Agatha Christie Re-Reading Project #8: Books 28-32

The next five in my Agatha Christie re-read project are now down the hatch! I said when I started doing this that it would take a while, and so it is proving, but I am really enjoying the journey, and you can't say fairer than that, can you?

I did a mixed bags this time - picked out three books I am very fond of, for quite varied reasons, and have already re-read a few times, so none of these plots came as a surprise, as well as two I didn't like much on first reading and haven't re-read before. I was interested to note the ways in which my reading of them is different now, with my middle-aged eyes, and the ways in which my response has remained consistent over time.

Over halfway now! I'm planning to clean up all the remaining Marples and Beresfords next, then swing back to do a Poirot completion journey.

Death on the Nile was among the earliest Christies I read - probably in the first five or six - and I fell madly in love with it then, and have re-read it several times since. 

I wondered how I would feel about it now, with a gap of several years since my last re-read, but I was delighted to find it is still a favourite, and quite as strong as I remembered. The setting is wonderful (I have a huge soft spot for Christie's books set in Egypt), the plot is clever but fair, and Poirot is completely on point as the best version of himself - shrewd, contemplative, and empathetic. (I have always believed that it is his ability to truly understand the emotions and motives of others - and his active listening skills - that gives him his edge as a detective).

The characters in this one are a rich tapestry, too - they are all Types, of course, but so vividly, and in some cases humorously, rendered that they jump off the page. The three members of the love triangle that occupies centre stage (this is not really a spoiler, it starts in chapter two) are all so strongly drawn as to be palpable. This is no mean trick given that certainly one of them, by my estimation two of them, and even, arguably, all three, are not at all nice or likeable people beneath the surface veneer.  There is more I would say about that if I wasn't trying to avoid spoiling the plot - I have a lengthy soliloquy about Why Character A is Bad and Should Be Read As Bad - but in the interests of keeping schtum, I won't!  I will just add that the side plot featuring the enthusiastic, naive, cheerful Celia Robson is one of my favourite B-plots in all of Christie's canon.

The solution to the mystery is satisfying in that it makes complete sense, but also quite sad. Christie, by the late 30s, was writing plots that showed a great and at times even delicate appreciation of the depth of the moral injury caused by murder, to the murderer themselves as well as those around them. This novel is a very good exemplar of that.

All in all, a cracking read, and this won't be my last visit with it! 9/10.

Written in 1950, this is possibly the best long-form example of Miss Marple in full flight - clever, nosy, a heavy brick wrapped in old-lady velvet. While I didn't love it quite as much as The Body in the Library, that's mostly down to atmosphere / setting preferences; as a mystery plot, I think it is probably slightly superior to Body, and the puzzle element is top notch.

Like Death on the Nile, the character work in this book is what elevates it. The opening chapter is a masterclass in giving quick, vivid sketches of a cast of varied people and setting up the inciting incident in a way that feels natural and embedded. Literally, the lens moves from village household to household, as each opens and reads the local newspaper, coming across the same Personals notice announcing a murder at the home of retired businesswoman, Miss Letitia Blacklock. The conversations that ensue create a strong colourful impression of who each person is - all in the space of six pages. 

In terms of modern sensibilities, the description of the character of Mitzi, the middle European refugee working as Miss Blacklock's cook, is a bit dire, somewhat redeemed by her being given a triumphant hero's journey near the end. (That's a very mild spoiler, in that a weak early misdirect raises the possibility of her being the culprit, but anyone who's read more than two of these sorts of books would not be taken in by that and it is cleared up quickly, so I don't feel bad :-)

Another very good read, and certainly worth keeping in the rotation! 8/10.

This late 50s Poirot is definitely not a fan favourite (Christie fans tend to rate it in the bottom quarter of her work, although it never reaches the depths of the true stinkers). 

That said, my guilty confession is that I really liked it when I first read it, and have enjoyed comfort re-reads several times since. Coming back to it now, in my own mid-life, all the things I enjoyed about it are still enjoyable, and although I did find the Orientalism more bothersome, the plot remains fun, engaging, and fast-moving enough to make this a happy little read.

The plot begins in the fictional middle eastern country of Ramat, where an Englishwoman and her teenage daughter are preparing to return to England after an extended holiday for the daughter's health. A revolution commences; Jennifer Sutcliffe (the daughter) becomes the unwitting courier of an Macguffin of Value out of the country, whereupon she unknowingly bears it off to her posh private girls' school, Meadowbanks. Hijinks, murders, and plots ensue!

I really enjoyed the school setting at Meadowbanks, and the cast of teacher characters, in this one, as well as the two central teenage characters, Jennifer and her best friend, the genuinely charming (to me) Julia Upjohn. I thought Christie made great use of the possibilities of a closed-circle that is not small but still has some functional limitations. Poirot does less in this book than some others - legitimately, the credit for the solve belongs jointly to Julia and her chaotic mother - but it's still really enjoyable to see him engaging with other people of high competence.

The ending is a bit on the nose (Christie had an odd yen for occasional flashes of sickly sentimentality) but overall, another goodie, knocked down a bit by the fairly unpleasant essentialist nonsense about Middle Eastern people. 7.5/10

This book is a very late Poirot, published just four years before Christie's death, and it is another one of the Poirot / Mrs Oliver stories. It also uses a familiar device that Christie employs in several novels or stories - the backwards look at an older crime, where Poirot has to try to solve something that happened many years ago with only memories and inferences to build from. (The most famous, and most successful, exemplar of this device is Five Little Pigs, one of Christie's masterpieces in my view).

When I first read Elephants Can Remember, I was a teenager, and I found the book irritating - scattered, scatty, and tangential to a fault. It would have been in my bottom ten Christies overall, although still not as low as the truly bad ones (A Passenger to Frankfurt, The Big Four, Destination Unknown, lookin' at you...)

 Re-reading it now in middle age, I found myself much more moved and saddened by the window it provides into Christie's ageing mind, and struck by some of the very accurate reflections it makes on the nature of memory and its erosion. I still wasn't in love with tne elephant motif, but the plot itself was stronger than I had remembered, and the Poirot / Mrs Oliver dynamic duo worked well.

Upgrading my rating from my teenage 5/10 to 7/10, because of the more contemplative way I read it this time which rewarded a slower cook.

This is the second full-length Tommy and Tuppence Beresford novel, and it comes after a time skip. We left the Beresfords at the end of Partners in Crime as a young married couple newly pregnant with what would turn out to be twin children, Derek and Deborah. N or M, set in the early days of World War 2, sees them as a middle-aged pair chafing at being judged too old for the war effort, while their son is off flying planes and their daughter engaged in intelligence work. 

Needless to say, they do indeed become embroiled in war work - counter-intelligence, in their case, building on their utter unremarkability paired with Tuppence's brains and Tommy's (alleged) good sense. The pair separately arrive at Sans Souci, a boarding house near the coast, where British intelligence suspects one of the Third Reich's top agents in England is operating. All that is known is that the two top agents in the country are a man designated "N" and a woman designated "M". Can the Beresfords uncover which it is, and what is going on? Spoiler alert, the answer is yes, although not, of course, until significant shenanigans ensue.

When I first read this book, I was pretty lukewarm on it, mostly because I don't really like the Beresfords, but I did concede that the solution was clever and satisfying. Re-reading it now, I still think the solution is clever (and not one that's easily guessable, although all the clues are there), but I read the overall story with kinder eyes, especially Tuppence's part. I still think it is the best Beresford book by some margin, and now I'm prepared to give it 7/10, docking a mark for Tommy because I really don't like him, and a mark for the lazy use of stereotypes for German, Polish and Irish people (although not especially pejorative by Christie's standards).

RUNNING LIST

Poirot books targeted (highlighted when read):

1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920): 6.5/10
2. The Murder on the Links (1923): 6.5/10
3. Poirot Investigates (1924, ss): 4.5/10
4. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926): 8.5/10
5. The Big Four (1927): 4/10
6. The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928): 7/10
7. Peril at End House (1932): 7/10
8. Lord Edgware Dies (1933) 
9. Murder on the Orient Express (1934) 
10. Three Act Tragedy (1935) : 6/10
11. Death in the Clouds (1935)
12. The A.B.C. Murders (1936): 8.5/10
13. Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
14. Cards on the Table (1936): 8/10
15. Murder in the Mews (1937, ss): 7/10
16. Dumb Witness (1937) 
17. Death on the Nile (1937): 9/10
18. Appointment with Death (1938)
19. Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938): 8/10
20. Sad Cypress (1940)
21. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940) 
22. Evil Under the Sun (1941): 8.5/10
23. Five Little Pigs (1942): 9/10
24. The Hollow (1946) 
25. The Labours of Hercules (1947, ss)
26. Taken at the Flood (1948) 
27. Mrs McGinty's Dead (1952)
28. After the Funeral (1953) 
29. Hickory Dickory Dock (1955)
30. Dead Man's Folly (1956): 7/10
31. Cat Among the Pigeons (1959): 7.5/10
32. The Clocks (1963)
33. Third Girl (1966)
34. Hallowe'en Party (1969)
35. Elephants Can Remember (1972): 7/10
36. Poirot's Early Cases (1974, ss)
37. Curtain (written about 1940, published 1975) 

Miss Marple books targeted (highlighted when read):

1. The Murder at the Vicarage (1930, Novel): 7.5/10
2. The Thirteen Problems (1932, short story collection featuring Miss Marple, also published as The Tuesday Club Murders): 8/10
3. The Body in the Library (1942, Novel): 8.5/10
4. The Moving Finger (1943, Novel): 5.5/10
5. A Murder Is Announced (1950, Novel): 8/10
6. They Do It with Mirrors (1952, Novel) – also published in the United States as Murder With Mirrors
7. A Pocket Full of Rye (1953, Novel): 7/10
8. 4.50 from Paddington (1957, Novel) – also published in the United States as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!
9. The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1962, Novel): 6/10
10. A Caribbean Mystery (1964, Novel): 5/10
11. At Bertram's Hotel (1965, Novel): 8/10
12. Nemesis (1971, Novel)
13. Sleeping Murder (1976, Novel)

Tommy and Tuppence and stand-alone books targeted (highlighted when read):

1. And Then There Were None (1939): 8.5/10
2. The Pale Horse (1961): 8/10
3. The Secret Adversary (1922 novel): 5.5/10
4. Partners in Crime (1929 short story collection): 6/10
5. N or M? (1941 novel): 7/10
6. By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968 novel)
7. Postern of Fate (1973 novel)