Read Recently -- June -- Murder Mysteries
Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie
This is the second Poirot mystery, after the Mysterious Affair at Styles. Published in 1923, it has Captain Hastings meeting a foul-mouthed but lovely young American actress on the Calais train as he is on his way back to England from doing business in France. When he arrives back at the quarters he shares iwth Poirot, he learns that Poirot has been summoned to France, to meet a British businessman who is in fear of his life. When our heroes arrive at his estate, they learn they are too late . . . the man has already been murdered; abducted from his house late at night by two masked men and left, stabbed in the back, in a shallow grave in the local golf course (hence the links of the title). The French police call in a detective of their own, a younger man who does not respect Poirot (or much of anyone, really, which encourages the Police to keep cooperating with Poirot). The Police soon have a suspect, but Poirot is not satisfied. The case is over-run with women, including Hastings' young American actress. Could one (or more) of them be the killer? Why? And will Poirot . . . yeah, he will.
This early in the series things are still shaking down, and there hasn't been time for patterns to form and grow stale. And Christie feels no need to lie to the audience, so this one is still good. Recommended.
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe: a Hercule Poirot Novel (Also published as the Patriotic Murders and An Overdose of Death) by Agatha Christie
Poirot is one of several patients who visits his dentist on a particular day. On the way out, Poirot encounters a woman on the way in, who has nice ankles but ugly shoes, with large buckles on them -- hence the title, and the fact that each chapter is titled with a verse from the popular childrens' rhyme -- but really thinks nothing of it and goes home. That afternoon he is contacted by the police, who want to know if the dentist seemed depressed or upset when Poirot saw him. It seems that the man has committed suicide, in his office, in the middle of the day. Poirot, consulting on the case, does not believe the verdict of suicide. One alternative theory is that, as one of the dentist's patients is a conservative Banker of great financial importance, a man who is often in danger of assassination, that maybe the dentist was eliminated either in a missed attempt at the Banker, or as part of such an attempt. Then the woman with the shoe mysteriously vanishes . . .
This is a great mystery. I can't tell you much more about it without spoiling something, but rest assured that there is more. I've barely scratched the surface. Twist on twist . . . twenty years after the one just above, it has no first-person narrator at all. Christie's at the top of her game here, and this may just be one of the best of the Poirot novels. Lotsa fun, and highly recommended.
Piece of My Heart by Peter Robinson
The latest Inspector Banks mystery, bar one.
Banks investigates the murder of a man renting an isolated cottage near Eastvale. The man was murdered during a localized blackout, and since he was paying cash for the rental no one really knows who he was or what he was doing there (it's the wrong season for hiking, for instance).
Simultaneously, we are told the story of the investigation of a murder at an outdoor rock concert in 1969. A dead girl is found in a sleeping bag in the woods the day after the concert; stabbed in the chest. The investigating officer, one Stanley Chadwick, soon determines that the killing had something to do with local band the Mad Hatters. In 2005, Banks discovers the same thing about his killing. Could the two killings be related? But what could the connection be between two murders more than 30 years apart?
While this is going on , Banks has to deal with the aftermath of the retirement of his old superintendant, and friend: a new Superintendant, with her own ideas for shaking up the station. And one of Banks' crew seems determined to toady up, even if it means selling out his fellow officers over minor faults.
The moving simultaneously through two different investigations in two different time periods has the potential to be difficult, especially as Robinson doesn't always clearly differentiate the two through chapter titles or clear labels when he changes in mid-chapter. On the other hand, he is quick to mention names and ground the story in the proper time, so things are never hard to follow. While your enjoyment of the story will be greater if you have read the rest of the series, this story is self-contained enough to be enoyed on its own. Highly recommended.