Girls Being Girls Being Girls Being Girls: The Girls & The River at Night | 2016

The Sum of It:
I'll be honest, it was pretty jarring to spend the first month of 2017 not completely immersed in Agatha Christie. Don't worry - I'm still keeping my Agatha obsession alive by working my way through the Agatha books Emily read without me last year (Seven Dials on Audible is my current favorite!) For the purposes of this post, the first novel I tackled in January was Emma Cline's mesmerizing The Girls, followed quickly by Erica Ferencik's thrilling The River at Night.

After a year of (for the most part) strictly mystery reading, I was interested to start 2017 out without the need to be on the lookout for a killer. The Girls centers around a character named Evie in the present-day, middle-age and 1960s. As a teen, Evie is bright, yet bored. It's summertime and her parents have divorced, she's fallen out with her best friend, and she's desperate for a distraction from her woes. The distraction comes in the form of Suzanne, a total free spirit whose dubious role-model/friend skillz get on super thin ice when she takes Evie to meet all her pals at a not-so-subtle cult meet-up. You can tell even teenage Evie knows this probably won't turn out well, and present-day Evie confirms these suspicions by relating cryptic fragments of her memories of that summer, which include, among other things, memories of #MURDER. While in the end there wasn't really much mystery to the murderS (yes, several #yikes), Cline's enchanting writing held me captive until the very last page...and made me a bit wary of making new friends in the park.

The River at Night is also about female friendship. Protagonist Wini and her group of three other besties are gearing up for their annual girls trip. Instead of a ski vacay or even Disney World, the group is going to go white water rafting in middle-of-nowhere Maine. PAUSE: THIS IS LITERALLY MY NIGHTMARE VACATION SO I WAS IMMEDIATELY TERRIFIED WHEN I READ THIS PART! (#shivers) Wini is a bit apprehensive about this particular excursion, but seeing the vacation as a way to reconnect with her friends, and have a break from her heartbreaking personal life, she acquiesces. While decidedly eerie, the beginning of this story gives the four women an opportunity to air some grievances and share some personal hardships. Even when it's discovered that the "leader" of the group, Pia, mayyyyy have decided to take this irregular trip to hook up with the hot young rapids guide (#partyfoul), it seems like the group might get home at the end of the day with some good campfire tales. BUT THEN THINGS GET REAL. I won't say much more for fear of #spoilers, but suffice it to say, things go from like a bummer, sleeping in the woods isn't the most fun kinda uncomfortable story to a things have gotten REALLY, REALLY, REALLY BAD kind of thriller. This book had me reading with wide eyes and heart pounding.

The YOA Treatment:
Many of the Agatha Christie books we read last year featured strong friendships. Obviously you have the ongoing besties saga of Poirot and Hastings, but her books show many other one-off friendships, particularly those between women, such as the one that develops between Ruth and Lenox in The Mystery of the Blue Train, the delicious Tea & Scandal group from The Murder at the Vicarage, and even tragic friendships like Jacqueline and Linnet in Death on the Nile. I wrote last year about how I appreciated Agatha's treatment of the teenage friendship in Cat Among the Pigeons. Though Emma Cline's meditation on the emotional rollercoaster that is being a teenage girl was much more in-depth than Pigeons, it made me smile to think the girls in both books were essentially from the same time period, and still have the same longings, delights, and frustrations as girls today.  The River at Night's Wini reminded me of Destination Unknown's Hilary Craven: riddled with personal tragedy, but in the end defiantly ready to give life a chance, and do what she must for those she has come to care for.

So far, it's really interesting to dig into new books with the perspective of a steady stream of Agatha having coursed through our eyeballs and ears and brains over the past year. We'll continue to be on the lookout for parallels, recurring concepts, and #spookymoments as we move through more mysteries and thrillers in 2017.

There are more classical detective novels to come for me in February, so stay tuned! And Emily has a terrific review of an entire SERIES of detective novels she has flown through so far this year still to come this week.

Happy reading, friends!

-A.

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Miss Lemon Makes an Error : Hickory Dickory Dock | 1955

Image from here

“Poirot closed his eyes. What he perceived mentally was a kaleidoscope, no more, no less. Pieces of cut-up scarves and rucksacks, cookery books, lipsticks, bath salts; names and thumbnail sketches of odd students. Nowhere was there cohesion or form. Unrelated incidents and people whirled round in space. But Poirot knew quite well that somehow and somewhere there must be a pattern . . . The question was where to start.. . . .”  - Hickory Dickory Dock

The Sum of It:

It all begins when the ever-efficient and capable Miss Lemon, Poirot's secretary, makes three mistakes in one letter. Miss Lemon never, ever makes mistakes, so Poirot knows something is up. In explaining, she reveals that she has a sister (Poirot is shocked, apparently he thought of Miss Lemon as emerging from a pod or something) and that said sister, Mrs. Hubbard, is presiding over a boarding house occupied by a bunch of students and there has been a shady bit of thievery going on. Miss Lemon's sister is quite concerned, and the students are in a tizzy. Can Poirot help??

The list of missing items is quite troubling to Poirot's orderly mind -- they make no sense! A compact, a diamond ring, electric light bulbs, a stethoscope, boracic powder, and more. Two items have been stolen and destroyed, a silk scarf and a rucksack. The diamond ring has been returned, but other items are still at large. Poirot goes to dinner under the guise of making a little speech about crime solving so he can scope out the situation and get to know the possible culprits. After he has clearly narrowed it down, someone finally confesses -- but only to some of the stolen items. The rest are still a mystery! Everyone is ready to let it go and move on, only the confessor hints that she knows who might have committed some of the other acts #bigmistake #flyyoufools. Predictably, she is quickly found dead, presumably of suicide by morphia poisoning, but everyone soon realizes that it was totes #MURDER. NOW things are really getting interesting!

After two more murders, the discovery of a drug and jewel smuggling ring, at least two engagements, and a lot of pasta consumed, Poirot and Inspector Sharpe (his old pal) realize that more than one of the youths in the house are not what they seem. 

The YOA Treatment:

Can't lie folks, this wasn't my favorite. For one thing, Agatha was getting on up in years at this point, and I think I'm offering that as one excuse for some of the rather unfortunate racial characterizations in the book. Many of the students staying in Mrs. Hubbard's boarding house are from India, Africa, and other non-European nations, and Agatha employed some rather unfortunate descriptive language in illustrating these folks, and allows some of the characters to make some pretty absurd statements about them (for example, when Inspector Sharpe asks one character why she suspects a Mr. Akibombo, she responds "Jealousy. All these coloured people are very jealous of each other and very hysterical." #YIKES #NOTOK) This is really pretty prevalent throughout the book, and put a bad taste in my mouth for the whole thing. While we've seen some of this in previous books, this is the most overt of the ones I've read so far.

Additionally, this is another book that has a TON of characters, and when that happens, unless she's really careful with it, it can get kind of muddled and confusing. There are so many different people here, and while you do get a little attached to some of them, it's hard to keep track when they're constantly being paired up and their descriptions are all over the place. There's also a lot of kind of side-plot crime that makes the overall plot a little hard to stick with, and I just never really got very engaged with it. SORRY AGATHA! I know I've got some good ones coming up. 

- E. 

Unsolved Mysteries: Ordeal by Innocence | 1958

(image from here)

"All right. It's your say so - and you're sticking to it. Jacko didn't kill her. Very well then - who did kill her? You haven't thought about that one, have you? Think about it now. Think about it - and then you'll begin to see what you're doing to us all..." -Micky Argyle, Ordeal by Innocence, p. 42

The Sum of It:
I'm going through a phase in this Year of Agatha project where I'm reading a lot of her books that have my most favorite premises, and today's read is no exception. Ordeal by Innocence follows the tribulations of the Argyle family, specifically, their painstaking efforts to figure out who killed their mother. Some years ago, mother Rachel Argyle was found dead, having been struck down from behind #yikes! At the time of her death, it was pretty clear she was killed by someone else in the house, meaning her husband, one of her children, the husband's secretary, or the household's long-time housekeeper. The most likely suspect was hot mess son, Jacko. Jacko had a history of disagreements with his mother, had a history of money troubles, and had recently been caught stealing by his mother and she wasn't gonna let that happen anymore. But Jacko says, I couldn't have killed her because at the time of her death I had been hitchhiking and was picked up by some random car driver so I'm innocent! However, no such car driver could be found during his trial, and so Jacko is convicted of the crime and thrown in jail, where soon after he dies of pneumonia.

The Argyle family has done their best to move on with their lives and so are pretty shocked when they receive a surprise visitor at their door, a geophysicist named Arthur Calgary, proclaiming: "GUYS, I WAS THE GUY IN THE CAR!" Apparently, Arthur picked Jacko up on his rounds of saying goodbye to pals before heading way out of town on the Hayes Bentley Expedition, and after dropping Jacko off Arthur is hit by a car and has a bit of amnesia and then heads to Australia to meet up with his expedition. He just recently has his memory restored when he sees old newspapers with the Jacko stories and realizes he was the alibi Jacko needed all along! Arthur expects the Argyle family to feel a sense of relief that Jacko wasn't Rachel's killer. However, as each one in turn explains to him, well then which of the rest of us DID kill her!?

The YOA Treatment:
You can tell when you read Agatha Christie's works, particularly this one, that she was intrigued by unsolved crime. In more than one book she mentions the Lizzie Borden case, and in this book she talks about another unsolved crime, the murder of Charles Bravo. I highly recommend looking up the story of Charles Bravo because it is pretttttty crazy! And it speaks to the drama of Ordeal by Innocence because after Jacko is shown to have an alibi for the time of the murder, the rest of the family is left in terrified mystery about which of them could have killed her...and which of them could be next? All in all, Ordeal by Innocence is a great read and I highly recommend it!

-A.

Quick Draw: Poirot Investigates | 1925

"I rather wished Poirot had been there. Some times I have the feeling that he rather underestimates my capabilities."
- Poirot Investigates, p. 40

The Sum of it All:
Poirot Investigates is the second in our current series of short story collections, but it is not short on auburn-haired ladies in distress, snappy telegrams from Poirot ("Of course black bearded man was not Havering only you or Japp would have such an idea"), and lightening fast mystery solving. The stories in this set are the first short stories featuring the dynamic duo of Poirot and Hastings, published in 1925 (in America, came out in 1924 in the UK #firstandfinest). Unlike The Thirteen Problems, these stories are not unified by a linked plot, but rather a simple set of quick cases.

The short-story format means super quick plot build up and resolution, which can provide for a nice, fast read while one is waiting through a bizarrely lengthy debate in a House Education Committee about whether or not college students should have to have records proving they've been inoculated against meningitis (I mean, I wasn't fully paying attention due to reading said book but I'm not really sure what there is to debate there...) ANYHOW BUT also the super short format can (#nooffenseagatha) mean kind of rote and less interesting plots. REGARDLESS, there are some majorly classic Agatha hits in this set. Two of my favorites include:

• The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge: A classic set-up (murdered monied uncle, discovered dead by the maid, just after a mysterious stranger called on him in the GUN ROOM [srsly]) is made a bit more complicated by Poirot being bedridden due to the flu. Hastings volunteers for a chance to show off his mystery-solving prowess on his own and joins Inspector Japp at the remote hunting lodge where the crime took place. There are DISGUISES, Poirot in a dressing gown, and twin revolvers. There's also a grisly demise for the real criminals #justdesserts #yikes

• The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb: Full disclosure, I was already familiar with this plot on account of it being one of my fave David Suchet Poirot stories. I always like the ones that take place in the Middle East because they provide a cool change of scenery and Agatha's experiences traveling in that part of the country provide for great visuals. This one involves Poirot's strong belief in the power of superstition, a potentially cursed tomb, and a series of deaths connected to an archaeological dig. Poirot soon learns that the deaths, seemingly only linked by their connection to the tomb of King Men-her-Ra, have another important thing in common. PLUS, Poirot rides a camel and is disappointed in the Sphinx ("It has not the air happy," he declared, "How could it, half-buried in sand in that untidy fashion.")!

The YOA Treatment: 
While there's not a thematic link between the short stories in this set, there is a reoccurring bit that links the stories: mocking Hastings.

Agatha wrote that while Poirot sometimes aggravated her with his fussy ways and disregard for others, she always loved Hastings. However, it's a little hard to tell that based on this set of stories because Hastings really gets called out A LOT, and it always provokes a chuckle. There are many incidences where Hastings' bragging on his own brilliant detective skills gives a solid wink at the reader because we all know that he has either missed a major detail or is just 100% off base. There's also a solid sprinkling of Poirot-to-Hastings digs. A sampling:

"Poirot," I said. "Am I quite demented?"
"No, mon ami, but you are, as always, in a mental fog."

"It's all very well," I said, my anger rising, "but you've made a perfect fool of me! From beginning to end! No, it's all very well to try to explain it away afterwards. There really is a limit!"
"But you were so enjoying yourself, my friend. I had not the heart to shatter your illusions."

"Your judgments of character are always profound, my friend."
I glanced at him uneasily, but he seemed perfectly serious. A twinkle, however, came into his eye, and he added slyly: "That is to say, when there is no question of a beautiful woman!"
I looked at him coldly.

"He's not [Japanese]," I ejaculated in a whisper to Poirot. [Edited for a more appropriate level of cultural sensitivity #1925]
"Observation was always your strong point, Hastings! Nothing escapes you. No, the man is not [Japanese]. He is an Italian."

While these quick reads are lighter fare than the more complex plots found in Agatha's novels, they're a fun set of vignettes that allow Agatha to flex her mystery muscles. Enjoy!

-E.