words in scarlet ink

I didn’t realize how many Agatha Christie mysteries I’d read in 2020 until after writing up the post I wrote on Black Coffee, but it was more than a few. The rest were:

The Secret Adversary
Murder is Easy
The Early Cases of Hercule Poirot
The ABC Murders
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side
Three Act Tragedy
Mystery of the Blue Train
Partners in Crime
The Clocks
Sparkling Cyanide
The Secret of Chimneys
Poirot Investigates

I enjoyed all these stories – there are so far no Agatha Christie mysteries that I didn’t enjoy somewhat – but I think my favorites were The Secret Adversary, The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side (a repeat read from college), and Sparkling Cyanide.

The Secret Adversary is the first Tommy and Tuppence mystery I’d read, and it worked out because that’s actually the first novel they appear in. They start out as friends, and end up getting married. They appear in four novels and one collection of short stories, and unlike Poirot and Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence age as their novels progress. In this book, they’re in their early twenties, by the time they appear in their last novel, they’re in their seventies.

The Secret Adversary is also one of the Christie novels that is not a murder mystery. Christie also wrote spy/crime novels, which is what this book is and I thought it was really well done. There were plenty of red herrings, the pace was good, and the culprit is secret until the end.

The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side is a repeat for me. I think I read it for the first time in college. I liked it for its readability. The mystery was a little loose, but I love Miss Marple and I love the Lady of Shalott references, which was a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson published in (I think) 1842. By the way, I actually ended up purchasing a variety of rose called ‘The Lady of Shalott’ to plant in my garden. They’re quite beautiful.

This was a mystery I had no hope of solving – I grew up in a world where the medicine is much too advanced for me to know the significance of the solution without being able to look it up online.

Sparkling Cyanide was a bit of a locked room mystery and I’m a pretty big sucker for locked room mysteries. A group of people sat down to eat dinner (I believe on New Year’s Eve?) and one never stands up again. When the lights are out, someone slips cyanide into her glass, and when the victim drinks her cocktail, she dies. Which of her companions did it?

The detective in Sparkling Cyanide is Colonel Race. He only appears in four novels (and I thought at least one short story but I can’t find it and I may be confusing him with another character). In two novels, Race is a good friend of Hercule Poirot, and in two, including this story, which is officially his last, he’s on his own (and he’s clearly older). He’s an intelligent ex-Army officer known for his patience and his composure, and he has an ability to detect facts without attracting notice from anybody.

I solved the Sparkling Cyanide mystery but 1) only half and 2) it was based more on what I know about Christie’s pattern of characters (and what I believe may be her personal opinion on some people) than real detective work on my part (which is probably why I only solved half).

As I said, the other stories I enjoyed very much as well, but these three were my favorites. It should be noted that Partners in Crime (Tommy & Tuppence), The Early Cases of Hercule Poirot, and Poirot Investigates (Hercule Poirot) are short story collections which were no less entertaining than any of the full length novels.