Tag: Agatha Christie

The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie: Book Review

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

As I’ve written an ABC of Agatha Christie for the Agatha Christie Blog tour and found the ABC Wednesday site, I thought I’d carried on with the alphabet theme and read Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders. I’m so glad I did because it’s one of her best, or at least I think it is.

My copy is in a compilation volume along with Why Didn’t They Ask Evans. The ABC Murders was first published in 1936.

It’s narrated by Captain Hastings, for the most part, interspersed by chapters written in the third person, which Hastings assures us are accurate and have been ‘vetted’ by Poirot himself. I thought that was interesting and it alerted me to read those chapters carefully. What follows is a series of murders advertised in advance by letters to Poirot, and signed by an anonymous ‘ABC’. An ABC Railway 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.

The only thing that seems to link them is that they were killed by the same person and that in each case there is a person who be the obvious suspect as the murderer if it hadn’t been for the ABC murderer. Poirot was convinced that one or possibly all of the relatives ‘knows something that they do not know they know.’ And indeed that was so. In Poirot’s final explanation of the case he admitted that all along he had been worried over the why? Why did ABC commit the murders and why did he select Poirot as his adversary?

Quite early on the book I had my suspicions about the identity of ABC but Agatha Christie was an expert at providing plenty of red herrings and twist and turns, and of course I was actually just as baffled as the police (quite an array of police, including a Chief Constable and an Assistant Commissioner, were involved from different forces around the country as well as Inspector Japp) and Doctor Thompson, a ‘famous alienist’. It was only right at the end that I worked out this ingenious mystery.

4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie: Book Review

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

4.50 from Paddington 1

I’d expected the 4.50 from Paddington (first published in 1957) to be set on a train going by its title, but actually it just begins on the train. Train timetables and routes feature quite highly though. Mrs McGillicuddy was going home from Christmas shopping in London when she saw from the window of her train a murder being committed in a train travelling on a parallel line. But nobody believes her because there is no trace of a body and no one is reported missing. Nobody, that is except for her friend Miss Marple.

Miss Marple is getting older and more feeble and she hasn’t got the physical strength to get about and do things as she would like. But she has a theory about the whereabouts of the woman’s body, having worked out the most likely place that a body could have been pushed or thrown out of the train and she enlists the help of Lucy Eyelesbarrow to find it. This takes Lucy to Rutherford Hall, the home of the Crackenthorpe family, a family with many secrets and full of tension.

It’s an intriguing puzzle because you know there has been a murder, that the victim was a woman but her identity is not known, until much later in the book. You also know that the murderer is a man and there are plenty of male suspects to consider. Even though Miss Marple explains it all at the end of the book and says that it was very, very simple – the simplest kind of crime, I didn’t find it simple at all and had no idea who the killer was or even the victim. How Miss Marple worked it out is down to intuition and she tricks the murderer into confessing his crime.

Sunday Salon – Current Books

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

I finished reading The Fall by Simon Mawer yesterday. It is the story of Rob Dewar and Jamie Matthewson from their childhood up to Jamie’s death 40 years later. But it’s also the story of their parents and how their lives are interlinked. I found it enthralling, one of those books that make me want to look at the ending to see how it all turns out. I managed to stop myself, however, and read impatiently to the end anxious to know what actually happened between them all.

It moves between the two generations beginning in the present day, when Rob hears on the news that Jamie, a renowned mountaineer has fallen to his death in Snowdonia. No one is sure whether it was an accident or suicide. Then it moves  back 40 years to the time when the two boys met, both fatherless – Jamie’s dad, Guy went missing when climbing Kangchenjunga and Rob’s parents are divorced, and back yet further again to 1940 when Guy Matthewson met the boys’ mothers – Meg (later calling herself Caroline) and Diana. And so  the drama unfolds in the mountains of Wales and the Alps, culminating on the North Face of the Eiger.

The Fall is not just a gripping account of the dangers of rock climbing and mountaineering, but it’s also a love story, with the intricacies of relationships, and love, loss and betrayal at its core. The love stories and the climbing scenes are both shown through the imagery of falling with all its ambiguities – actual falls, falling in love, falling pregnant and falling from grace. It’s beautifully written, capturing not only the mountain landscape but also London during the Blitz. This is the second excellent book by Mawer that I’ve read, even though it has a rather predictable ending.

I’m still reading Agatha Christie’s  An Autobiography and will be for some time as it is long and detailed – 550 pages printed in a very small font, which makes it impossible for me to read it in bed. But it is fascinating. It’s not just an account of her life but is full of her thoughts and questions about the nature of life and memory:

I am today the same person as that solemn little girl with pale flaxen sausage-curls. the house in which the spirit dwells, grows, develops instincts and tastes and emotions and intellectual capacities, but I myself, the true Agatha, am the same. I do not know the whole Agatha. The whole Agatha, so I believe, is known only to God.

So there we are, all of us, little Agatha Miller, and big Agatha Miller, and Agatha Christie and Agatha Mallowan proceeding on our way – where? That one doesn’t know – which of course makes life exciting. I have always thought life exciting and I still do. (page 11)

I’ll be writing more about Agatha Christie on Wednesday for my contribution to the Agatha Christie Blog Tour.

Agatha Christie Blog Tour

Published on by Margaret

On 15 September 2010 Agatha Christie would have been 120 years old.

Over at the ACRC Blog Carnival we are taking part in world wide celebrations with a blog carnival tour from 1-30 September 2010.

My contribution will be on 22 September. The schedule for the blog tour is at the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge site, where you can check out what the other participants write each day.

Teaser Tuesday – 4.50 from Paddington

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Share a couple or more sentences from the book you’re currently reading. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your ‘teaser’ from €¦ that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!


This week one of the books I’m reading is 4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie, in which a woman is killed on a train and then her body can’t be found. Miss Marple gets involved. As she is by now a frail old lady told by her doctor to take things easy she enlists the help of Lucy Eyelesbarrow in finding out what actually happened. This works out very well, mainly because of Lucy’s thoroughness and Miss Marple’s powers of deduction.  This is how she thinks about it:

Of course, I am somewhat handicapped by not actually being on the spot. It is so helpful, I always feel, when people remind you of other people – because types are alike everywhere and that is such a valuable guide.

…

One is inclined to guess – and guessing would be very wrong when it is a question of anything as serious as murder. All one can do is to observe the people concerned – or who might have been concerned – and see of whom  they remind you. (page 121)

Book Beginnings on Friday

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted by Becky at Page Turners. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you’re reading. If you like, share with everyone why you do, or do not, like the sentence.

I’m just about to start reading 4.50 From Paddington by Agatha Christie. The first sentence is:

Mrs McGillicuddy panted along the platform in the wake of the porter carrying her suitcase.

I like this sentence because it paints a picture and I know immediately that Mrs McGillicuddy is not a young or a fit woman, as she’s out of breath, or she’s running late for the train. The next few sentences pad out the picture of a woman who is short and stout, carrying a large quantity of parcels as a result of Christmas shopping. So I also know that it is most likely to be December and as she has been shopping she is most likely to be going home and she’s probably tired out.

As this is an Agatha Christie book I know there’ll be a murder and I also know from the blurb that she is about to witness the murder on a passing train through the train window. Now I just need to get reading.