Crossposted from Dreamwidth

What I've Finished Reading

Unfinished Portrait is the second murder-free novel published by Christie under the pen name Mary Westmacott, and it's much better than Giant's Bread. Maybe it's just that the weaknesses don't show as much, since Unfinished Portrait is the story of a hapless young twentieth-century housewife/ ( Read more... )

Crossposted to Dreamwidth

What I've Finished Reading

I finished Murder in Three Acts in about two days - it just walked in and took over all my reading time without any effort. Mr. Satterthwaite, the quietly observant "womanish" bachelor from The Mysterious Mr. Quinn, returns for a crossover with Hercule Poirot. There's been one mysterious death ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

The stories in The Listerdale Mystery are nearly all in the "silly fun" category of Christie shorts - lots of perky young women testing their men for manliness, and downtrodden young men getting a new lease on life through some staged or accidental adventure. When you line them all up together, Christie's faux-adventure ( Read more... )

I'm back home and almost through the busy season, so hopefully this will be the last useless placeholder for a while ( Read more... )

Crossposted to Dreamwidth as usual.

What I've Finished Reading

Aunt Dimity's Death develops into a very mild mystery with the help of a ghost - Dimity's spirit carefully preserves plausible deniability by communicating through written messages that only specific people can hear. She also subtly alters reality to make Lori a good cook for the ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

If I say that Murder on the Orient Express doesn't hold up as well on re-reading as Roger Ackroyd or Death on the Nile, I hope you all know I don't mean it in a bad way. Orient Express is an extremely efficient machine for producing a couple of very impressive experiences in the reader, and once that result has been ( Read more... )

"I do not play games. You know that. Murder is not a game. It is serious. And anyway, Hastings, you should not use that phrase -- playing the game. It is not said anymore. I have discovered that. It is dead. Young people laugh when they hear it. Mais oui, young beautiful girls will laugh at you if you say 'playing the game' and 'not cricket.'"
( ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

So I knew there was going to be some vintage bigotry in Enter Sir John, but it's mostly fairly subtle in the first half of the book. Thus I was completely unprepared for the nature of the HIDEOUS SECRET that Martella Baring heroically risked her own life to conceal, and which drove the real murderer to start smashing ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

The Hound of Death was a great collection of short stories, about 2/3 spooky unexplained events and 1/3 cynical humans being cynical. Some of them are excellent, and some are just fun. I'm predisposed to enjoy Christie whenever she stretches her muscles (or doesn't, for that matter), so I would probably have enjoyed this ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart. A beautiful young governess gets a job at an isolated French estate, with a glowering disabled man and his wife, a tall drink of cold water. The little boy she’s hired to teach English is distant and wary. One ominous thing after another happens and finally it becomes clear that ( Read more... )