Miss Marple's Last Case: Sleeping Murder | 1976

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"No," said Miss Marple. "You believed him. It really is very dangerous to believe people. I never have for years." - Sleeping Murder

The Sum of It

Gwenda Reed, a young lady who grew up in New Zealand, has been sent to England by her new husband, Giles, to find them a house along the coast. She spies a white Victorian house from the road outside the town of Dillmouth, and gets a feeling that its the house for her. She goes about renovating the house based on her intuition, envisioning a new door connecting the dining room and drawing room, choosing a wallpaper of cornflowers and red poppies for a room that she feels used to be a nursery, asking the gardener to cut a new walkway in the garden. Only, it turns out there used to be a door where she asked for a new one to be cut, and a cupboard in the room that had been painted shut revealed old wallpaper exactly like what she had asked for, and when the gardeners went to cut the new path, evidence of an old path in the same spot was found. 

Gwenda starts thinking she's psychic or something, which weirds her out, and so she decides to get away for a bit to visit her husband's friend #FamousNephew Raymond West, along with his wife and aunt, one Miss Jane Marple, in London. While they're watching the play The Duchess of Malfi, a character utters the line: "cover her face, mine eyes dazzle; she died young" and Gwenda shrieks, jumps out of her seat, runs out of the theater and takes a cab back to Raymond's house where she sits shivering in bed until Miss Marple comes in with a water bottle and a calm request that Gwenda tell her what exactly is going on. Gwenda finally tells her that when she heard the line, she immediately envisioned a man with "monkey's paws" strangling a beautiful blonde woman in the foyer of her house, then saying those exact words. Somehow, Gwenda is sure this woman's name was Helen. She tells Miss Marple about the other weird stuff going on related to her house, and that she's afraid she's going nuts.

Miss Marple explains that what makes more sense is that Gwenda has actually been in the house before, and maybe even witnessed a murder, even though Gwenda is sure she's never been to England. However, a bit of investigating reveals that her late father actually took her to England, to the very house, to live with her young stepmother, Helen, for a couple years when Gwenda was a baby. The stepmother eventually disappeared, and her father died soon after, having sent little Gwenda to live with relatives in New Zealand. Once she hears this, Gwenda is like oh crap was my stepmother #MURDERED in my house, and did I see it as a tiny child?! She and her husband Giles decide to start investigating, even though Miss Marple tells them they really ought to let "sleeping murder" lie, as getting mixed up in an old crime like this is #DANGEROUS. They're like yeah yeah this is our house, we have to protect it #HomeAlone and decide to embark on digging up old relatives,  lovers, and employees of Helen's and trying to get to the bottom of why she really disappeared all those years ago. Out of concern (and probably curiosity, knowing her) Miss Marple arranges to visit some family friends in Dillmouth so she can keep an eye on things and help them out. Turns out in the end that it's a bloody good thing, too! 

The YOA Treatment

As we were reading this one, we were both thinking "man, Agatha might have struggled a bit with Tommy and Tuppence in old age but she is still on FIRE with Miss Marple!" Then Audrey remembered that Sleeping Murder is actually one of two books, along with the last Poirot, Curtain, that Agatha always said she wrote during WWII and left in a safe in the names of her daughter and husband, for posterity's sake (and in the way of an inheritance, should the war prove fatal for Agatha, EEK thank goodness it didn't, not only because we would have missed out on so many great books!!) So, this final Miss Marple was actually written long before several others that were released before this one was published following Agatha's eventual death in the 1970s. 

Regardless, this book is top form Agatha, a very creepy and mysterious mystery that absolutely keeps you guessing until the very end (as long as you haven't seen one of the two TV adaptations, or, if you've seen the ITV Marple version, you'll still be guessing as to when the troop of summer stock actors will turn up [spoiler: they are not in the book]). It really is a very clever concept with some truly deceptive red herrings, and the initial premise of a potentially haunted or sentient house reminded us of some other classics, like Henry James' The Turn of the Screw or one of our favorite recent novels, Rebecca Makkai's The Hundred-Year House. 

While the real onus of the sleuthing is left to Gwenda and Giles, Miss Marple guides them along in their amateur detecting and steps in to help when she's needed. Since this book was technically written before Agatha let Miss Marple start getting really frail, in light of the last few Marples we've been reading, it was also nice to bid farewell to our favorite lady sleuth when she's still depicted in her prime, weeding in the garden, running up stairs, and garnering the respect of police inspectors all over England. 

One of the most surprising things about The Year of Agatha for both of us has been that we truly enjoyed Miss Marple's mysteries even more than our beloved Poirot's! The joy and mischievous twinkle of Miss M's sleuthing style, the cozy nature of her environs and the clever, dark-horse nature of her character are a delight to read. While we've finished all the Marple books at this point, we feel confident that we'll be revisiting her stories many times over the years to come. 

- E. & A. 

P.s. We'll post about Curtain, and about our plans for 2017, after Audrey returns from her honeymoon later this week! 

Tommy & Tuppence Off Into the Sunset: Postern of Fate | 1973

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"I suppose without curiosity a man would be a tortoise. Very comfortable life, a tortoise has. Goes to sleep all winter and doesn't eat anything more than grass as far as I know, to live all the summer. Not an interesting life perhaps, but a very peaceful one." - Postern of Fate

The Sum of It

In this finale of the Tommy and Tuppence tales, our favorite bantering couple is in their sixties (aka elderly if you ask Agatha) and have acquired a new house in a cozy little seaside village in which to spend their sunset years. Along with the house, they bought a bunch of the old books in the shelves, as well as a shed full of random junk. As Tuppence is going through all the old books, she finds some strategic underlining that reveals a secret message: Mary Jordan did not die naturally. Clearly our curious friend Tuppence isn't just going to let such a message go, so she and Tommy start poking around their new little town to see if anyone has heard of Mary Jordan, or the little boy who left the cryptic message in his book, Alexander Parkinson. Turns out there are all kinds of rumors about a girl named Mary Jordan going back to WWI, some saying she was a German spy, some saying she was a British spy, all saying she died of accidental poisoning. Tommy and Tuppence have several very repetitive conversations with their neighbors, all of whom seem to have heard of the couple's apparently nationwide fame following their capture of a German spy in the last Tommy and Tuppence tale, N or M, and are very excited to talk about that over and over again. 

Tommy eventually starts going through some official channels to obtain information, including Mr. Pikeaway and Mr. Robinson, both of whom featured prominently in the non-Tommy and Tuppence story Passenger to Frankfurt. Meanwhile Tuppence is making the rounds to all the village's oldest inhabitants to see if they know anything useful about Mary Jordan, what she might have been spying about, and what perhaps might be hidden around the house, since so many people seem to think that something spy-related is on their property still. Despite a stated desire to keep their research on the down-low, Tuppence eventually enlists both their elderly gardener Isaac and a huge troop of neighborhood children in helping her track down information, which eventually results in old Isaac getting #MURDERED in Tuppence's own garden shed! There are some mysterious objects in there, including two garden stools in differing shades of blue known apparently as Oxford and Cambridge, as well as a giant wooden rocking horse thing, Mathilda, and a child's toy car, called Truelove for unknown reasons. Tommy and Tuppence narrow their search to these items, but while they're digging around to get close to a clue, someone takes a shot at poor Tuppence from a clump of grass! Their dog Hannibal chases the criminal off, and it takes a little intervention from Mr. Robinson and Mr. Pikeaway to finally clear up who the baddies in town still are. 

The YOA Treatment 

Alas, guys. As much as I love Tommy and Tuppence -- and YOU KNOW I truly do love them -- this book was pretty bad. All their old fun banter was replaced with deadly dull, amazingly repetitive conversations about not being able to remember things: names, places, nationalities, what a census is, quotes from books, etc., etc. That really took a lot of the wind out of my sails in terms of enjoying their detecting. The same was true of basically every conversation they had with anyone else, child or elderly neighbor, ALL of which consisted of someone trying to remember something that doesn't seem that hard to remember, "Err, she was German. Or maybe Russian. Or was it French?" "Oh yeah I remember who lived there, something like Parks. Or was it Parker? Or maybe Parkinson?" The whole time I'm like IT'S PARKINSON Why are we spending time on this conversation?? It was somewhat frustrating, but I had to remind myself that given that Agatha was getting on in years, this was probably a frustrating experience in her own life too!

Additionally, the mystery here -- who killed a British spy during WWI and what might she have hidden on their property before she was killed like 50 years ago -- was either not sufficiently compelling or not sufficiently established so as to really hold one's interest. I kept forgetting (maybe that was on purpose, in keeping with the book's theme) what Tommy and Tuppence were looking for. I think another thing that I have always loved about all the other Tommy and Tuppence stories has been the fairly rapid pace of the action. While some people prefer Agatha's more intellectual mysteries, like Poirot stories, I've always thought she writes a cracking good thriller, and those have been some of my favorite reads. However, I think in her later years, and this is one of the last three books she wrote, that just wasn't really her speed anymore. Over all, this last Tommy and Tuppence tale was definitely my least favorite of the books about them, and I found myself wishing she had allowed them to stay a little younger as she herself grew old, so that their mysteries would still feel fresh. 

We've only got two more books to report on before our Year of Agatha concludes! Stay tuned for Sleeping Murder and Curtain, the last Marple and Poirot books respectively, as well as a post letting you know about the direction we're planning on taking the blog in 2017.

- E. 

Something's Rotten in the State of Meadowbank: Cat Among the Pigeons | 1959

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"But you must remember this," said Miss Bulstrode, "one or other of the girls may wish to make herself important by exaggerating some incident or even by inventing one. Girls do very odd things..." -Cat Among the Pigeons, p. 94

The Sum of It:
As we get closer and closer to the end of our Agatha journey this year, I am becoming more and more sad about saying goodbye to Poirot! Although Emily and I discovered this year that we prefer a Miss Marple book (#sorryHercule), it was still sad to realize this was my second to last Poirot read! Okay so on to the summarizing:

Our story begins in Ramat (a fictional Middle Eastern country) where the Prince of the land (one Prince Ali Yusef, Hereditary Sheik of Ramat) is consulting his British private pilot and pal, Bob Rawlinson. There's a revolution going on, and Prince Ali has decided he needs to flee the country or be killed. Bob agrees to fly him out, but before they go, Prince Ali entrusts Bob with a huge task: thinking of a way to smuggle nearly a million pounds's worth of jewels out of the country! Bob is like GEEZ, LOUISE HOW DO I DO THAT? The palace is full of spies, and the two men's plane ride will be dangerous enough. Luckily, Bob's sister and niece have been visiting him, and they should be able to leave the country un-searched. Bob goes to their hotel to make the jewel arrangements and potentially bid farewell (forever!?) to his family, but they are not there. He spends some time in their room doing something mysterious to hide the jewels, and then takes off with Prince Ali on their flight to freedom.

Some months later, Bob's niece, Jennifer, is one of many girls arriving at fancy-dancy school, Meadowbank, for the start of term. The school is run by "headmistress extraordinaire" Miss Bulstrode, who prides herself on running an establishment that takes on the brightest students, with a couple of princesses sprinkled in for the wow factor. One of these princesses is Princess Shaista of Ramat. Princess Shaista is fond of touting the fact that a) she is royal, b) she was engaged to her cousin, the now deceased Prince Ali (Bob and Ali's plane crashed in the mountains as they attempted to flee #RIP #sadface), and c) as an important royal, she is likely to be kidnapped at any moment. Miss Bulstrode and Co. assume she is just a dramatic teenage girl and ignore her fears.

Meadowbank is experiencing an influx of new staff, notably a new games mistress, Miss Springer, a new French mistress, Mlle. Blanche, and a young gardener named Adam, who is repeatedly described as obnoxious to the Meadowbank staff, as they assume all the young girls will be in love with him (#accurate). We learn early on that Gardener Adam is actually not a gardener (well, sort of, apparently his mom was good with plants?), but in fact a secret agent sent to keep an eye on Princess Shaista. The school year seems to be going along swimmingly, until games mistress Miss Springer is found #MURDERED in the new sports pavilion! Although a rather brusque and disliked woman, there doesn't seem to be much motive for her death. Local Inspector Kelsey is doing his best on the case, and then has to work double time when there is a SECOND murder, and a kidnapping to boot! The case needs a professional, and so, nearly 3/4 through the book, one of Meadowbank's plucky students gets herself to London to bring in none other than Hercule Poirot to make sense of it all. As he makes his way through his usual interviews, it becomes apparent that something (or more importantly, someONE!) is not right this year at Meadowbank...there is a cat among the pigeons!

The YOA Treatment:
When I first started reading this book, it felt a bit like Agatha was in two places at once. The opening scenes set in Ramat (and the following intrigue) felt very much like They Came to Baghdad or Destination Unknown. And then the rest of the story set at Meadowbank felt like her usual English countryside murder mystery. However, she did a fairly good job of bringing the two together and leaves you with a story that is one part caper, one part whodunit. I was a bit disappointed that Poirot didn't come into the picture earlier (and when he did, he figured things out awwwwfully quickly), but the cast of colorful Meadowbank characters kept my attention until it was finally time for Hercule's appearance.

I also admire Agatha's take on a bit of a coming of age story by setting this mystery at a girl's school. Quite a bit of the story is seen through the eyes of several of Meadowbank's students and it's entertaining to see how their adolescent trials and tribulations fit into the plot. Secret cigarettes are discovered, tennis rackets are unraveling, tiffs are had with Mother, and the halls are thick with gossip about the teachers. I'm attempting to work my way through Emma Cline's truly excellent book, The Girls, and while Cat Among the Pigeons is vastly different, I get some of those same pangs of recognition of my younger self like "Oh wow, that IS what it was like to be 15 and have a crush on the hot guy that mows the lawn at your school."

Overall, a read that's fun and intriguing and with a bit of Poirot to boot!

-A.

Star Struck: The Mirror Crack'd | 1962

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"I don't think," he said gently, "that anything that you or I could say about murders is likely unduly to excite or shock Miss Marple. I can assure you, my dear Miss Knight, that Miss Marple can contemplate murder and sudden death and indeed crime of all kinds with the utmost equanimity." - The Mirror Crack'd, p. 203

The Sum of It:

Times, they are a'changin' (ain't that the truth, AGH) in St. Mary Mead, and Miss Marple is trying to come to terms with it. There's a new "development" with lots of brand new houses built all close together, a new supermarket (where they expect you to shop for your own groceries #ew), and even Miss Marple's friend Mrs. Dolly Bantry has sold her old estate, Gossington Hall, and is living in the lodge at the gates. Gossington has been purchased by an American film star, Marina Gregg, on the waning end of her fame, and her husband, which has the town all a-twitter with celebrity gossip. After a recent bout of illness, and getting quite on in years, Miss Marple is constantly frustrated with the limitations she finds on herself, from her inability to tend her own garden to dropped stitches in her knitting, and worst of all, to her new live-in help, Miss Knight, insisted upon by nephew Raymond and Miss Marple's doctor. Miss Knight is always up in Miss Marple's grill and treats her like a senile child (does that make sense? well, she does). What Miss Marple needs is a good murder to consider, and soon a party at Gossington Hall provides her with just that!

Dolly gets invited to the party, since it's her own former house, and she's just about to meet the movie star, Marina Gregg, when Ms. Gregg's face freezes with what appears to be "dread" during a conversation with the woman in line in front of Dolly, Heather Badcock. The book's title comes from Dolly's description of Ms. Gregg's face at this time, like Tennyson's Lady of Shalott when the curse has come upon her. Just a few minutes later at the party, Heather Badcock drops dead, #MURDERED with poison in her daquiri! Turns out she had switched drinks with Ms. Gregg so everyone is like uh oh, looks like someone's got it out for you, Marina! While Miss Marple tries to work out what exactly happened, a few more people die (or disappear!) before she's able to work out just what it was that came upon Marina Gregg that day at the party. 

The YOA Treatment:

Honestly this is a rough week here in the states, and it feels a bit difficult to be cheerful and creative. Even so, it was nice to have a visit from one of our favorites, Miss Marple, who like a certain candidate we know, simply refuses to acknowledge anyone underestimating her, and just continues to do her thing like a boss #WEREWITHHER. 

At this point, Miss Marple is quite an old lady, which she was a bit when Agatha first started writing about her, but now she's been poking around solving mysteries for quite some time, and people are starting to reference her as "about 100 years old" and telling her she needs to take midday naps and try easier knitting patterns. While she's quite aware of her physical capabilities, she's also quite aware that mentally she's still sharp as a tack, so she has to do a bit of sneaking to let her detective flag fly, especially behind the back of her live-in help, Miss Knight, who is just #theworst. 

By the end of the book, though, Miss Marple has gathered about her some new allies, from police to her bright young housekeeper, Cherry, and has proved yet again that she's got what it takes to do her own thing, even if she needs a bit of help around the house now and then. I really enjoyed seeing her continue to hold her own, while being perfectly frank with herself about what she was and was not capable of. Sometimes that type of thing is depicted sadly, and with frustration, but the way Agatha wrote it came across as refreshing and encouraging, especially in a week when the ladies of the world could use a bit of encouragement. 

- E. 

One Wedding & Two Funerals: Crooked House | 1948

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“I've never met a murderer who wasn't vain... It's their vanity that leads to their undoing, nine times out of ten. They may be frightened of being caught, but they can't help strutting and boasting and usually they're sure they've been far too clever to be caught.” 

― Crooked House, p. 87

The Sum of It:
IT'S SO GOOD! K, got that out of the way. This one is narrated by Charles, a tall cutie-patootie who falls in love with this girl Sophia while they're out in Egypt at the end of WWII. Sophia is beautiful and has crisp brown hair and is quite English looking thus he is taken with her, and by the time she's about to head home he decides to pre-propose. She tells him to look her up when he gets back in a few years and she'll be thrilled to see him. She also tells him all about her unique familia, the Leonides clan. Her grandfather, Aristide, is an old Greek who came to England and made his fortune in restaurants and catering businesses. He built his first wife a great big crazy looking house and since her death, basically his whole family lives there in separate apartments within the rambling structure. Sophia jokingly calls it a "crooked house" from the nursery rhyme, and says that they're a crooked family, though not dishonest, just intertwined.

Charles is so pumped when he returns to England to be able to propose to the lovely Sophia who agrees to meet him for dinner the day he gets back, even though her beloved grandfather has just passed away. Charles can't wait to get the wedding bells a'chiming, but Sophia is like hold up fella, turns out grandfather was #MURDERED with poison in his insulin injection and she totally cannot get married til things get sorted. Charles, whose father JUST HAPPENS to be the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, quickly gets involved with the solving of the mystery due to his unique position as friend of the family/relative of crime solver #England. Quickly, he figures out what Sophia meant about the crooked house because everything over there is a bit cray.

Sophia's dad, Philip, is Aristide's son, and writes books on books. He is quiet, calm, and handsome. His wife, Magda, is a DRAMATIC stage actress who's always wanting to use family money to put on doomed productions and just acts out scenes instead of having real conversations with people. Philip's brother, Roger, is charming, clumsy, and in spite of being in charge of the family catering company, not exactly a business man. His wife, Clemency, is a scientist, and is very remote and cool, and has decorated their entire apartment in a minimalist style that seems to freak everyone out #hipster. Aristide's new young wife, Brenda, a former waitress, lives in the house, but the whole fam thinks she's a gold digger who's been busy getting her flirt on with Laurence, the tutor to Aristide's grandchildren, Eustace and Josephine, who are basically described like the kids from the Adams Family except less nice #creepy. Josephine is obsessed with detectives and goes around spying on people all the time and making notes and eating apples. Rounding out the house's occupancy is Aunt Edith, who came once wife #1 died to care for the children, and never left. Charles gets a feeling once he's talked to everyone in the house that literally any of them (except his beloved Sophia, of course) could have knocked off the old man. But which one?? And WHY??

The more Charles gets to know the family, the more he is concerned for their safety. When one of the house's staff is also murdered after someone is taken into custody for the first murder, everything is up in the air again, and the air of mystery gets more sinister. By the time the mystery gets resolved, we learn some sad stuff, and this book gets #DARK. Needless to say, if things work out for Charles and Sophia, they will both know a lot about one another's families before they even get hitched #agoodsign?

The YOA Treatment:
So as we've previously stated, this is one of Agatha's most favorite books of all that she wrote, and she saved the idea for when she'd have time to devote to something this complex and clever. And it for real is ah-mah-zing. The drama and tension in the house is palpable through the page, and the setting is so interesting with the different family apartments, which convey something unique about each group. Also the culprit is #SHOCKING for first time readers, which is why we don't want to include any spoilers in the post! What did you think??

Although the majority of Agatha's stories have made it to the screen at one point or another, somehow this one has not. Which is part of the reason we were SO PUMPED to learn that a film adaptation is planned and will be helmed by none other than genius of British television, Julian Fellowes!! AHHHH!! You guys, it gon' be so good. Anyhow, obviously this got us all fired up about who might be cast in this landmark adaptation, so we decided that the best people to cast the actors would be us. And so, our cast list follows:

(Matt Smith as Charles Hayward & Emilia Clarke as Sophia Leonides)

(Ralph Fiennes as Philip Leonides)

(Kate Winslet as Magda Leonides)

(Maggie Smith as Aunt Edith De Haviland)

(Clive Owen as Roger Leonides)

(Michelle Dockery as Clemency Leonides)

(Nicholas Hoult as Eustace Leonides)

(Bella Ramsey as Josephine Leonides)

(Carey Mulligan as Brenda Leonides)

(Matthew Goode as Laurence Brown)

(Daniel Day Lewis as Sir Arthur Hayward)

(Hugh Bonneville as Chief Inspector Taverner)

(Imelda Staunton as Nannie)

(John Hurt as Aristide Leonides)

*all images from IMDB*

What do you think?? Did you love the book? Were you shocked by the ending? Did you think that this one was particularly complex? Surprisingly dark? Why so? And most importantly, what do you think of our cast list?

Can't wait to hear what you all thought of Crooked House in the comments section!

- A. & E.

The Nun Motif: After the Funeral | 1953

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"It shows you, Madame, the dangers of conversations. It is a profound belief of mine that if you can induce a person to talk to you for long enough, on any subject whatever! sooner or later they will give themselves away." -Hercule Poirot, After the Funeral, p. 283

The Sum of It:
We are back to good old fashioned big family murder this week with After the Funeral (also called Funerals are Fatal). The story begins with the rather sudden, yet not entirely unexpected, death of older gentleman, Richard Abernethie. His remaining family members (sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, and one younger sister) attend his funeral without much pomp and circumstance. However, the drama turns up a notch when eccentric Cora Abernethie Lansquenet blurts out her observations of her brother's death: "But he was murdered, wasn't he?"

The family is rather taken aback, assuming Richard's death in his sleep was perfectly natural, and rush to chalk up her remarks to Cora Be Cray. However, Cora's words linger with each Abernethie as they leave the family gathering...especially when Cora turns up #MURDERED the next day! (and #murdered with a hatchet no less...it's pretty gruesome for Agatha...#yikes.) The Abernethie's lawyer, Mr. Entwhistle, is very disturbed by the turn of events, and after some light investigation of his own, he enlists the heavy-duty assistance of retired detective Hercule Poirot to get to the bottom of who is killing the Abernethies.

There is kind of a lot of comings and goings in this book. Poirot doesn't get involved until two murders in, and the book divides most of its time between Enderby, the Abernethie family home, and Cora's small cottage, which is short-term inhabited after her death by her companion, a Miss Gilchrist who spends a lot of time defending the poor artistic abilities of her late mistress and telling sad tales of her own out-of-business tea shop. Richard Abernethie's surviving family members are often visiting one another and repeatedly having vague discussions about their alibis for each murder and how lucky it is that Richard left them money. #suspicious? There's also quite a bit about nuns showing up to the point of giving one of the characters the creeps (don't worry - it ends up helping Poirot solve the crime in the end.) However, overall, I enjoyed this book immensely. It's the kind of Christie you know and love, and you can tell it's the kind of story Agatha liked to write. I've always liked the solution of this story because of its simplistic cleverness (those of you who have read it will know what I mean!)

The YOA Treatment:
After the Funeral features Poirot investigating in his usual style, yet with a few, unexpected additions. Sure, he does his usual spiel of talking to all the characters involved to size them up and see if some basic conversation will lend him any clues. Per usual, this works like a charm, and a few slips of the tongue during a Poirot chat are enough to give the murderer away. However, this story also briefly features a lesser-known Poirot comrade: one Mr. Goby. Mr. Goby shows up in chapter 12 and is described as an elderly man (as is Poirot in this story), "small and spare and shrunken," with an aversion to eye contact and in possession of a double-jointed thumb #odddetail. Like Poirot, Mr. Goby is retired, but is willing to take a few days to do some P.I. work for Poirot by giving him the skeletons in the closet of all the potentially guilty Abernethies (along with some grumpy speeches about the Government.) Mr. Goby can be found giving Poirot a hand in several other books, including The Mystery of the Blue Train, Third Girl, and Elephants Can Remember. It's always fun to see Agatha spice up Poirot's world with new associates, particularly in these later stories devoid of the usual Hastings/Miss Lemon/Japp crew.

-A.

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. 

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.