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.
Tag Archives: genre: crime fiction
Black Coffee
Agatha Christie’s Black Coffee was her first play and launched her another part of her writing career as a playwright. The premise of the story is that a scientist discovers a secret formula he was working on for explosives has been stolen. He calls in Hercule Poirot, but as Poirot, his friend and sidekick Captain Hastings, and Inspector Japp arrive, the scientist is murdered.
The play was, with the consent of the Christie estate, turned into a novel in 1998 by Charles Osborne (a writer and a classical music composer and critic). This is the version I listened to in 2020 (and the first of several Christie mysteries I read in 2020). I enjoyed this story very much, in spite of the fact that Christie didn’t actually write it in its novel form. It was more or less a locked room mystery and those are some of my favorites, plus, I enjoy Hercule Poirot a lot. I learned another fun poison, and of course read all about it.
When I saw this was the adaptation of a play I wasn’t sure what to expect. I would assume that it would be easier to go from a play to a novel under the premise that adding is easier than subtracting, but I don’t rightly know. That said, Christie always created an atmosphere that I enjoyed and wasn’t sure Osborne would be able to duplicate it, but he did a good job. I enjoyed the story tremendously and I even thought I’d solved it! But I got it wrong, haha.
It wasn’t my favorite Christie mystery but it was very enjoyable and I hope to see the stage play some day.
The Girl Who Lived Twice
The Girl Who Lived Twice is the sixth book in the Millennium saga, originally started by Stieg Larsson and continued by David Lagercrantz. This was the last book by Lagercrantz.
In some ways this book picks up where the last one left off, with Lisbeth Salander looking to find her twin sister, Camilla, who is the head of an international crime syndicate. Mikael Blomkvist is once again in a creative slump because nothing interesting is happening – until a man turns up dead under suspicious circumstances with Blomkvist’s phone number in his pocket.
With Salander’s help, as well as another the help of another journalist named Catrin Lindas, Blomkvist begins to unravel the tangled nest of wires that connects an Everest guide to the Swedish Minister of Defense, and Salander continues to chase her sister, first to Russia and then back to Sweden, ultimately cornering Camilla when Camilla goes after Blomkvist.
I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this book – it was decent enough and I liked it. Salander and Blomkvist are still a dynamic pair and Salander is still fascinating, but the stories themselves are becoming less compelling with time. I loved The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo when I first read it back in 2012(ish). Since then, the stories have gone downhill. I couldn’t say why. There was less violence in this book than the previous couple, but that is not a sticking point for me. I disliked how gory the books had become. Maybe I just don’t like Lagercrantz’s stories as much as Larsson’s. Either way, when I read/listened to this book, I was pretty glad that this was the end of the series. At the time, it was the end of the series.
But the publishing company has contracted another trilogy with Swedish writer Karin Smirnoff. The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons will be released in the English translation on August 29, 2023. I am, of course, going to read/listen to it. Hopefully, Smirnoff will be able to capture some of Larsson’s original magic.
The Outsider
I was always going to read/listen to The Outsider. It was released in 2018, and I listened to it in 2020 during Covid, of course, but I had been on the waiting list at the library for much longer – I think three or four months. Anyway, I was always going to read The Outsider because Stephen King wrote the novel around Holly Gibney, probably my favorite of his female characters to date, and maybe favorite overall.
Holly is hired when what seems to be an open and shut case begins to get out of control. The raped and mutilated body of Frankie Peterson is found, and all signs point to Terry Maitland, a teacher and local Little League coach. Maitland claims innocence, as he was at a conference with other teachers at the time of the murder, but they find his fingerprints and DNA at the crime scene – however, they also find video of him and his fingerprints at the site of the conference, with the other teachers confirming his nearly constant presence.
Maitland is eventually murdered by Ollie Peterson, Frankie’s brother, who blames Maitland for his brother’s death and his mother’s resulting fatal heart attack. Ollie is shot and killed by police. Ralph Anderson, who ordered the public arrest of Maitland and blamed for the ensuing publicity circus, is put on leave. With his dying breaths, Maitland continues to insist he’s innocent.
Holly, who has become a private investigator since we last saw her in End of Watch, takes the case when she’s approached by the investigator hired by Maitland’s attorney. Things proceed from there, with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous Sherlock Holmes quote driving the story: Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. The premise of the story is that a guy was in two places at once, and Holly knows that cannot be the case.
I enjoyed this book a lot although I saw some mixed reviews of it when I googled it briefly to refresh myself of some of the character names (I couldn’t remember Terry’s last name to save my life three years later). Once again, Stephen King sucked me into a story *so* fast. It took one chapter or less. His gift for this, at least in my case, is something I can only dream of.
I love that Holly has opened a detective agency. I love Holly. She is just as adorably quirky in this book and I found her just as endearing.
Of note: HBO made this novel into a show and I hated it because they ruined Holly. I remember seeing a lot of criticism at the time that people who disliked the TV version of Holly was because she was black and eyeroll. It wasn’t that she was black. It was that they took away all her charming quirks and just left her as someone who was socially awkward. I love that she’s a movie buff and that she bites her nails obsessively and that she’s very sweet and loyal once you get to know her. None of what made her wonderful came through in the adaptation. I was super glad when HBO decided not to pick up season 02.
Better Holly news! Stephen King is publishing another novel focused around Holly later this year, and I’m so excited that I’m tempted to preorder it.
Lethal White
Lethal White is the fourth Cormoran Strike novel. As usual, I enjoyed it.
As usual, the main narrative of the novel is a murder investigation, this one triggered by a young man with a mental illness who believes he may have witnessed a child’s murder and burial in the woods near his home some years before the start of the novel.
The case leads to the Minister of Culture, Jasper Chiswell, and the investigation into his son Freddie’s death in Afghanistan, as well as the rest of his family and some left wing environmental activists.
This book also features art, which I am on and off randomly obsessed with.
I enjoyed Lethal White. I thought the motive was excellent and the story was well written.
My favorite part of the series continues to be Robin. She’s smart, determined, quite a bit ballsy, and I admire her struggle with PTSD because 1) it’s hard and 2) she does a lot of things I feel like I would do if I had PTSD. But anyway, I like everything about her except her sticking by her unsupportive boyfriend/fiancé/husband even though he’s a selfish cow. BUT THAT WAS FINALLY REMEDIED IN THIS BOOK. SHE FINALLY DUMPS HIM.
This is clearly setting up Robin and Strike as…endgame? Not 100% sure about that and not 100% certain how I feel about it, but honestly it doesn’t matter because OMG SHE DUMPED MATTHEW AND THANK GOD BECAUSE HE WAS AWFUL.
I don’t want to spoil too much of the case. I enjoy the cases in these stories because I find them interesting and difficult to work out (I don’t enjoy stories where I work out the end too much, makes me feel like I wasted my time). So I’ll cut this off here. BUT ROBIN DUMPED MATTHEW. YAY.
words in scarlet ink 