Review 2237: The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

It’s been interesting rereading a few Jane Marple books after I so recently viewed the television versions, because although I have known the identity of each murderer, I’ve been better able to judge how fair Christie is playing. That is, are there clues to the solution? In The Mirror Crack’d there are.

The villagers of St. Mary Mead are agog to hear that the famous actress, Marina Gregg, has purchased Gossington Hall (the site of The Body in the Library) and will be hosting the local fête. Miss Marple’s friend Mrs. Bantry, who used to own the house, will be a special guest.

At home, Miss Marple is a bit unhappy. She is no longer allowed to garden, and her doctor thinks she shouldn’t live alone. The solution is the kind but obnoxious Mrs. Knight, who talks in the plural and hovers and doesn’t listen to Miss Marple. One day Miss Marple sends her out shopping so she can escape and goes to investigate the new housing development. She has a fall and is helped by Heather Badcock, a foolish woman who doesn’t consider how her actions affect others.

At the fête, just after Heather has introduced herself to Marina Gregg and is again telling her how she met her, her drink is spilled. Marina gives Heather her own, and after Heather drinks it, she quickly dies. It is poisoned, but was the victim intended to be Heather or Marina? Neither woman seems to have serious enemies.

I think that this novel has one of the most powerful endings of Christie’s novels. You’ll also be happy to know that Miss Marple finds a way to rid herself of Mrs. Knight.

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Review 2219: A Pocketful of Rye

When wealthy businessman Rex Fortescue collapses and dies over tea in his office, the police are surprised to find his pocket full of rye. When they figure out how he was poisoned, they realize it must have been over breakfast not tea. That leaves his family in the frame.

His much younger new wife is having an affair, so she is the obvious suspect—that is, until she collapses over tea. Then Gladys, the house maid, is found with the laundry, strangled and with a clothespin on her nose.

Miss Marple arrives on the scene after she reads of Gladys’s death, having trained Gladys to be a maid. She is the one who makes the connection between the deaths and the old nursery rhyme. But then, what about the blackbirds? Could this have anything to do with the Blackbird Mine, over which Fortescue reputedly cheated a partner?

This is one of Christie’s more ingenious mysteries. It hangs together without seeming absurd even though the murders seem deranged. I also thought the ending was quite effective.

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Review 2205: Nemesis

Unfortunately, because my husband and I went on a Christie series TV binge last summer, I eventually remembered how Nemesis was going to end. Otherwise, I hadn’t read it before.

Miss Marple reads an obituary for Mr. Rafiel, a wealthy man whose assistance she requested to prevent a murder in A Caribbean Mystery. Some time later, his lawyers summon her. He has left her £20,000 if she will take on a project for him and get a result. The catch is that he doesn’t say what the project is.

She decides to take the project and a few days later receives tickets for a home and garden tour. At one of the stops, she receives an invitation to stay with three sisters, who have invited her at the posthumous urging of Mr. Rafiel. Here, she begins to get a sense of her mission when she learns from another tour participant, Miss Temple, that a former student, Verity Hunt, had been murdered by Michael Rafiel, Mr. Rafiel’s son, and she had been killed by love. Soon after this conversation, Miss Temple is killed by a falling boulder.

Mr. Rafiel wanted to right an injustice, Miss Marple decides. But can she figure out what it is and finish her mission?

I at first thought the writing of this one was a little choppy—lots of subject-verb-object sentences in a row with no variation. But eventually I got caught up into another clever and interesting tale.

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Review 2180: They Do It With Mirrors

I am fairly sure I have never read They Do It With Mirrors before, but as I recently watched a TV adaptation, it was difficult for me to judge how easy it would have been to predict the outcome. I suspect it wouldn’t be.

Jane Marple has not seen her old school friend Carrie Louise for many years, but their mutual friend Ruth thinks something is not right, so she asks Jane to visit if invited. Carrie Louise is a frail woman whom others yearn to protect. She was left with a fortune after the death of her first husband. Her second husband left her for a dancer. Her third husband, Lewis Serrocold, is using wings of her massive home as a rehabilitation center for young criminals.

When Jane arrives, she finds quite a few people residing in or visiting the main house. Carrie Louise’s granddaughter Gina is there with her American husband Walter. Carrie Louise’s daughter Mildred is widowed and living there. Alex and Stephen, the two sons of Carrie Louise’s second husband, are there (well, Alex soon arrives on a visit), and they all get a surprise visit from Christian Gulbrandsen, an executor of the estate trust and Carrie Louise’s stepson. He is there to talk to Lewis, who is momentarily away, but Miss Marple sees them conferring outside when Lewis returns home.

After dinner, Christian has gone to his room to write letters when one of the inmates, Edgar Lawson, strikes up an argument with Lewis Serrocold and starts flashing a gun around. Edgar sometimes says different important men are his father and has moments of confusion and paranoia. This time he says Serrocold is his father and has been spying on him. The two go into his office, from which the others can hear the argument. They hear a gun fired outside, and then the gun in the office is fired, but when they get into the office, both men are fine. Later, though, Christian Gulbrandsen is found shot to death.

When questioned by the police, Lewis tells them Christian suspected Carrie Louise was being poisoned, her arthritis symptoms being similar to slow arsenic poisoning. And sure enough, when the police check a bottle of tonic that Serrocold told her not to take, it’s poisoned.

Soon there are two more deaths, and insights are needed from Miss Marple.

There are a lot of characters in this story and perhaps they’re not as vivid as Christie’s usually are, but she has set us an entertaining puzzle to solve.

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Review 1735: #1976 Club! Sleeping Murder

With the 1976 Club looming, I picked out some books to read for October that were published in 1976. Sleeping Murder also qualifies for RIP XVI! As usual, on this first post I’m also listing anything else I’ve reviewed published in 1976. As far as I know, there are only two:

• Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream
• Touch Not the Cat

Newlywed Gwenda Reed is house hunting along the south coast of England for herself and her husband Giles, both newly arrived from New Zealand. When she comes across a house in Dillmouth, she immediately feels at home there, although she experiences a fleeting panic on the stairs. Nevertheless, she buys the home.

Gwenda is residing in it to oversee updates to the house when she begins to experience something odd. She expects the stairs down from the terrace to be in one place but they are in another. When workmen remove some bushes where she thinks the steps should be, they find the stairs used to be there. Similarly, she keeps trying to walk through the wall in the dining room where she thinks there should be a doorway. When the workmen examine the wall, they say it had a door there. She imagines a particular wallpaper in what used to be the nursery, and when a blocked cupboard in that room is opened, she sees that wallpaper inside.

Gwenda is most upset because she’s had a vision of a woman dead at the bottom of the stairs and realized it was Helen. But she has no idea who Helen is. Feeling confused, she decides to consult friends in London. Accompanying the group out for the evening is her friends’ aunt, Miss Jane Marple. After she explains what’s been happening, Miss Marple says she should find out if she ever lived in England as a child.

Inquiries find that Gwenda lived in the house when she was three. At the time, her father had a second wife named Helen. But Helen supposedly ran off with another man. Gwenda and Giles find that Helen’s half brother, Dr. Kennedy, still lives in the area. He has some letters that she sent right after she left but hasn’t heard from her since.

Gwenda and Giles begin to believe that Helen was murdered. Did Gwenda’s father kill his wife, or did someone else?

It was hard for me to judge whether this was a difficult mystery, because I vividly remembered a TV production of it. However, knowing the identity of the killer made me appreciate how skillfully Christie salts in the clues without giving too much away. The characters are clearly defined, and Miss Marple is at her cleverest.

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Review 1407: Murder at the Vicarage – #1930Club

I decided to reread Murder at the Vicarage for the 1930 Club, but it also applies to Readers Imbibing Peril. It is the first Miss Marple book, and for much of it she seems like a minor character.

The novel is narrated by Len Clement, the vicar of St. Mary Meade. He is called away one evening by what proves to be a false call for help. He arrives home late for a meeting with Mr. Protheroe, a wealthy man who is disliked by many. In his study he finds Protheroe dead, shot in the head.

Of course, there are lots of suspects and red herrings. Mr. Hawes, the curate, is behaving oddly. Mrs. Protheroe had just decided to part from Lawrence Redding, who is in love with her. Lettice Protheroe has inconsistencies in her alibi. Rumor reports that a local poacher has a grudge. A team exploring the local barrow seems to be up to something besides archaeology.

No sooner does Inspector Slack appear on the scene when first Lawrence Redding then Anne Protheroe make confessions of guilt. Miss Marple lives next to the vicarage so has some testimony to offer about its comings and goings. And she also has some interesting ideas about who may be guilty.

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Day 360: 4:50 from Paddington

While traveling by train, Miss Marple’s friend Elspeth McGillicuddy witnesses a murder on another train along a parallel track. The police find no trace of a victim, so they are inclined to think Mrs. McGillicuddy imagined the incident. Miss Marple knows her friend, however, and imagination is not her strong suit.

Jane believes the body must have been thrown off the train near an estate called Rutherford Hall. She sends her friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow in as a housekeeper to investigate, and Lucy eventually finds the body, not lying somewhere in the bushes along the track, but hidden away.

The money from the estate will eventually be divided among the grown children of Luther Crackenthorpe, a semi-invalid widower, while the house will go to his eldest surviving son. But does that have anything to do with the murder? All of the children seem to have their secrets. Cedric is a bohemian painter who lives in Ibiza, Harold is an aloof banker, Alfred is engaged in shady business deals, and Emma is a spinster who is in love with Dr. Quimper, Luther’s doctor.

The biggest puzzle is to identify the body. Who is the woman murdered on the train, and why does Lucy find her in a sarcophagus among a bunch of antiques in the stables? Soon Miss Marple is on the scene visiting Lucy at tea time. The solution will soon be divulged, we feel.

Christie is great at drawing convincing characters, and Lucy is one of her most attractive. We wish we could see more of her. 4:50 from Paddington is yet another entertaining mystery from Christie.

Day 242: The Tuesday Club Murders

The Tuesday Club Murders is a collection of Miss Marple short stories structured around a club in which the members tell each other about crimes or mysteries and the others try to solve them. Of course, Miss Marple is the only member to get the right solution, even though some of the club members are eminent jurists and a Scotland Yard detective. As usual, the other members of the club, except a few most in the know, completely underestimate her.

I’m not that fond of crime short stories because there isn’t really enough room to develop much of a plot. In particular, the format chosen for this book is even more sketchy than usual because the characters involved are only described by the story tellers. You don’t end up with a mystery so much as a puzzle, and one that you probably don’t have enough information about to solve. But then, Christie often withholds information in her novels, too.

That being said, Christie’s biggest talent is her ability to sketch believable characters with just a few words. Of course, her humor is another asset. I may have only solved half the crimes, but I laughed a few times.

Day 227: At Bertram’s Hotel

Miss Marple’s nieces and nephews don’t have much luck sending her off for a rest. At her niece’s expense, she is spending a week at Bertram’s Hotel, a place she remembers from her childhood. Although at first the hotel seems exactly the same as it was when she was young, Edwardian in appearance and yet offering every comfort despite the intercession of the war, Miss Marple can’t help feeling something isn’t right.

Another guest at the hotel is the dashing Bess Sedgwick, who has lived a life of excitement and glamor. By coincidence, her daughter Elvira, whom she deserted at the age of two, also is staying there. Soon Miss Marple has spotted them meeting separately with the notorious race car driver Ladislaus Malinkowski.

Befuddled Canon Pennyfeather goes to the airport to fly to his conference in Switzerland on the wrong day. Returning unexpectedly to his room at Bertram’s, he opens the door to find–something–but is knocked out and disappears.

In the meantime Chief Inspector Davy is investigating a huge crime network responsible for a series of robberies. In two of the incidents a witness claimed to see a reputable citizen who was actually somewhere far away from the crime at the time, but both of these men were staying at Bertram’s Hotel.

And soon there is a murder to solve. As with much of Agatha Christie’s work, the plot is overcomplicated and somewhat silly. Still, At Bertram’s Hotel is a lot of fun.

Day 74: A Caribbean Mystery

Agatha Christie is one of the best mystery writers of the so-called Golden Age of mystery writing because she so skillfully sketches believable characters and plots. Although many of the Golden Age mysteries concentrate on perplexing puzzles such as figuring out railway timetables, Christie was much more interested in the personality of the murderer and his or her motivations.

A Caribbean Mystery begins after Miss Marple has suffered a serious bout of pneumonia. Her affectionate nephew Raymond has arranged a vacation for her on an island in the Caribbean, where she can recover. But of course her vacation isn’t as restful as her nephew had hoped.

She is only half listening to boring Major Palgrave when he offers to show her the snapshot of  a murderer, but just then he sees something and quickly begins chatting about something else. That night he is found dead, apparently of a heart attack.

Miss Marple is having grave doubts about that heart attack when the chambermaid reports that before his death the Major Palgrave did not have the heart medication found in his room. Shortly thereafter, she is found stabbed to death.

Miss Marple begins sizing up her suspects. Molly Kendal, owner of the hotel with her husband Tim, has been behaving oddly, having nightmares and reporting blackouts and feelings of paranoia. Years ago, Greg Dyson’s wife died and he married her cousin Lucky within a month. Colonel Hillingdon and his wife Evelyn appear close, but are they really? And are they as friendly with the Dysons as they seem to be? The elderly and wealthy Mr. Rafiel is too feeble to be a murderer, but his secretary Esther Walters is secretive and Miss Marple spots his attendant Jackson skulking around.

As usual, Christie does a deft job of quickly limning believable characters and a complex mixture of motives and red herrings in a brief novel that is fun to read. I spotted the killer quickly but still enjoyed the book.