Three's Company: Towards Zero | 1944

(image of US First Edition cover from here)

"I like a good detective story,' said the venerable Mr. Treaves. 

'But you know, they begin in the wrong place! They begin with the murder. But the murder is the end. The story begins long before that -- years before sometimes -- with all the causes and events that bring certain people to a certain place at a certain time on a certain day. All converging towards a given spot...And then, when the time comes -- over the top! Zero hour!' 

He sat in front of the fire and reflected on the events of the day. 'Even now,' he thought, 'some drama is in the course of preparation. If I were writing one of these amusing stories of blood and crime, I should begin now with an elderly gentleman sitting in front of the fire opening his letters -- going, unbeknownst to himself -- towards zero.'" - Towards Zero, p. 3

The Sum of It:

Towards Zero is basically about tennis and cliffs. NOT REALLY. But kind of?

The book begins in prologue, with a bunch of lawyers sitting around a fire, reminiscing about court. The wise elder amongst them, Mr. Treves, starts expounding on how there's so much background that goes into every crime committed, really the murder is the least interesting part. He returns to the story later when he decides to go on vacay in the little seaside village of Saltcreek, near the home of his friend Lady Tressilian. 

The next scene is in a hospital, with a young man who's pretty frustrated because he tried to fling himself off a cliff across the river from Lady Tressilian's house, Gull's Point, and got stuck in a tree and then someone rescued him and he doesn't understand why people wouldn't just leave him alone. He'll join us again later when he goes back to visit the scene of his survival a year later. Same time Mr. Treves is going to Saltcreek. Notice a theme?

We quickly find out that Lady Tressilian, an invalid, has a bunch of people who regularly come to visit her beach house. Among those are Neville Strange, a handsome and affable professional tennis player, his ex-wife Audrey, and his new wife, Kay. Audrey is often described as looking like a beautiful ghost #RowenaRavenclaw because she is pale and enchanting in a quiet way, while new-wife Kay is beautiful in more of a siren-y way, with auburn hair, tan skin, and flashing eyes. Needless to say, everyone is expecting #MAJORAWKWARDNESS when Neville requests that everyone come visit Lady T at the same time for a group vacay. 

They also join up with Mary Aldin, Lady T's companion/cousin, who is super capable and self-sacrificing and has a Cruella DeVille style white streak in the front of her hair. She's got a bit of a crush on, well, maybe everyone, but kind of seems like she has the feels for another family friend, Thomas Royde, who has a bum arm from an earthquake-smashing incident, grows tea in Malay or somesuch, and has long harbored feels for the beautiful ghost, Audrey Strange (Neville's first wife), because they grew up together. Ted Latimer, one of new-wife-Kay's bffs who is a #handsomeface #maybegigolo drops by to visit. 

So everybody gets together for a jolly awkward holiday at Gull's Point. There is a great deal of emphasis on underlying tensions. Everyone is a bit on edge and often caught staring at one another. Mr. Treves comes over for dinner and is like "a storm's a-brewin', watch out people" and then is promptly #MURDERED in a very indirect way by someone forcing him to take the stairs at his hotel instead of an elevator because he's got a weak heart and poor fella doesn't make it to the top. Turns out there was a sign on the elevator saying it was out of order, when it was totally operational! WHY? However, his is only the first of the #MURDERs and once the next one happens, it's a doozy, and everyone in the house is implicated. Only an outsider can figure it out! Here comes Inspector Battle, #FriendofPoirot, to do some deducing. He'll need some help from another outsider before its over and done with, but by the time the main murder actually happens, we've got ourselves a FINE KETTLE OF FISH. 

The YOA Treatment:

This was a different take on the classic murder mystery for exactly the reason cited in the lead quote above. It definitely does not start with the murder. In fact, the main murder doesn't happen til nearly a hundred pages into the book. Agatha really spends time investing in the backgrounds of each character. Without Poirot here to do all the psychological background work, we kind of get an opportunity to do some of it ourselves, which is an interesting twist. Honestly, in this way, this one is sort of similar to some of your more contemporary mysteries, like The Girl on the Train, or Black Chalk, in that it spends a great deal of time on the circumstances and the "why?" and less time on the murder itself. #Trendsetter

This one is also SO twisty. I really don't know if anyone could figure it out. In part that's a bit sneaky of Agatha, but then, that's kind of the point, and there are probably some out there who decided who the culprit was and how he/she did it before the book ended, but this is a real surprise ending, probably the most TOTALLY surprised I've been since Lord Edgware Dies, where I really didn't think the culprit was gonna be the culprit. Similarly, though even more so in this case, I was all like "noooo Agatha not that one!" I really kind of liked and had some sympathy for the culprit in this one, even though this person had some weaknesses, so I was a little bummed when they turned out to be the baddie. BUT I think that is pretty good of Agatha to create a villain who you want to like and trust, and who you're disappointed to see head off to jail in the end. 

This one is a classic, though a bit of a slow burn, given all the background Agatha works pretty hard to build up before the crime is really committed, but the resolution is totally worth it. 

THAT SAID, in the last two pages Agatha drops in one of the most random and unrealistic proposal/love scenes ever, which is kind of a buzzkill after the real resolution of the mystery, but I think maybe she thought the resolution was a bit grim, and decided to lighten things up at the end. If she had written the book now, I think her editor would have said KEEP IT DARK, LADY! 

- E. 

Where Have All the Scientists Gone?: Destination Unknown | 1954

(image from here)

"To Hilary it all had an unreal quality. It was as though she was still in a dream, mercifully protected from contact with reality. This was only a delay, only a matter of waiting. She was still on her journey - her journey of escape. She was still getting away from it all, still going towards that spot where her life would start again." -Destination Unknown, p. 27

The Sum of It:
We return for this week's second read to Caper-town aka one of those times when Agatha decided to write about espionage for a change. Destination Unknown (also known as Many Steps to Death) begins with some good old Cold War Era drama: scientists are disappearing from various countries and the British government is afraid they are defecting to the Soviet Union (#yikes). The most recent disappearee is Thomas Betterton. His wife, Olive, is quite distraught about his MIA status and tells the authorities hey can you please help me find my husband? Also, unrelated, my doctor says I'm probably due for a break down soon, so I think I need to hit up the beach so can I peace out? Investigating Official named Jessop says, okay sure, Mrs. Betterton, go have some rest and we will figure out what happened to your husband. Being a smarty, he also thinks that perhaps Olive Betterton knows EXACTLY where her husband has gone off to, and decides maybe he needs a little beach vacay as well...

MEANWHILE, one Hilary Craven is on a flight to Casablanca via Paris, basically on a farewell Europe tour before she plans to commit suicide. Her life has become quite grim due to the death of her young daughter and, shortly thereafter, her husband leaving her for another woman. There is some fog in France, so she gets put on a different flight to Casablanca (ugh, airports...), and is then even further bummed out when she finds out her original flight CRASHED and there were only a few survivors. She checks into a nice hotel in Casablanca, visits several drugstores for a stockpile of sleeping pills, has a nice dinner, and heads to her room to take all the pills. HOWEVER, before she can complete this plan, who bursts into her room but Jessop! He says, listen, I saw you buy all those pills today and I know you're planning to kill yourself. How about instead of taking pills you agree to help me out with some seriously dangerous spy work because you don't really care about being alive so if you die it's all good? Hilary deliberates for a bit, but decides to go along with Jessop's offer because she literally has nothing else to live for.

Jessop needs Hilary to impersonate Olive Betterton BECAUSE Olive was on the original Casablanca flight that crashed and, although she survived, is not expected to live much longer. Hilary goes to Olive's bedside in time to hear some ominous words about a dangerous Boris and a poem about snow before Olive dies. Armed with only these super vague clues, Hilary reads up on Olive's life, undergoes some voluntary surgery to make herself look like she had been in a plane crash, and continues Olive Betterton's trip itinerary. What follows is a wholeeeee lot of, to be frank, confusing and at times pretty boring spy drama involving MORE plane crashes, leper colonies, and hidden scientist colonies seeking to take over the world (uh...not cool, guys.)

The YOA Treatment:
I really adore the premise of this book. For the first few chapters I was really hooked on the idea of a woman abandoning suicide for a truly dangerous spy mission. The set up of this book had a very Agatha-esque feel, and yet it became very muddled in the middle, and failed to really hold my interest by the end. I admire Dame Agatha for expanding beyond her typical murder mystery novel, that, no doubt, had become kind of monotonous for her by this point in her career. And yet...spy novels were not her thing. There are moments when you can see her style peeking out, but the plot lacks that climactic twist ending that you expect when you read her works.

Also of interesting note: Destination Unknown is considered to have influence from real-life scientists defecting to the Soviet Union in the 1950s. You can read about these two men, Bruno Pontecorvo and Klaus Fuchs, and see how their stories parallel aspects of Destination Unknown.

-A.

Poirot Studies the Classics: The Labors of Hercules | 1947

First Edition cover, photo from here

"Yet there was between this Hercule Poirot and the Hercules of classical lore one point of resemblance. Both of them, undoubtedly, had been instrumental in ridding the world of certain pests...Each of them could be described as a benefactor to the society he lived in... 

What Dr. Burton said last night as he left: 'Yours are not the Labors of Hercules...' Ah, but there he was wrong, the old fossil. There should be, once again, the Labors of Hercules -- A modern Hercules. An ingenious and amusing conceit! In the period before his final retirement he would accept twelve cases, no more, no less. And those twelve cases should be selected with special reference to the twelve labors of Hercules." - The Labors of Hercules, p. 6

The Sum of It

The premise of this set of short stories is that Poirot, whose given name is Hercule, is 100% unfamiliar with Roman and Greek mythology, and really didn't know much about his classical namesake til a snobbish old Brit told him about it over claret. This seems kind of unlikely, given how cultured and urbane Poirot is, but it suits the purpose of the story and gives Agatha a chance to mock the elderly Oxford fellas who read classics and feel like they are fancy stuff, so I guess it works. 

His friend is talking about his name, and saying how Poirot certainly has a set of labors, but that they are labors of love, not like the labors of valor or whatever that Hercules undertook. But that gets ol' Poirot thinking. The two have been discussing Poirot's retirement plans, which are wholly centered around vegetable marrows, and cultivating them so that they are more flavorful. Poirot doesn't really explain why he feels like he's the man for that job, but they do talk about it quite a bit, and his friend is basically like um, Poirot, if you try to live that life you will be #SOBORED, but Poirot is totally sure it's a great plan and that he is the man to bring marrows into the future. However, he hasn't decided yet how he's gonna go out, and their conversation about Hercules gives him an idea... #THEMECRIME! 

He decides (as the quote at the top notes) that he will solve exactly twelve more crimes before retiring, all of which must correspond thematically with the various labors of Hercules. This sends him on several different globe-trotting adventures which take him from dog thieves and London society ladies to murder in a secluded Swiss ski lodge to a stolen goblet at a remote convent on the western coast of Ireland to a drug ring at a nightclub called HELL, owned by one of his favorite ladies of all time, the jewel thief Countess Vera Rossakoff. Each story is titled with the corresponding moniker of one of Hercules' labors. 

The YOA Treatment

Ahh, short stories. A great way to pay the bills. Listen, there may be people out there who actually really love short mysteries. If you're out there, and you're reading this, I'm sorry for the low level of credit we've given them so far. Also, I would love to get your insight, so please drop it in the comments section! But to me, and I feel like we're sounding like a broken record on this, the short story is just not the best vehicle for a really compelling mystery. 

In Agatha's full length novels, there is much more ability for character development beyond how golden someone's hair is or whether they have a neat mustache. There is also more room for plot twists and build up to the resolution. Given the shorter page length of the short stories, obvi, there is just not really time for too much of that, though the mysteries aren't un-clever. 

Anyhow, the theme of these contributed an added level of interest, and the total range of settings was fun, especially the part set in Ireland, because the way Agatha described it just made it sound like the perfect place to go wander around with a book and meet a romantic fisherman who looks like Matthew Goode or something (I'm pretty sure he's Irish in real life and not just in that terrible Amy Adams movie). 

"It was three months later that Hercule Poirot stood on a rocky point and surveyed the Atlantic Ocean. Gulls rose and swooped down again with long melancholy cries. The air was soft and damp...It had a beauty, a melancholy, haunted beauty, the beauty of a remote and incredible past."

So overall, of course, as a set of short stories this one wasn't bad, and there were some thematic and linguistic highlights! But I am definitely looking forward to my next full-length novel.

- E. 

Our next #YOAReadalong: Crooked House!

Image of the FIRST EDITION cover from here

Hello everyone! We feel like it's been a while, and we have loved seeing a few more folks join our ranks every time we do a #readalong, so we have been eagerly anticipating the next one, which we are now excited to announce: please join us in reading Crooked House, written in 1949.

We've really been looking forward to this particular one, because it is widely known to be one of Agatha's favorite among her own books. The official Agatha Christie site quotes her as saying, "This book is one of my own special favourite. I saved it up for years, thinking about it, working it out, saying to myself: ‘One day, when I’ve plenty of time, and want to really enjoy myself – I’ll begin it.'"

If you're curious about this one, it's another of Agatha's nursery rhyme books (as in 'There was an old man, who lived in a crooked house'). Here's a quick summary from the official Christie folks:

The Leonides are one big happy family living in a sprawling, ramshackle mansion. That is until the head of the household, Aristide, is murdered with a fatal barbiturate injection. Suspicion naturally falls on the old man’s young widow, fifty years his junior. But the murderer has reckoned without the tenacity of Charles Hayward, fiancé of the late millionaire’s granddaughter.

The ending to Crooked House is notoriously shocking, so we can't wait to hear what everyone thinks! We'll be posting about the book on September 10th, and will look forward to hearing from everybody in the comments section.

Happy reading!

-A. & E.

Autumn Leaves and Death by the Pool: Murder After Hours | 1946

Image from here (also a fun post about a fellow Agatha book collector!)

"And suddenly, with a terrific shock, with that feeling as of blurring on a cinematograph screen before the picture comes into focus, Hercule Poirot realized that this artificially set scene had a point of reality. For what he was looking down at was, if not a dead, at least a dying man. It was not red paint dripping off the edge of the concrete, it was blood. This man had been shot, and shot a very short time ago." -Murder After Hours, p. 95

The Sum of It #OLYMPICEDITION!

This book, also known as The Hollow (a title which makes way more sense than Murder After Hours, incidentally, considering said murder takes place at an estate called The Hollow and is committed during the day) was a compelling, fun read with a lush setting and a number of rich characters (rich like interesting, not like wealth, though actually most of them are wealthy as well #leisureclass, more on that later). The characters are all gathering for a weekend in the country, most of them staying at The Hollow, hosted by Lord Henry and Lady Lucy Angkatell, with the exception of Veronica Cray, a super-glam actress who's leased a little cottage nearby, and our own Hercule Poirot, who has done the same. 

Converging on The Hollow is a motley crew of Angkatell cousins and family friends. First at the house is Midge, a cousin who has fallen on somewhat trickier financial times (she had to get a JOB. In a SHOP. Quel nightmare.) Midge is a goodnatured, practical girl for whom Agatha uses adjectives like "sturdy" and "steady," with warm brown skin, so I pictured her as gymnast Ali Raisman. Midge is followed by Henrietta, a sculptor who is creative and clever, as well as tall and beautiful, and described as having hair the color of autumn leaves so she sounds like U.S. soccer player Alex Morgan to me. Next comes Edward Angkatell, the cousin who has inherited the family seat, Ainswick, and is tall and bookish with nice eyes, so basically the fictional embodiment of Australian swimmer Mitch Larkin #doll #lovetheglasses. 

Next come the Christows, Dr. John and Mrs. Gerda. Dr. John is a powerful figure with golden hair and apparently attractive to every woman on the planet, so call me crazy, but I'm casting Italian swimmer Luca Dotto here. Poor Gerda is described mostly as dull and slow, so obvi there's no Olympic equivalent, but the actress who plays her in the tv version is perfect. Lady Angkatelle, who's described as a clever but vague fairy-like creature, and her husband, Henry, who seems to be your classic British country gentleman, are a bit older than Olympians, but still seem delightful. There's also cousin David who is a grumpy communist so I'm loathe to cast him as any athlete in the interest of being politically considerate but we'll just go with ANGRY Michael Phelps. Down the lane we find Poirot and his neighbor, Veronica Cray, whose blonde bombshell looks lead us promptly to Danish swimmer Pernille Blume (who also has the prettiest name in the Olympics as well as being a super-talented medalist). 

Dynamics with this bunch are a bit tense. Basically no one likes Gerda because she's not very bright and can't keep up with the Angkatell antics, but Henrietta feels protective of her (despite the fact that Henrietta is also Gerda's husband's mistress - unbeknownst to poor slow G.) Dr. John is still not over the woman he jilted 15 years earlier and is super surprised when she - Veronica Cray - turns up to try and persuade him to come back to her #ladiesman. Midge is pining for Edward who's pining for Henrietta, cousin David is sulking about spending the weekend with his intellectually inferior relatives, Lady Angkatell is basically messing with everybody all the time, and Henry is just trying to teach everyone to shoot guns. For fun, Lady Angkatell invites the funny little detective down the lane for lunch and quite coincidentally (OR NOT?) one of the party gets #MURDERED right before he arrives. Another of the party is standing over the body with a gun, but is it the true culprit? Poirot helps the local coppers with the investigation, knowing all along that lots of people know more than they're letting on. 

The YOA Treatment:

This is a cleverly conceived tale with a plot based even more than many others on purposeful misdirection from multiple characters. Murder After Hours seems to be much more focused on the perpetrator(s?) of the crime than the victim, and allows Poirot to really tease out all the possibilities of each potential murderer. 

Like many of Agatha's books, this one dwells quite a bit on storylines of adultery. I can't really tell if extra-marital affairs were really THAT common among the British upper class in the early part of the 20th century, or if Agatha's own personal experiences were still coloring the lives of her characters. It seems to be a theme she really likes exploring; why affairs take place, what the people involved are looking for from each other, what (if any) justifications exist for the behavior, and also how such behavior impacts the other people involved. 

Murder After Hours also provides an interesting glimpse into the lives of the British leisure class at a point in time (mid-1940's) when such a class of people was really shrinking. Edward, in thinking about Midge spending her days working in a shop, bemoans to himself the fact that she "could not drop into a picture gallery, that she could not go to an afternoon concert, drive out of town on a fine summer's day, lunch in a leisurely way at a distant restaurant." It's a thought he can hardly bear, he feels so bad that Midge doesn't get to spend her days reading books and strolling through fields like he does #dreamlife. 

Don't get me wrong, I hear ya, Edward! It would be amazing to have tons of free time in which to read books, take leisurely lunches, and jaunt out to a country estate, and have the resources to do it all without any professional responsibilities. Not to mention the fact that there are of course some folks #livingthatLYFE currently. But sometimes when I read about these characters -- or even when reading about Agatha's own life growing up (sometimes they only had two servants and were forced to travel Europe for months at a time, staying in fabulous hotels, to save on expenses at home!) -- I wonder how any of it could have been real, especially now when leisure is almost a dirty word #WORK. 

Finally, Agatha was feeling REAL nostalgic for autumn days in the country when she wrote this one, because we have some very lyrical language about the colors and smells of fall, including this lovely image: 

"Henrietta had always loved the view from that particular place. She paused now just at the point where the road began to descend. All around and below her were trees, trees whose leaves were turning from gold to brown. It was a world incredibly golden and splendid in the strong autumn sunlight. Henrietta thought, 'I love autumn. It's so much richer than spring.'"

Get thee to a country house!

- E.

Nursery Rhyme Nightmares: A Pocket Full of Rye | 1953

(image from here)

"If wonder--I suppose it would be great presumption on my part--if only I could assist you in my very humble and, I'm afraid, very feminine way. This is a wicked murderer, Inspector Neele, and the wicked should not go unpunished." -Miss Marple, A Pocket Full of Rye, p. 107

The Sum of It:
My read this week turned out to be a very unexpected favorite! A Pocket Full of Rye is our third Miss Marple read in a row, and just continued to solidify my love for Agatha's elderly sleuth. A Pocket Full of Rye begins with an awful lot of death. The Fortescue family are shocked when patriarch businessman Rex Fortescue dies after a violent illness shortly after having his morning tea at the office. It turns out to be a case of #POISONING, and unlikely that he was poisoned in the office! Inspector Neele is on the case, and travels to casa de Fortescue (aka Yewtree Lodge) to see if perhaps old Rex was poisoned at breakfast? Rex's much younger second wife, Adele, emerges as a likely suspect, as she inherits quite a large amount of cash from dead Rex, and has a not so secret boyfriend on the side. HOWEVER, Inspector Neele has to cross her off his list when she turns up #POISONED as well post afternoon tea! Fortescue sons business-minded Percival and recently-returned prodigal Lancelot (yes, those are their for real names) and their wives are rattled further when the family maid, Gladys, ALSO turns up dead! And with a clothes pin on her nose...#mystery!

This last death ushers Miss Marple on to the scene. She literally just shows up on the Yewtree Lodge doorstep to discuss the Gladys death, having been the one to train young Gladys as a maid back in the day. She feels a sense of responsibility to bring her young protégée's killer to justice, and Inspector Neele is grateful for her help. He recognizes her ability to act as unassuming confident to the household. With their powers combined, they do eventually get to the bottom of who is doing all the killing at Yewtree Lodge.

The YOA Treatment:
Two interesting points emerge from A Pocket Full of Rye. The first is that Agatha has once again used a nursery rhyme theme as a plot device, and actually does so quite well this time. This set of murders seems to be follow a Mother Goose rhyme. Rex Fortescue had found some dead blackbirds in his dinner, and on his desk (seemingly a practical joke), and then upon his death, was found with rye in his pocket. His wife, Adele, was killed after "eating bread and honey," and maid Gladys was found dead "in the garden hanging out the clothes." As with other Agatha novels with a nursery rhyme theme ("Hickory, Dickory, Dock", "One, Two, Buckle my Shoe," etc.), Miss Marple and Inspector Neele must determine if the killer is just nutso, or if there is a hidden meaning behind the killings.

A second theme I found particularly interesting from this book is Miss Marple's vengeful attitude toward solving this crime. She is troubled and deeply angered by the way Gladys was demeaned after death with the clothes pin put on her nose. She describes the killer several times in her discussions with Inspector Neele as someone who must be very, very wicked. Inspector Neele comments to himself that he wouldn't have expected someone of Miss Marple demeanor to be so vindictive, and yet, understands her desire to seek justice for someone from, as she says kindly, "her part of the country." I shall not spoil the ending, but rest assured that Miss Marple gets her "surge of triumph" in the end.

-A.

Miss Marple's American Friends: They Do It With Mirrors | 1952

(image from here)

"You've got a nose for that sort of thing. You always had. You've always been a sweet innocent-looking creature, Jane, and all the time underneath nothing has ever surprised you, you always believe the worst." -Ruth Van Rydock, They Do It With Mirrors, p. 14

The Sum of It:
We are back with Miss Marple for a second time this week. This time, our favorite Jane is meeting up with an old school friend from sort of back-in-the-day study abroad situation in Europe. This American friend, Ruth Van Rydock, and Jane spend most of their catch-up discussing Ruth's increasing concern for her sister, Carrie Louise's wellbeing. Ruth can't put her finger on what's up with Carrie-Louise, just that something is amiss and will Jane please be a dear and help her get to the bottom of it? You know Miss Marple can't resist some investigating, so she goes along with Ruth's suggested ruse of Miss Marple being super poor and needing some R&R at her wealthy friend's home.

So Miss Marple heads to Stonygates, which serves not only as the home of Carrie-Louise, her third husband, Lewis Serrocold, and their vast assortment of family members (more on that momentarily), but also a kind of rehabilitation hospital/work house for youths with a criminal past. Carrie-Louise has a history of husbands with a penchant for bettering society. Her first husband, an older Swedish gentleman named Gulbrandsen, was big into charity. Her middle husband was fun-loving Johnnie Restarick who ran off with a Yugoslavian (gasp!), leaving Carrie-Louise and her vast fortune from dearly departed Gulbrandsen free to marry current hubby Lewis and take up good deeds once again (so. many. husbands.) If you think the husband situation is complicated, don't even get me started on the children and grandchildren: adopted, natural, in-law, and step-children all alike find a home with Carrie-Louise and Lewis. Child of note is Carrie-Louise's stepson, Christian Gulbrandsen. Christian, who serves on the board of trustees of the Gulbrandsen Trust (from which Stonygates receives its funding) drops by the house unexpectedly with a vague need to talk to Lewis about something important, and asking people how Carrie-Louise's health is these days #suspiciousness.

The evening's post-dinner activities get dicey when one of the troubled youths shows up demanding to talk to Lewis Serrocold, cornering him in the study, locking the door, shouting threats, and ultimately firing shots wildly. The assembled family members are stunned that the youth, Edgar, would turn so violent, but are shocked further when housekeeper Miss Bellever announces that Christian Gulbrandsen has been shot dead in his bedroom upstairs! The family and investigating officer Inspector Curry are mystified as to who would have had an opportunity to shoot Christian, since everyone was captivated by the Edgar/Lewis drama, and the rest of the troubled youths were accounted for in their rooms for the night. Was someone able to slip away? Miss Marple believes some sort of conjuring trick might just be the answer.

The YOA Treatment:
They Do It With Mirrors is a good example of Miss Marple's ability to make, and keep, friends. In many of her books we see Miss Marple able to work her way into the trust and hearts of those involved with whatever crime she's low-key investigating. Police officers typically dismiss her at first (and are often annoyed by her pointed questions), but she always earns their respect by the end. Suspects and family members of victims are also hesitant to open up to the old lady who happens to be on the scene, and yet by Miss Marple's denouement, wouldn't trust anyone else with their secrets. If you're lucky enough to be Miss Marple's friend, you will stay such for life. Many times throughout Mirrors, Miss Marple reminiscences on the fact that although she hasn't seen Carrie-Louise for some time, they always stay in touch with letters and "cards at Christmas." When Carrie-Louise needed her most (even though she didn't know it right away!), Jane Marple was there. We see this kind of loyalty in Poirot as well (I mean, he does keep Hastings around way longer than you would assume he would...), but, in my opinion, it's Miss Marple that wins the gold medal for friendship.

-A.

The Old Man and the Twee: The Body in the Library | 1941

Image from the blog Pulp Covers

"Downstairs in the lounge, by the third pillar from the left, there sits an old lady with a sweet, placid, spinsterish face and a mind that has plumbed the depths of human iniquity and taken it as all in the day's work. Her name's Miss Marple. She comes from the village of St. Mary Mead, which is a mile and a half from Gossington; she's a friend of the Bantrys and, where crime is concerned, she's the goods, Conway." 
- The Body in the Library, p. 101

The Sum of It:

Yayyyy you guys it's Miss Marple! This is only like the second legit full Miss Marple novel I've gotten to read this year and I have been so excited about it. I remained excited through the reading of it, because this one is great (is that starting to sound like a blog cliche? For real though, so many of them are really great, which is why Agatha has been crowned Queen of Mystery millions of times over in loads of countries. So we're all on board, yeah?) It all begins in an "Oh What a Beautiful Morning"-esque scene at Miss Marple's friend Dolly Bantry's estate #Oklahoma #UKnotOK #RodgersandHammersteinandAgatha. Don't believe me? Give this a whirl: 

"Mrs. Bantry was dreaming. Her sweet peas had just taken a First at the flower show. The vicar, dressed in cassock and surplice, was giving out the prizes in church. His wife wandered past, dressed in a bathing suit, but, as is the blessed habit of dreams, this fact did not arouse the disapproval of the parish in the way it would assuredly have done in real life. 

Mrs. Bantry was enjoying her dream a good deal. She usually did enjoy those early-morning dreams that were terminated by the arrival of tea. Somewhere in her inner consciousness was an awareness of the usual noises of the household. The rattle of the curtain rings on the stairs as the housemaid drew them, the noises of the second housemaid's dustpan and brush in the passage outside. In the distance the heavy noise of the front-door bolt being drawn back.

Another day was beginning. In the meantime, she must extract as much pleasure as possible from the flower show, for already its dreamlike quality was becoming apparent."

In some of her more lyrical writing, Agatha is basically depicting waking up in a grand house as the opening scene to a Broadway musical. We half expect Mrs. Bantry to subsequently be dressed by birds, BUT INSTEAD she is awoken by a quivering housemaid who busts in the door to inform the Bantrys that there is a body in the library!

Turns out there is a random stranger's corpse in the library, a young woman with platinum blonde hair, too much makeup (even in death), a cheap dress, and varnished fingers and toes. Who is this girl?? Why is she dead in the Bantrys' library? How did she get there? So many mysteries right away, and Mrs. Bantry naturally calls in Miss Marple tout suite. Eventually we learn that she's a temporary dance hostess from a resort hotel in the area who had recently gained the favor of a wealthy and aged hotel guest, Conway Jefferson, who is wheelchair-bound, though quite acute otherwise. Bantry had recently decided that he was going to adopt this rando (whose name, in life, was Ruby) and bequeath upon  her a fortune, leaving his daughter-in-law, her son, and his son-in-law, totally up a creek (his actual children died in a plane crash and he had been keeping these two semi-relatives close since then). Right away, then, there's a couple suspects: the two semi-relatives who were on the brink of being bumped out of a fortune. One problem: both have alibis. Agh so whodunnit?? The rest of the cast involves a bridge hostess, tennis coach/handsome dancing pro, a dude who can't find his car, a man who works in films, a girl guide (aka girl scout), and even a quick stop-in with our friends at the St. Mary Mead vicarage from #blogfavorite Murder at the Vicarage!

There are like four detectives on the case, one of whom is familiar with Miss Marple and wisely advises everyone else to let her in on the huddle, because he knows her to be one sharp lady. As usual, we get quite a few St. Mary Mead anecdotes-as-evidence, including a frog jumping out of a clock, as well as some Miss Marple realness on how the world is dark and full of terrors #thenightisdarkandfullofterrors. In part because the ending is not quite the same as the tv Marple version, I did NOT know who the culprit was til she FINALLY revealed it at the very end. 

The YOA Treatment:

So there's a bit of treatment in that summary, but this book provided yet more evidence that Miss Marple is really a winner. I think both of us going into this year felt sure we were Poirot devotees, and have come to realize that Miss Marple is at least giving him a run for his money. She is so clever, yet unassuming, and gets to the heart of the problem each time. In her autobiography, Agatha notes that her real interest in murder mysteries is not the criminal, but the victim. Miss Marple seems to reflect that interest in her detecting as well, always sympathetic. 

Agatha also seems to really enjoy giving her characters some flaws, and where  Poirot is quite conceited and so particular as to be ridiculous at times, Miss Marple's nosiness, seemingly absent-minded human interaction style, and frank statements sometimes rub other characters the wrong way. However, what she may lack in manners, in my opinion, she more than makes up for with her truly dark sensibility about the general depravity and evilness of the human condition #heartofdarkness. All through this book, she's cautioning people to basically not give anyone too much benefit of the doubt, and in the end, that's the reason she solves the mystery and leaves the police in her dust. 

This book was a fun read and satisfies the Marple craving nicely, for those who are so inclined (or even for those who don't know they are!)

- E.