old murder trial. 

Vengeance by Benjamin Black (a pseudonym used by John Banville), number five in Black’s Quirke Mysteries series set in Ireland in the 1950s. It begins with a suicide, that of Victor Delahaye, a business man who takes his boat out to sea and shoots himself. He had taken his partner’s son, Davy Clancy out to sea with him. The Delahayes and Clancys are interviewed – Mona Delahaye, the dead man’s young and very beautiful wife; James and Jonas Delahaye, his identical twin sons; Marguerite his sister; Jack Clancy, his ambitious, womanizing partner and Sylvia, Jack’s long-suffering wife. Then there is a second death. Why did Victor kill himself and who is the murderer, wreaking vengeance on the families?

The setting is excellent, both in location and time, with the characters wreathed in cigarette smoke, and having to find public telephones for example. 

 Death Has Deep Roots: a Second World War Mystery by Michael Gilbert. Set in 1950 it’s a mix of courtroom drama, spy novel and an adventure thriller. Victoria Lamartine, a hotel worker, and an ex-French Resistance fighter is on trial for the murder of Major Eric Thoseby, her supposed lover, and alleged father of her dead child. She is the obvious suspect – she was found standing over Thoseby’s dead body in his room at the Family Hotel in Soho, a room that was only accessed by one staircase – making this a variation on a locked room murder mystery. It was written not long after the end of the Second World War and it conveys a vivid impression of what life was like in both France and England, with memories of the war still fresh on people’s minds.

An Awfully Big Adventure, a semi-autobiographical novel set in 1950, based on Beryl Bainbridge’s own experience as an assistant stage manager in a Liverpool. A Liverpool repertory theatre company are rehearsing its Christmas production of Peter Pan. The story centres around Stella, the assistant stage manager. On the face of it this is a straight forward story of the theatre company but underneath it’s packed with emotion, pathos and drama. And it’s firmly grounded in a grim post-war 1950s England, food rationing still in operation and bombed buildings still in ruins overgrown with weeds.

Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie, a Poirot mystery, first published in 1955. It’s set in a crowded London house, owned by Mrs Nicolstis, a Greek and full of a mixed group of young students from a variety of backgrounds and cultures – from America, West Africa and India as well as an assortment from the British Isles.Items have gone missing and then one of the students commits suicide – or is it murder? And more deaths follow.

Agatha Christie reveals contemporary attitudes (1950s) to race and politics, as the characters’ prejudices come out in their discussions. There are some interesting reflections on crime and the psychology of behaviour. 

Fresh from the Country by Miss Read, set in the 1950s, this is a stand-alone novel telling the story of Anna Lacey, a newly qualified teacher, as she spends her first year teaching in Elm Hill, a new suburb in London. It highlights the differences between life in the country and the suburbs, which transported me back to the 1950s, when children were taught in large classes and the pace of life was slower than today. It was a bit disconcerting to read that Anna enjoyed smoking, but then the dangers of cigarettes were not emphasised in those days and many people did smoke.

The Blood Card by Elly Griffiths, the third book in the DI Stephens and Max Mephisto series. Known as the ‘Magic Men’ they had been part of a top-secret espionage unit during the War. This book captures the atmosphere of 1953 – a time of great change and optimism. Britain is looking forward with eager anticipation to the new Queen’s coronation. The newspapers and newsreels are full of it and more than half the homes in the country have bought a television in order to watch the coronation live- it was the first British coronation to be broadcast on television, a momentous occasion. But there are fears that an anarchist group is plotting to disrupt the coronation.

I enjoyed the insight into the history of television as Max is sceptical about performing magic on TV thinking the ‘smug grey box’ will be the death of the days of music hall, that magic tricks needed to be performed on stage not in close up with a camera over his shoulder. But he is persuaded to take part in a new show after the coronation.

Six Degrees of Separation from We Have Always Lived in the Castle to Ryan’s Christmas

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

This is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge.

A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the ones next to them in the chain.

This month we are starting with We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson is a fantastic book; a weirdly wonderful book about sisters, Merricat and Constance. They live in a grand house, away from the village, behind locked gates, feared and hated by the villagers. Merricat is an obsessive-compulsive, both she and Constance have rituals that they have to perform in an attempt to control their fears. Merricat is a most unreliable narrator.

I’m starting my chain with The Lottery is a short story also written by Shirley Jackson. It was first published on June 25, 1948, in The New Yorker, (the link takes you to the story.) The lottery is an annual rite, in which a member of a small farming village is selected by chance. This is a creepy story of casual cruelty, which I first read several years ago. The shocking consequence of being selected in the lottery is revealed only at the end.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, was first published in The New Yorker magazine on 14th October 1961. It is perhaps Muriel Spark’s most famous novel about the ‘Brodie set’. But which one of them causes her downfall and her loss of pride and self-absorption? What really impresses me about this book is the writing, so compact, so perceptive and so in control of the shifts in time backwards and forwards. It’s a joy to read.

Another book that was a joy to read is Miss Austen by Gill Hornby. This is the untold story of the most important person in Jane’s life – her sister Cassandra. After Jane’s death, Cassandra lived alone and unwed, spending her days visiting friends and relations and quietly, purposefully working to preserve her sister’s reputation. Cassandra is convinced that her own and Jane’s letters to Eliza Fowle, the mother of Cassandra’s long-dead fiancé, are still somewhere in the vicarage. Eventually she finds the letters and confronts the secrets they hold, secrets not only about Jane but about Cassandra herself. Will Cassandra reveal the most private details of Jane’s life to the world, or commit her sister’s legacy to the flames?

My next link is also a book in which letters play a key part. It’s The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie, a Golden Age of Detective Fiction novel first published in 1936. A series of murders are advertised in advance in letters to Poirot, and signed by an anonymous ‘ABC’. An ABC Railway guide is left next to each of the bodies. So the first murder is in Andover, the victim a Mrs Alice Ascher; the second in Bexhill, where Betty Barnard was murdered; and then Sir Carmichael Clarke in Churston is found dead. The police are completely puzzled and Poirot gets the victims’ relatives together to see what links if any can be found. Why did ABC commit the murders and why did he select Poirot as his adversary?

Another Golden Age murder mystery published in 1936 is Death at the President’s Lodging by Michael Innes. This is essentially a ‘locked room’ mystery. Dr Umpleby, the unpopular president of St Anthony’s College (a fictional college similar to an Oxford college)  is found in his study, shot through the head. His head was swathed in a black academic gown, a human skull beside his body and surrounding it, little piles of human bones. Inspector Appleby from Scotland Yard is in charge of the investigation, helped by Inspector Dodd from the local police force. 

Innes’s writing is intellectual, detailed, formal and scattered with frequent literary allusions and quotations. The plot is complex and in the nature of a puzzle. There are plenty of characters, the suspects being the dons of the college. 

And my final link is Ryan’s Christmas by L J Ross, another ‘locked room mystery’. DCI Ryan, and DS Phillips and their wives are stranded in Chillingham Castle when a snowstorm forces their car off the main road and into the remote heart of Northumberland. Cut off from the outside world by the snow, with no transport, mobile signals or phone lines they join the guests who had booked a ‘Candlelit Ghost Hunt’. Then Carole Black, the castle’s housekeeper is found dead lying in the snow, stabbed through the neck. There’s only one set of footpaths in the snow, and those are Carole’s, so who committed the murder?

My chain includes books by the same author, books first published in the same magazine, letters, Golden Age murder mysteries, and ‘locked room’ mysteries.

‘Next month (December 6, 2025), we’ll start with a novella that you may read as part of this year’s Novellas in November – Seascraper by Benjamin Wood.

Short Story September 2025

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Lisa at ANZ LitLovers will be hosting a new reading event – Short Story September, running from September 1 to 30. On September 1st Lisa will set up a post where all contributions can be posted so that they form a valuable resource that is easy to find.

To participate, please keep it simple.  We all know that it’s hard to review short story collections, so all you are asked to do is to read a collection and then choose just one story from that collection to review.  To sidestep all the yada-yada about how many words a short story can be, just choose a story that can be read in under an hour.

Contributions should include the name of the short story and its author, and the title of the collection that you found it in, and its editor is there is one.  Please #NameTheTranslator for all translations.  It’s fine to mention the titles of other stories in the collection that you also enjoyed, of course.

Aim for a review that’s less than 800 words, but this is not a hard-and-fast rule because some stories need less and others need more.

I’ve four collections of Agatha Christie’s short stories I’ve been meaning to read for ages. So, I got them down from the bookshelves:

Poirot’s Early Cases – Captain Hastings recounts 18 of Poirot’s early cases from the days before he was famous from theft and robbery to kidnapping and murder – were all guaranteed to test Poirot’s soon-to-be-famous ‘little grey cells’ to their absolute limit.

The Golden Ball and Other Stories – bizarre romantic entanglements, supernatural visitations and classic murders.

Miss Marple and Mystery: the Complete Short Stories, an omnibus of 55 short stories, presented in chronological order 1923 -1958.

The Complete Parker Pyne, Private Eye – this edition brings together all 14 stories featuring the rather fat and unconventional Mr Parker Pyne.

Top Five Tuesday: Books with Colours in the Title

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah at Bionic Book Worm, and it is now being hosted by Meeghan at Meeghan Reads. You can see the Top 5 Tuesday topics for the whole of 2025 here. 

Today the topic is Books with Colours in the Title.

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, a work of fiction, not a biography of Marilyn Monroe. I had to keep reminding myself of that as I was reading, because it was so easy to believe in the characters. it’s a tragic story, intense and shocking in parts. It begins with a Prologue – 3 August 1962 with Death hurtling along towards 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, Brentwood, California. It then follows Norma Jeane Baker’s life in chronological sections from The Child 1932 – 1938 to The Afterlife 1959 – 1962. It switches from one narrator to the next, and from third person to first person perspective throughout. It’s brutal, tender and both lyrical and fragmented

Blue Heaven by C J Box. The action takes place over four days in North Idaho one spring. It’s a story about two children, Annie and William who decide to go fishing without telling their mother, Monica, and witness a murder in the woods. One of the killers sees them and they run for their lives. It’s written in a style that appeals to me – straightforward storytelling, with good descriptions of locality and characters, secondly characters that are both likeable and downright nasty, but not caricatures, and finally the ending was what I hoped, and also dreaded it would be.

 The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon, set in London in 1924, with Britain still coming to terms with the aftermath of the First World War. Evelyn Gifford, one of the few pioneer female lawyers, takes on the case of Leah Marchant, who wants to get back her children who had been taken into care. She was accused of trying to kidnap her own baby. It’s early days for women to be accepted as lawyers and Evelyn struggles to defend Leah who distrusts her and wants Daniel Breen, Evelyn’s boss to defend her. It clearly shows the prejudice these women had to overcome just to qualify as lawyers, never mind the difficulties of persuading law firms to employ them and clients to accept them.

Gray Mountain by John Grisham, a book that puts the big American coal companies under the microscope, companies that are  ruining the environment by strip-mining in the Appalachian mountains. I was amazed to read the details – clear-felling the forests, scalping the earth and then blasting away the mountain tops to get at the coal. All the trees, topsoil and rocks are then dumped into the valleys, wiping out the vegetation, wildlife and streams. Gray Mountain is one of the mountains destroyed in this way.

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie. The novel is a mix of murder mystery and international crime organised by an arch-villain known as ‘the Colonel’, involving violence (but not graphic) and suspense. Anne Beddingfield saw a man fall to his death on the live rails at Hyde Park tube station. He had a terrified look on his face and turning round Anne sees a man in a brown suit, who quickly becomes The Man in the Brown Suit both to her and the newspapers. A second death follows, this time a young woman, found strangled at Mill House, the home of Sir Eustace Pedler, MP. She was thought to be a foreigner. Anne decides to investigate and the trail takes her on board the Kilmorden Castle sailing to Cape Town. As usual there are a number of suspects and Anne has to work out who she can trust and who to believe

Six Degrees of Separation from Theory and Practice to The Night Hawks

Published on by Margaret27 Comments

It’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we start with Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser, the winner of the Stella Prize for Fiction 2025, praised for its innovative structure and exploration of young love, jealousy, and literary inheritance.  I’ve not read it but it looks interesting. This is Amazon’s description:

It’s 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda, she meets artists, activists, students – and Kit. He claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, a dismaying discovery throws her work on ‘the Woolfmother’ into disarray.

Theory & Practice is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame. It makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain. Michelle de Kretser, one of Australia’s most celebrated writers, bends fiction, essay and memoir into exhilarating new shapes to uncover what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art..

I’ve read some of Virginia Woolf’s books, including my first link: Orlando, a fictionalised biography of Vita Sackville-West, based on her life. It tells the tale of an extraordinary individual who lives through centuries of English history, first as a man, then as a woman. This is a book steeped in history showing how the passage of time had changed both the landscape and climate of England along with its society. There are many vivid passages – such as her description of the ‘Great Frost’ of 1608, when the Thames was frozen for six weeks and Frost Fairs were held on the ice.

Second link: There have been several Frost Fairs over the centuries. Another one in 1669 is described in Edward Marston’s The Frost Fair, the fourth in the Christopher Redmayne Restoration series about an architect and Jonathan Bale, a parish constable. They are both visiting the fair when one of Bale’s sons gets into trouble on thin ice. They rescue the boy but in the process make a grim discovery – the frozen corpse of a man. The dead man is Jeronimo Maldini, an Italian fencing master who has been missing for some time. Redmayne is inclined to dismiss the case and leave the investigation to Bale; but all that changes when his own brother, Henry Redmayne, is charged with the murder.

Third link: The first Christopher Redmayne book is The King’s Evil set in London in September 1666, just as the Great Fire of London has begun, eventually devastating a large part of the old medieval City of London. It’s also a murder mystery. Redmayne is working to restore London after the Fire, when he becomes involved in investigating the murder of Sir Ambrose Northcott. whose body was found in the cellars of his partly built new house.

Which links nicely to my fourth link about another architect, Cat (Catherine) Hakesby: The Royal Secret by Andrew Taylor set in 1670. This is the 5th book in the Marwood and Lovett series. After designing a poultry house for the young daughter of Lord Arlington, the Secretary of State, Cat Hakesby (formerly Lovett) gains a commission to design one for Charles II’s sister, ‘Minette,’ the Duchess of Orléans. This is a complicated book, as Marwood is investigating the mysterious death of Richard Abbott, one of Lord Arlington’s men. It’s full of political intrigue, danger and conspiracy, involving witchcraft, poisonings, and tricky international relationships.

My Fifth link is conspiracy, which brings me to Agatha Christie’s They Came to Baghdad. Set in 1950 this is a story about international espionage and conspiracy. The heads of the ‘great powers‘ are secretly meeting in Baghdad, where if it all goes wrong ‘the balloon will go up with a vengeance.’ And an underground criminal organisation is out to make sure it does go wrong, aiming at ‘total war – total destruction. And then – the new Heaven and the new Earth.’ Victoria Jones, a short-hand typist, a courageous girl with a ‘natural leaning towards adventure’ and a tendency to tell lies gets involved after meeting with a young man, Edward, who is going out to Baghdad the following day to join an archaeological dig. 

My sixth link is archaeology in The Night Hawks by Elly Griffiths. Ruth Galloway is now Head of the Department of Archaeology at her old university, the fictional University of North Norfolk. The body of a young man who Detective Chief Inspector Nelson guesses is an illegal immigrant, an asylum seeker, is found on the beach at Blakeney Point. Then a skeleton, buried in a mound of what appears to be Bronze Age weapons, is also discovered on the beach by the group known as the Night Hawks when they were searching for buried treasure. Ruth, however is more interested in the hoard of Bronze Age weapons. 

My chain is mostly made up of two of my favourite genres, historical fiction and crime fiction. What is in your chain?

Next month (August 5, 2025), we’ll start with the 2025 Women’s Prize winner, The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden.

Spell the Month in Books May 2025

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

This month’s there isn’t a theme. I’ve read the first two of these three books and the third is one of my TBRs.

M is for The Madonna of the Almonds by Marina Fiorato, which I read soon after it was first published in 2009. It is a love story above all, but there is so much more as well. It’s set in Italy in the 16th century, about a young widow, Simonetta di Saronno, struggling to save her home, who meets the artist Bernadino, a protege of Leonardo da Vinci. 

Bernardino Luini, favoured apprentice of Leonardo da Vinci, is commissioned to paint a religious fresco in the hills of Lombardy. His eye is caught by the beautiful Simonetta di Saronno, a young noblewoman who has lost her husband to battle, and whose fortune is gone. Captivated by her beauty and sadness, Bernardino paints Simonetta’s likeness, immortalizing her as the Madonna in his miraculous frescoes in Saronno’s church. As the sittings progress, they fall in love, and Simonetta reciprocates Luini’s genius, with the help of a Jew, known as Manodorata (because of the golden hand replacing his own hand that had been chopped off by the Spanish Inquisition) by creating a drink for her lover a delicious liqueur, Amaretto, from the almond trees, the only crop growing on her estate.

I love the story-telling aspects of this book, its rich descriptions of art and the detailed history of the period. I love Italy, history, art history and almonds, especially Amaretto, so this book just could not fail to delight me.

A is for After the Funeral by Agatha Christie, one of her Hercule Poirot murder mysteries. I read this in 2012 and loved it.

When Cora is savagely murdered, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother’s funeral takes on a chilling significance. At the reading of Richard’s will, Cora was clearly heard to say, “It’s been hushed up very nicely, hasn’t it…But he was murdered, wasn’t he?”  In desperation, the family solicitor turns to Hercule Poirot to unravel what happened next …

I read it quickly and consequently had little idea who had killed Cora. I did spend some time looking at the family tree at the beginning of the book, working out the family relationships and who was present at Richard Abernethie’s funeral and their reaction to Cora’s question. It seemed to me that any of the family could have done it – Agatha Christie goes through the actions and thoughts of each character and there’s cause for suspicion for each one.

Apart from trying to solve the mystery I was interested in the glimpses into life in post-war Britain, where jobs are scarce, servants even more scarce and there are complaints about the economic situation, with high taxation and the prospect of properties such as the Abernethie house being turned into a hotel, or institute, or even worse being pulled down and the whole estate built over.

Y is for Yellowface by Rebecca F Yuang, one of my TBRs, which I bought because I’d read positive reviews from other bloggers.

THIS IS ONE HELL OF A STORY.

IT’S JUST NOT HERS TO TELL.

When failed writer June Hayward witnesses her rival Athena Liu die in a freak accident, she sees her opportunity… and takes it.

So what if it means stealing Athena’s final manuscript?

So what if it means ‘borrowing’ her identity?

And so what if the first lie is only the beginning…

Finally, June has the fame she always deserved. But someone is about to expose her…

What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.

Next month June 7: reflects the beginning of the library’s Summer Reading program: books that you found or currently see at the library.

The Summer Reading Challenge, delivered in partnership with public libraries across the UK, is back for 2025! Launching in June in Scotland and July in England and Wales, the Challenge invites children to embark on an exciting reading journey, either through their local library or online. This year’s theme, Story Garden, encourages young readers to explore nature and the great outdoors through reading.