Is it shining? No, it's not. Here's the monthly book blog.
Jack of Fables, vols 4, 5 & 6, Bill Willingham & Matthew Sturges
More Fables spin-offery. It passes the time.
The Seven Per Cent Solution, Nicholas Meyer
Some while ago, Jo and I rented the film based on this book, and we agreed it was excellent. The one-line plot summary – Sherlock Holmes Meets Sigmund Freud! - might suggest the worst, but in fact the screenplay treated its two stars with the utmost believability and respect, and the story managed to tie in very nicely with the Conan Doyle canon, even while demolishing bits of it.
I'm delighted to say the book has all the content and flavour of the film, narrated convincingly in Dr Watson's voice to boot. In a foreword, “Watson” not only explains how he covered up the events of this story with the entirely fictitious “The Final Problem” and “The Empty House”, but goes so far as to debunk several other of the later (not very good) canonical Holmes stories – cheeky, but very tempting. This is easily the best apocryphal/mash-up Holmes story I've read.
The Book of Lost Books, Stuart Kelly
A nice little book for dipping into. This is a collection of literary biographies with an emphasis on works lost or not completed; there's naturally a heavy lean towards classical and medieval authors. Kelly's prose style is a little much in places, but it's always engaging and readable.
Towards Zero, Agatha Christie
The recent ITV Marple series has adapted quite a few of Christie's non-Marple (and so far, non-Poirot) stories in order to prolong the series' life expectancy. Naturally this has outraged some Christie fans, although I think the real crime isn't shoehorning Miss Marple into these stories per se, but doing it before they'd even got halfway through adapting the stories that do have her in. Still, it's prompted me to take a look at some of the less prominent Christie novels I'd previously overlooked.
Towards Zero is probably the most solid of the five I've picked out – solid in the sense of workmanship, like a wooden cabinet, or like its hero, Superintendent Battle. Nobody's killed until halfway through, but the character work and prose are good enough to do the work of maintaining the reader's attention. The central idea of the story is one that's been used elsewhere, but it's presented in an original way. My one real gripe is that the resolution of the crime relies pretty heavily on the coincidental involvement of someone outside the main group of characters – Battle ends up not doing a whole lot of detecting after all. But it's certainly a good 'un.
Ordeal by Innocence, Agatha Christie
Bit of a letdown. Once the basic premise has been laid out – and it takes several chapters, because the hero's a bit slow on the uptake – the book settles down to a hundred or so pages of bugger all happening. We might expect Christie to spend this part of the book revealing her characters, throwing them together in different combinations and gradually uncovering telling facts about them; in fact the same groups of characters sit around and repeat the same arguments over and over while they wait for the plot to kick in. When it finally does, around page 150, it's just too late.
There's nothing wrong with the idea, but the execution is off. This is one that I would say has benefited from being adapted for the telly.
The Pale Horse, Agatha Christie
A very pleasant surprise! This is a stand-out among Christie's novels in a number of ways. It's unique among the five I've read this month in that the murder isn't attributable to a character's childish vanity, but is – as advertised up front – committed on a contract basis. Interested parties apply to “The Pale Horse”, and by apparently supernatural means their intended victims fall ill and drop dead. The whole set-up is, I think, unique in Christie's work, and unusually blends the scientific in with the supernatural as a cover for murder.
The book is stuffed with unusually colourful characters too, most prominently the trio of self-professed witches who front “The Pale Horse”. I did also particularly like the dodgy geezer who works as their commissioning agent, and his suggestion that the murder contract be considered as a perfectly legitimate bet on whether or not the victim will live past the end of the month.
As a sidenote, it's worth pointing out the large number of minor/cameo characters who reappear from other novels. The vicar and his wife from The Moving Finger and Rhoda Despard (née Dawes) and her husband from Cards on the Table have coincidentally retired to the very village that houses “The Pale Horse”; also present is Ariadne Oliver, whose previous appearances significantly include Cards on the Table, and a comedy cameo character from By the Pricking of My Thumbs. Yet unusually for Christie (and strangely, given the history between Mrs Oliver and the Despards), no mention is made of these previous murders. Not that I'm complaining about that.
Murder is Easy, Agatha Christie
This one is surprisingly comedic. (I assume it was unintentional, but who knows?) People are dropping like flies in a small English village, but the villagers just shrug and say “Accidents will happen”. You could probably trace nine out of ten murder mystery sketches and parodies back to this book.
The Bill Bixby film version carries the line “Murder is easy, if no one knows it's murder!”, which is perhaps rather obvious but has a certain ring to it; I was surprised to find the book instead has the less zingy and even more trite “It's easy to kill if nobody suspects you!”. Why not bring a checklist and mark off the stock character types as they appear: the buffoonish landowner, the Major and his dogs, the (barely) secret Satanist... And the red herring is so thickly larded, it's almost a surprise to find it wasn't a massive double bluff on Christie's part. Despite all this, it's quite an enjoyable read.
Crooked House, Agatha Christie
There's a multi-functional hero in this one: he happens to be romantically involved with one of the murder victim's household, but also happens to be the son of the chief of police, who's asked him to work as their “man on the inside”. This potential conflict isn't played out as much as it might have been, and creates the problem that every few chapters, the hero is summoned away from the house in mid-snoop to report on what's going on. (His father then blames him for not keeping an eye on a character who's attacked in his absence, which is extremely rich.)
The other problem I have with this book is that the theatrical mother and clumsy uncle are caricatured well beyond credibility. But by and large, this is a well written and strongly plotted story, and although there's a pretty large giveaway clue about halfway in, the ending is still a tour de force. I can see why Christie thought it one of her very best.
Showing posts with label Agatha Christie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Agatha Christie. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Monday, November 02, 2009
Books read in September and October
A much reduced intake of books this past couple of months, owing to the general frenzy of activity around our emigration to New Zealand. It's nearly upon us! This time next week we'll be there! It's a safe bet that the ratio of personal ramblings to book reviews on this blog will increase once we've migrated, but for now, here's another post of plain old literature.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
The book that made Christie's name as a writer. Not only did it earn her a lot of public attention with its "cheating" ending, it also breathed fresh life into the English murder mystery genre, a genre that relies more heavily than most on repetitive formula. And as luck would have it, it's one of Christie's best-written books - her first real classic. The last couple of chapters are a delight on every reading.
Hercule Poirot's Christmas, Agatha Christie
Yes, it's a ridiculous book, but I still love it. I love all the tricksy Christies. Thing is, in that book that I really must get my own copy of, Robert Barnard analyses this particular novel and shows exactly where the clues are and how Christie has set up the surprise ending, so suddenly it doesn't seem all that ridiculous. Now it actually seems quite clever. Hurrah!
Cards on the Table, Agatha Christie
Not a tricksy Christie, but one of her all-time greats. You're given four suspects and assured that one of them is the murderer - your only clue in solving the mystery is the way in which each of them played bridge on the night of the murder. This, then, is the clearest expression of Poirot's (supposedly) psychological method of detection (and as if by a staggering coincidence, it's also the set-up Poirot detailed as his ideal crime investigation in The ABC Murders the previous year - Cosmic Dialling in Crime Fiction?). It's not the hardest one to solve, but it's immense fun.
The ABC Murders, Agatha Christie
Saving the best for last here. Among Christies, this stands alone, not least because it's so different from the other Poirots (notwithstanding the horror that is The Big Four) - it's Poirot versus a serial killer. Yes, yes, I know Christie's murderers often kill more than once, but let's draw a critical distinction between the domestic murderer who kills again and the lunatic who kills unrelated victims according to a pattern or a theme - in this case the alphabet. These days, serial killers have become so absurdly romanticised that horror films, police procedurals and even comedy series actually feature them as heroes, sometimes even giving them the moral high ground over victims and police; in Christie's day, Jack the Ripper was still within living memory and the "homicidal maniac" was still a sufficiently rare and startling thing that this book's impact must have been all the greater at the time it was published. Naturally, there's a terrific twist.
It was at this point (or shortly thereafter) that the removal men came and took away all of our stuff - we'll be seeing it again, in New Zealand, in about another two months. There were a few books that I felt obliged to keep in my hand luggage for the journey, those that would be particularly hard to replace and would give me joy during the first couple of months down under. However, due to the airline weight restrictions I was forced to compromise on numbers, and ended up with the following:
The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, edited by Robert E Egner and Lester E Denonn
Library book. I'd stumbled across a collection of the philosopher's quotes online and liked what I read, so this (very large) collection of essays seemed like the appropriate next step. The editors have arranged their choice of essays by subject, selecting four or five in each case. Russell proudly admitted having changed his views over the decades ("What physicist would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed in the last half century?" was one of his charming bon mots), yet there's a lot of similarity between the essays in each section. It's all very well setting out to select Russell's best pieces on a subject, but if they all happened to appear within a few years of each other, because he'd arrived at some particularly pleasing opinion or found a particularly good way of phrasing his views and went on to repeat it a few times... So while there's much to recommend this book, I'm not sure that it's entirely representative of Russell's output. I might well find it better to try one of his own one-topic books.
WG Grace's Last Case, William Rushton
The great comedian Willie Rushton's first (and possibly his only) novel, this anticipates The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by a decade or two. What you have here is the Champion of All England teaming up with Doctor Watson, AJ Raffles, the Canadian Mountie son of Charles Dickens and a host of other historical and fictional characters to foil a second Martian invasion. Barking mad, and although at first it appears to be a string of rambling, unrelated episodes, it does all tie in at the end.
The Lovecraft Papers, PH Cannon
Alas, how difficult to get hold of Scream for Jeeves, the Wodehousian Lovecraft parody by Peter Cannon. But hurrah, here's a book that not only includes Scream for Jeeves but also Pulptime, a team-up between HP Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes, and all for a surprisingly lower price than its individual parts. The Jeeves stories are brief (and although close, not entirely in keeping with Wodehouse's style - Bertie Wooster seems to know more than he should about eldritch lore) but a lot of fun. The Holmes story is not per se Lovecraftian, but a lovely coda to Conan Doyle's canon.
In Search of Bristol, Stephen Morris
Bristol and Ballooning, John Christopher and Richard Cardy
Two coffee-table books of Bristol-themed photography, given to me as a leaving gift from my colleagues at work (thanks, guys!). Sadly I haven't been able to find room (or rather, weight) for these in the luggage, so the in-laws are kindly looking after these too, but I did manage to read them. Stephen Morris' book is a straight collection of his own photographs of the lesser-seen bits of Bristol. Some nice shots in here, although I'd rather he hadn't favoured the close-up detail shots as much as he has. Clifton Suspension Bridge is one of those things I feel you can appreciate better when you can see more than a few square metres of it. The ballooning book is a history of Bristol's famous annual Balloon Fiesta, with plenty of photos and some surprising information in the text (the story of Air Balloon Road in St George, for instance). Both very nice.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
The book that made Christie's name as a writer. Not only did it earn her a lot of public attention with its "cheating" ending, it also breathed fresh life into the English murder mystery genre, a genre that relies more heavily than most on repetitive formula. And as luck would have it, it's one of Christie's best-written books - her first real classic. The last couple of chapters are a delight on every reading.
Hercule Poirot's Christmas, Agatha Christie
Yes, it's a ridiculous book, but I still love it. I love all the tricksy Christies. Thing is, in that book that I really must get my own copy of, Robert Barnard analyses this particular novel and shows exactly where the clues are and how Christie has set up the surprise ending, so suddenly it doesn't seem all that ridiculous. Now it actually seems quite clever. Hurrah!
Cards on the Table, Agatha Christie
Not a tricksy Christie, but one of her all-time greats. You're given four suspects and assured that one of them is the murderer - your only clue in solving the mystery is the way in which each of them played bridge on the night of the murder. This, then, is the clearest expression of Poirot's (supposedly) psychological method of detection (and as if by a staggering coincidence, it's also the set-up Poirot detailed as his ideal crime investigation in The ABC Murders the previous year - Cosmic Dialling in Crime Fiction?). It's not the hardest one to solve, but it's immense fun.
The ABC Murders, Agatha Christie
Saving the best for last here. Among Christies, this stands alone, not least because it's so different from the other Poirots (notwithstanding the horror that is The Big Four) - it's Poirot versus a serial killer. Yes, yes, I know Christie's murderers often kill more than once, but let's draw a critical distinction between the domestic murderer who kills again and the lunatic who kills unrelated victims according to a pattern or a theme - in this case the alphabet. These days, serial killers have become so absurdly romanticised that horror films, police procedurals and even comedy series actually feature them as heroes, sometimes even giving them the moral high ground over victims and police; in Christie's day, Jack the Ripper was still within living memory and the "homicidal maniac" was still a sufficiently rare and startling thing that this book's impact must have been all the greater at the time it was published. Naturally, there's a terrific twist.
It was at this point (or shortly thereafter) that the removal men came and took away all of our stuff - we'll be seeing it again, in New Zealand, in about another two months. There were a few books that I felt obliged to keep in my hand luggage for the journey, those that would be particularly hard to replace and would give me joy during the first couple of months down under. However, due to the airline weight restrictions I was forced to compromise on numbers, and ended up with the following:
- WG Grace's Last Case by Willie Rushton, a recent acquisition. The Lovely Jo and I have both since read this, and as the largest of these books it's now been left with the in-laws (temporarily, until the next time we're in the country) because the luggage was still overweight.
- The Lovecraft Papers by Peter Cannon, another recent acquisition.
- Cobralingus by Jeff Noon.
- Cold Print by Ramsey Campbell.
- Two volumes of Kai Lung stories by Ernest Bramah - The Wallet Of and Golden Hours.
- A small souvenir fold-out book from the Magritte Museum in Brussels.
- Let's Learn Maori by Bruce Biggs - this one may actually be of practical use.
The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, edited by Robert E Egner and Lester E Denonn
Library book. I'd stumbled across a collection of the philosopher's quotes online and liked what I read, so this (very large) collection of essays seemed like the appropriate next step. The editors have arranged their choice of essays by subject, selecting four or five in each case. Russell proudly admitted having changed his views over the decades ("What physicist would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed in the last half century?" was one of his charming bon mots), yet there's a lot of similarity between the essays in each section. It's all very well setting out to select Russell's best pieces on a subject, but if they all happened to appear within a few years of each other, because he'd arrived at some particularly pleasing opinion or found a particularly good way of phrasing his views and went on to repeat it a few times... So while there's much to recommend this book, I'm not sure that it's entirely representative of Russell's output. I might well find it better to try one of his own one-topic books.
WG Grace's Last Case, William Rushton
The great comedian Willie Rushton's first (and possibly his only) novel, this anticipates The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by a decade or two. What you have here is the Champion of All England teaming up with Doctor Watson, AJ Raffles, the Canadian Mountie son of Charles Dickens and a host of other historical and fictional characters to foil a second Martian invasion. Barking mad, and although at first it appears to be a string of rambling, unrelated episodes, it does all tie in at the end.
The Lovecraft Papers, PH Cannon
Alas, how difficult to get hold of Scream for Jeeves, the Wodehousian Lovecraft parody by Peter Cannon. But hurrah, here's a book that not only includes Scream for Jeeves but also Pulptime, a team-up between HP Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes, and all for a surprisingly lower price than its individual parts. The Jeeves stories are brief (and although close, not entirely in keeping with Wodehouse's style - Bertie Wooster seems to know more than he should about eldritch lore) but a lot of fun. The Holmes story is not per se Lovecraftian, but a lovely coda to Conan Doyle's canon.
In Search of Bristol, Stephen Morris
Bristol and Ballooning, John Christopher and Richard Cardy
Two coffee-table books of Bristol-themed photography, given to me as a leaving gift from my colleagues at work (thanks, guys!). Sadly I haven't been able to find room (or rather, weight) for these in the luggage, so the in-laws are kindly looking after these too, but I did manage to read them. Stephen Morris' book is a straight collection of his own photographs of the lesser-seen bits of Bristol. Some nice shots in here, although I'd rather he hadn't favoured the close-up detail shots as much as he has. Clifton Suspension Bridge is one of those things I feel you can appreciate better when you can see more than a few square metres of it. The ballooning book is a history of Bristol's famous annual Balloon Fiesta, with plenty of photos and some surprising information in the text (the story of Air Balloon Road in St George, for instance). Both very nice.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Books read in August
The Hollow, Agatha Christie
If Dead Man's Folly is the Christie auto-parody, this is the inside-out Christie. Agatha Christie's Poirot, first inversion. Of all the second-tier Christies, this is probably the one that most deserves to make it onto my top list. Oh, and Gudgeon - Best Butler Ever.
After the Funeral, Agatha Christie
Pretty good post-war Poirot. There are those who say that Christie's golden age ended with the Second World War, but I'm starting to think she was good for a clear decade after that, with Hickory Dickory Dock marking the tipping point and Folly the real beginning of the end.
Poirot Investigates, Agatha Christie
I've commented before on Christie's short stories; I don't think there are any here that weren't improved by being adapted to the fifty minute TV format.
Taken at the Flood, Agatha Christie
Musical deaths - which ones are murders, which suicides? This is really Christie trying too hard and being too smart for her readers' good, but it certainly deserves some recognition for that. Took a fairly hefty rewriting in the TV series, not least because the catalytic event for the story is a WW2 air raid, and the TV series is still resolutely clinging to the '30s.
Cat Among the Pigeons, Agatha Christie
Readers may insert what comments about Poirot in a girls' boarding school they consider appropriate. The TV series tried to spice things up by changing the murder weapon from a common or garden handgun to a javelin, but it couldn't entirely carry it off. The most intriguing thing in the book is that Christie seems to think that Candide (and it quite definitely is Voltaire's Candide) is pornography. I may have to reread Candide to try to work this one out. Of course, it could simply be that Christie took the title the wrong way.
The Big Four, Agatha Christie
Irredeemable. Poirot finds himself in the middle of one of Christie's Daily-Mail-on-speed political thrillers. The villains might best be thought of as Fu Manchu, Evil Marie Curie, Evil Rockefeller and the blandest available member of the RSC. This started life as a series of short stories, and apparently didn't take much reworking when it was turned into a novel, so we can assume that readers in 1924 were treated to week after week of Poirot accusing a shadowy conspiracy of crimes he'd failed to solve. In the real world we'd call that paranoia, or the next Dan Brown blockbuster. It can't have been that thrilling at the time. It isn't now, to be honest. My hope for the TV adaptation, when it comes, is that either they do it as a surreal nightmare (Massive Opportunity For German Expressionism!) or they do it as the sexed-up version of events presented by Hastings when he came to write it up. In any case, good luck, ITV adapters.
Black Coffee, Charles Osborne (based on a play by Agatha Christie)
Reconstituted Christie product. I was prepared to allow that Christie herself might have included the verbatim cut-and-pastes from her novels in the original script, until I saw the speech lifted straight out of After the Funeral, a book published more than two decades after the play was written. Osborne's also made far too much of an effort to tie down the chronology of the story, in relation to real world events and to other books - far more of an effort than Christie ever did - and made a bit of a hash of it. The story itself is light - probably well suited to an evening's theatre, not quite so promising as a book - and tragically includes the old "I'm going to turn the lights off and when I turn them back on..." schtick. It's Christie-flavoured rather than full fat Christie.
What I don't understand is why it's been included in the last few reprints of the Christie canon, with Christie's name on the cover. This feels a bit weird to me.
Elephants Can Remember, Agatha Christie
The last Poirot novel Christie actually wrote (Curtain having been locked in a vault some thirty years earlier). I suppose the best way to describe it is that it's like Five Little Pigs, but with no life in it. Nothing happens in the present day except for the detective(s) getting half-remembered testimony out of the witnesses, the case itself is cold and (re)solving it won't help or please anyone except the offspring of the victim and apparent murderer - but there's an unbridgeable gulf in style between Pigs and Elephants. Pigs oozes character and emotion; Elephants just feels like Samuel Beckett, but without the wit.
Autobiography, Agatha Christie
Lively and conversational, this book really only covers Christie's life up to the 1930s. The '40s, '50s and '60s are covered almost as an afterthought; you're halfway through before Christie's even got as far as Roger Ackroyd. And anyone hoping for insights relating to her work will be disappointed - this really is strictly biographical. Worth a read, for all that.
Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie
And so at last we've exhausted the library Christies, and we're onto the titles in the personal collection. There's no denying it - I like the tricksy Christies. The gimmicky ones, the ones that contemporary reviewers considered "cheating" - they're the ones for me. They've lasted the years precisely because of their tricksy gimmicks. But it also strikes me, rereading Orient Express now, that even as mere prose it's a step above its fellows. It's as if Christie knew this one would last and upped her game accordingly. I don't know why, it just shines that bit brighter. And once you know the ending, you can spot the groundwork being laid for it, in cheeky asides as well as clues, and I feel that that helps too. I've said it before and I'll continue to say it - no book should rely exclusively on a "surprise" ending. This is a detective novel that rewards repeat readings.
Five Little Pigs, Agatha Christie
So, the Interesting Theory. This book was written sixteen years after Christie's bust-up with her first husband and her famous disappearance, and concerns a husband-and-wife murder that took place sixteen years earlier. Some critics regard this as significant, and once you've had it pointed out to you you can read what you like into the martyred wife, the unpleasant and ultimately unsatisfied mistress, the husband with the initials AC (Archie Christie). Taken at face value, it's an engrossing in-depth examination of the five characters at the heart of the case, and (even after reading the other "crime in the past" novels first) still better by far than any other Christie of the type. But there is an emotional depth to the novel, and it's tempting to think that Christie was working something out of her system here. Of course, we'll never know for sure because (qv above) she never said.
The Fantastic Four: True Story, Paul Cornell
Part of the comic book mayhem that seized us while in Glasgow last weekend. The Fantastic Four venture into the world of fiction; literary hi-jinks ensue. Jasper Fforde is, naturally, referenced, because it's taken as a given nowadays that anything of the sort must owe him its inspiration. Worth a look for the "Reader, I clobbered him" chapter if nothing else.
Captain Britain and MI13 vol. 2, Paul Cornell
Interesting. Hard to take seriously if you know who Dr Plokta is, mind you. However, vol.3 looks mind-blowing - apparently Count Dracula's got a castle on the Moon, and this is about to figure in some way in the story of MI13. I suspect Dracula's moonbase has been covered in some previous (unknown to me) Marvel publication and that this is, therefore, going to be no different from the endless reappearances of Dr Doom or the Green Goblin in other Marvel publications, but to me in my ignorance it looks exciting. This may be one occasion on which I benefit from not being a big Marvel reader.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, vol. 1, Alan Moore
The Threepenny Opera rejigged League-style. This feels like a prologue rather than a part of something - of course it does chronologically precede The Black Dossier, but it doesn't tie into that at all, so it's hard to see exactly what it's paving the way for. Two more volumes (of around 90 pages) to follow - hopefully the other two will feel more substantial. This is fun (of a kind), but not very satisfying.
If Dead Man's Folly is the Christie auto-parody, this is the inside-out Christie. Agatha Christie's Poirot, first inversion. Of all the second-tier Christies, this is probably the one that most deserves to make it onto my top list. Oh, and Gudgeon - Best Butler Ever.
After the Funeral, Agatha Christie
Pretty good post-war Poirot. There are those who say that Christie's golden age ended with the Second World War, but I'm starting to think she was good for a clear decade after that, with Hickory Dickory Dock marking the tipping point and Folly the real beginning of the end.
Poirot Investigates, Agatha Christie
I've commented before on Christie's short stories; I don't think there are any here that weren't improved by being adapted to the fifty minute TV format.
Taken at the Flood, Agatha Christie
Musical deaths - which ones are murders, which suicides? This is really Christie trying too hard and being too smart for her readers' good, but it certainly deserves some recognition for that. Took a fairly hefty rewriting in the TV series, not least because the catalytic event for the story is a WW2 air raid, and the TV series is still resolutely clinging to the '30s.
Cat Among the Pigeons, Agatha Christie
Readers may insert what comments about Poirot in a girls' boarding school they consider appropriate. The TV series tried to spice things up by changing the murder weapon from a common or garden handgun to a javelin, but it couldn't entirely carry it off. The most intriguing thing in the book is that Christie seems to think that Candide (and it quite definitely is Voltaire's Candide) is pornography. I may have to reread Candide to try to work this one out. Of course, it could simply be that Christie took the title the wrong way.
The Big Four, Agatha Christie
Irredeemable. Poirot finds himself in the middle of one of Christie's Daily-Mail-on-speed political thrillers. The villains might best be thought of as Fu Manchu, Evil Marie Curie, Evil Rockefeller and the blandest available member of the RSC. This started life as a series of short stories, and apparently didn't take much reworking when it was turned into a novel, so we can assume that readers in 1924 were treated to week after week of Poirot accusing a shadowy conspiracy of crimes he'd failed to solve. In the real world we'd call that paranoia, or the next Dan Brown blockbuster. It can't have been that thrilling at the time. It isn't now, to be honest. My hope for the TV adaptation, when it comes, is that either they do it as a surreal nightmare (Massive Opportunity For German Expressionism!) or they do it as the sexed-up version of events presented by Hastings when he came to write it up. In any case, good luck, ITV adapters.
Black Coffee, Charles Osborne (based on a play by Agatha Christie)
Reconstituted Christie product. I was prepared to allow that Christie herself might have included the verbatim cut-and-pastes from her novels in the original script, until I saw the speech lifted straight out of After the Funeral, a book published more than two decades after the play was written. Osborne's also made far too much of an effort to tie down the chronology of the story, in relation to real world events and to other books - far more of an effort than Christie ever did - and made a bit of a hash of it. The story itself is light - probably well suited to an evening's theatre, not quite so promising as a book - and tragically includes the old "I'm going to turn the lights off and when I turn them back on..." schtick. It's Christie-flavoured rather than full fat Christie.
What I don't understand is why it's been included in the last few reprints of the Christie canon, with Christie's name on the cover. This feels a bit weird to me.
Elephants Can Remember, Agatha Christie
The last Poirot novel Christie actually wrote (Curtain having been locked in a vault some thirty years earlier). I suppose the best way to describe it is that it's like Five Little Pigs, but with no life in it. Nothing happens in the present day except for the detective(s) getting half-remembered testimony out of the witnesses, the case itself is cold and (re)solving it won't help or please anyone except the offspring of the victim and apparent murderer - but there's an unbridgeable gulf in style between Pigs and Elephants. Pigs oozes character and emotion; Elephants just feels like Samuel Beckett, but without the wit.
Autobiography, Agatha Christie
Lively and conversational, this book really only covers Christie's life up to the 1930s. The '40s, '50s and '60s are covered almost as an afterthought; you're halfway through before Christie's even got as far as Roger Ackroyd. And anyone hoping for insights relating to her work will be disappointed - this really is strictly biographical. Worth a read, for all that.
Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie
And so at last we've exhausted the library Christies, and we're onto the titles in the personal collection. There's no denying it - I like the tricksy Christies. The gimmicky ones, the ones that contemporary reviewers considered "cheating" - they're the ones for me. They've lasted the years precisely because of their tricksy gimmicks. But it also strikes me, rereading Orient Express now, that even as mere prose it's a step above its fellows. It's as if Christie knew this one would last and upped her game accordingly. I don't know why, it just shines that bit brighter. And once you know the ending, you can spot the groundwork being laid for it, in cheeky asides as well as clues, and I feel that that helps too. I've said it before and I'll continue to say it - no book should rely exclusively on a "surprise" ending. This is a detective novel that rewards repeat readings.
Five Little Pigs, Agatha Christie
So, the Interesting Theory. This book was written sixteen years after Christie's bust-up with her first husband and her famous disappearance, and concerns a husband-and-wife murder that took place sixteen years earlier. Some critics regard this as significant, and once you've had it pointed out to you you can read what you like into the martyred wife, the unpleasant and ultimately unsatisfied mistress, the husband with the initials AC (Archie Christie). Taken at face value, it's an engrossing in-depth examination of the five characters at the heart of the case, and (even after reading the other "crime in the past" novels first) still better by far than any other Christie of the type. But there is an emotional depth to the novel, and it's tempting to think that Christie was working something out of her system here. Of course, we'll never know for sure because (qv above) she never said.
The Fantastic Four: True Story, Paul Cornell
Part of the comic book mayhem that seized us while in Glasgow last weekend. The Fantastic Four venture into the world of fiction; literary hi-jinks ensue. Jasper Fforde is, naturally, referenced, because it's taken as a given nowadays that anything of the sort must owe him its inspiration. Worth a look for the "Reader, I clobbered him" chapter if nothing else.
Captain Britain and MI13 vol. 2, Paul Cornell
Interesting. Hard to take seriously if you know who Dr Plokta is, mind you. However, vol.3 looks mind-blowing - apparently Count Dracula's got a castle on the Moon, and this is about to figure in some way in the story of MI13. I suspect Dracula's moonbase has been covered in some previous (unknown to me) Marvel publication and that this is, therefore, going to be no different from the endless reappearances of Dr Doom or the Green Goblin in other Marvel publications, but to me in my ignorance it looks exciting. This may be one occasion on which I benefit from not being a big Marvel reader.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, vol. 1, Alan Moore
The Threepenny Opera rejigged League-style. This feels like a prologue rather than a part of something - of course it does chronologically precede The Black Dossier, but it doesn't tie into that at all, so it's hard to see exactly what it's paving the way for. Two more volumes (of around 90 pages) to follow - hopefully the other two will feel more substantial. This is fun (of a kind), but not very satisfying.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Books read in July
It's been a, ho ho, Herculean month in the ongoing Poirothon:
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, and a Selection of Entrees, Agatha Christie
So easy to forget this anthology, but I think it's more deserving of attention than, say, Murder in the Mews. The stories are of that long-short towards novella length that suits Christie so well, two more stories than in Mews (and fewer cop-outs too) and the surprise inclusion of a Marple for extra variety (although it's not a very good Marple). I think "The Under Dog" might be my favourite Christie short story - although it's not honestly a very solid story once you sit down and think it through, it reads very smoothly.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie
Stands up remarkably well, considering this was Christie's first ever novel. Perhaps it benefited from a few years' extra attention between first writing (1916) and publication (1920). Indeed, stood next to The Murder on the Links it looks very polished - you'd've said this was the second novel. She doesn't seem to have nailed down Poirot yet, though - one minute he's got a limp (supposedly), the next he's bounding around like Zebedee. His explosive outbursts and aggrieved wailing and head-clutching when revelations occur to him would also be toned down in later books, thank goodness.
Sad Cypress, Agatha Christie
A very good character-driven story, and unusually the denouement is played out in court. Not often we see Poirot in this environment. All in all it's an extremely strong story - not sure if it belongs in the very top tier of Christie, but it's certainly on the borderline.
Death on the Nile, Agatha Christie
"And the murderer iiiiiiiis..." Bang! That's how death #3 tends to be played in adaptations of this one. It isn't quite like that in the book, but it's not too far off. This is one where the victims seem especially keen to make it easier for the murderer to kill them while making the detective's life harder. It's uncanny how deaths #2 and #3 both involve an eye-witness interrupting Poirot (and his pal Colonel Race) while he's trying to talk to victim #1's husband, completely failing to come out with the important information and then getting killed. Presumably Christie found herself a hundred pages short and had to resort to this extra chicanery to make the contractual number of words.
On the other hand, what we have here is the story of the perfect murder gone wrong. It would have been watertight, except that - inevitably - one person sees the wrong thing and has to be silenced. And then someone else sees that, and they have to be silenced... And what should have been one neat crime ends up being an escalating chain of crimes, because of good old Sod's Law. On that basis, it sounds a lot better. And hey, it's got Egypt in it too. Still can't quite bring myself to give it top marks, though.
Appointment with Death, Agatha Christie
In story terms, this one ought to be the best of the Middle Eastern trio - not nearly so far-fetched as Mesopotamia or Nile. But overall it feels slightly doughy, slightly as though the colour's been turned down. The first third of the book is spent just getting us to understand that Mother Boynton is a nasty piece of work, and Poirot spends the entire final sixth explaining everything, in an unusually long wrap-up. Mother Boynton alone ought to be able to imbue the book with colour and character, but she's too much the grotesque, and of course her down-trodden kids are required to be quite characterless. In its favour, I like the way Poirot follows the chain of everyone suspecting someone else until he finally arrives at the real solution. Well, it's more or less on a par with its Middle East counterparts.
The Mystery of the Blue Train, Agatha Christie
See, here's the funny thing. Most of Christie fandom seems to agree that The Big Four, which was the first book to come out after Christie's now legendary "disappearance", is a very bad book, but people let it off lightly because of everything she was going through that year. But Blue Train is the book she was actually writing during that hard, hard year. When asked, she always cited it among the least favourite of her own books. She famously had to force out every word. And it shows, in the best possible way - it doesn't feel forced, but you can see that work's gone into it. It's a high quality Christie. The Big Four, on the other hand, rushed out to fill the publishing gap while Christie got herself together, was cobbled together from short stories published nearly three years earlier, so it was cack long before anything went wrong with her life. But I'll be mean about it in more detail when I get around to re-reading it.
A Talent to Deceive: An Appreciation of Agatha Christie, Robert Barnard
At last, the reference work I've been looking for! A proper critical text, a series of essay-ish examinations of Christie's oeuvre. Barnard's happy to draw attention to Christie's shortcomings as a writer - her tendency for "off-the-shelf" characters (or character types, perhaps), her "broad stroke" approach to description, her often quite flat prose - but as he says, that's not the point of Christie's work nor the secret of her popular success. The point is the puzzle - the reader's pleasure, like that of the detective, of taking the pieces of information available and trying to work out what the complete picture is.
I can go with that. A lot of science fiction works in the same way - take the given clues about a situation and work out what's going on. Asimov's and Clarke's writings aren't a million miles away from this, and they too have a bit of a tendency to skimp on character depth and atmospheric description. But all the As You Know, Professors in the world aren't going to knock them off SF's top pedestal.
Intriguingly, Barnard also mentions the Interesting Theory about Five Little Pigs (he downplays it), and his book was published two years before Charles Osborne's. This not only gives me even less reason to spend money on my own copy of Osborne's book, it also makes me wonder who actually first suggested the theory, and when.
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, Agatha Christie
Dodgy dealings at the top of the banking industry - who'da thunk it?! It's not generally a good idea to get Christie onto the subject of politics, but here she's not too bad. In fact this might be the best of the political Poirot novels, not that it's up against much competition. The solution is completely out of a hat, though.
Hickory Dickory Dock, Agatha Christie
The second book in this month's Spurious Nursery Rhyme In The Title Double Bill is better than its reputation would suggest. The attempted foreign characters are a little regrettable, but by no means horrifying - could have been a lot worse if Christie had written it twenty or so years earlier. There's a lot going on in this novel, so it doesn't flag in the way the '60s Poirots do, and it even has a touch of atmosphere to it.
The comedy scene with the brandy bottles may have been recycled from Dumb Witness, but it's still good for a chuckle.
Hallowe'en Party, Agatha Christie
This year, I will be mostly imitating Dennis Wheatley. Christie's definitely past her best by this stage - the character work is pretty terrible (Poirot visits the bereaved mother and two young siblings a day or two after the murder to find them all nonchalantly carrying on as before, and let's not start on the Precocious Child), it's not difficult to spot the murderer, and whole chapters of the book are just extruded ramblings. Does not bode well for the even later Elephants Can Remember. I'd still say it's better than Third Girl, though.
Evil Under the Sun, Agatha Christie
Ah, much better. This one's high on the border between second tier and top rank, and what's doubly pleasing is that it made a first rate TV adaptation too. A successful combination of love triangle, crime from the past repeated with variation, and a rather original bit of jiggery-pokery. Throw in a Famous Five subplot about Cornish smugglers and you've got all the bases covered.
Amusingly, this book actually includes a scene where a policeman tastes a suspicious powdery substance. Happens all the time in TV cop shows, but I think this might be the first time I've seen it in print. I could be wrong; it may just have stuck because the policeman here actually seems to react to the drug.
Dead Man's Folly, Agatha Christie
This is practically a self-parody. The lord and lady of the country manor and their household are relics of a (by then) dead age, and I think they and Christie know it. The comedy socialist is past his best before date as well, and completely superfluous to the story throughout. Watch out for wacky rustic accents and Those Pesky Foreigners too. Worst of all, the resolution includes a double whammy of two of Christie's most infuriating plot devices - surprise bigamy and one character working two identities simultaneously right in front of everyone without anyone noticing. Still, once again I have to say it's not as bad as Third Girl. That book's definitely the low benchmark.
The Labours of Hercules, Agatha Christie
Is it an anthology or is it a novel? Perhaps we should put it in a special intermediate category with The Big Four. Considered as a whole it's varied and lively, and I can't really pick out any duff bits. Remember, kids - the longer the Christie short story, the better, and you certainly get your money's worth (or in my case, my library reservation fee's worth) with this one. The prince of Christie anthologies.
It is slightly amusing to see Poirot planning his retirement to grow vegetable marrows, since he already tried this back in the '20s and swore never to do it again. But perhaps we can write this detail off as it was only bolted on in the all-new prologue when the stories were collected. Or perhaps this is the crime fiction equivalent of those reboots Marvel and DC superhero comics go through every couple of decades?
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, and a Selection of Entrees, Agatha Christie
So easy to forget this anthology, but I think it's more deserving of attention than, say, Murder in the Mews. The stories are of that long-short towards novella length that suits Christie so well, two more stories than in Mews (and fewer cop-outs too) and the surprise inclusion of a Marple for extra variety (although it's not a very good Marple). I think "The Under Dog" might be my favourite Christie short story - although it's not honestly a very solid story once you sit down and think it through, it reads very smoothly.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie
Stands up remarkably well, considering this was Christie's first ever novel. Perhaps it benefited from a few years' extra attention between first writing (1916) and publication (1920). Indeed, stood next to The Murder on the Links it looks very polished - you'd've said this was the second novel. She doesn't seem to have nailed down Poirot yet, though - one minute he's got a limp (supposedly), the next he's bounding around like Zebedee. His explosive outbursts and aggrieved wailing and head-clutching when revelations occur to him would also be toned down in later books, thank goodness.
Sad Cypress, Agatha Christie
A very good character-driven story, and unusually the denouement is played out in court. Not often we see Poirot in this environment. All in all it's an extremely strong story - not sure if it belongs in the very top tier of Christie, but it's certainly on the borderline.
Death on the Nile, Agatha Christie
"And the murderer iiiiiiiis..." Bang! That's how death #3 tends to be played in adaptations of this one. It isn't quite like that in the book, but it's not too far off. This is one where the victims seem especially keen to make it easier for the murderer to kill them while making the detective's life harder. It's uncanny how deaths #2 and #3 both involve an eye-witness interrupting Poirot (and his pal Colonel Race) while he's trying to talk to victim #1's husband, completely failing to come out with the important information and then getting killed. Presumably Christie found herself a hundred pages short and had to resort to this extra chicanery to make the contractual number of words.
On the other hand, what we have here is the story of the perfect murder gone wrong. It would have been watertight, except that - inevitably - one person sees the wrong thing and has to be silenced. And then someone else sees that, and they have to be silenced... And what should have been one neat crime ends up being an escalating chain of crimes, because of good old Sod's Law. On that basis, it sounds a lot better. And hey, it's got Egypt in it too. Still can't quite bring myself to give it top marks, though.
Appointment with Death, Agatha Christie
In story terms, this one ought to be the best of the Middle Eastern trio - not nearly so far-fetched as Mesopotamia or Nile. But overall it feels slightly doughy, slightly as though the colour's been turned down. The first third of the book is spent just getting us to understand that Mother Boynton is a nasty piece of work, and Poirot spends the entire final sixth explaining everything, in an unusually long wrap-up. Mother Boynton alone ought to be able to imbue the book with colour and character, but she's too much the grotesque, and of course her down-trodden kids are required to be quite characterless. In its favour, I like the way Poirot follows the chain of everyone suspecting someone else until he finally arrives at the real solution. Well, it's more or less on a par with its Middle East counterparts.
The Mystery of the Blue Train, Agatha Christie
See, here's the funny thing. Most of Christie fandom seems to agree that The Big Four, which was the first book to come out after Christie's now legendary "disappearance", is a very bad book, but people let it off lightly because of everything she was going through that year. But Blue Train is the book she was actually writing during that hard, hard year. When asked, she always cited it among the least favourite of her own books. She famously had to force out every word. And it shows, in the best possible way - it doesn't feel forced, but you can see that work's gone into it. It's a high quality Christie. The Big Four, on the other hand, rushed out to fill the publishing gap while Christie got herself together, was cobbled together from short stories published nearly three years earlier, so it was cack long before anything went wrong with her life. But I'll be mean about it in more detail when I get around to re-reading it.
A Talent to Deceive: An Appreciation of Agatha Christie, Robert Barnard
At last, the reference work I've been looking for! A proper critical text, a series of essay-ish examinations of Christie's oeuvre. Barnard's happy to draw attention to Christie's shortcomings as a writer - her tendency for "off-the-shelf" characters (or character types, perhaps), her "broad stroke" approach to description, her often quite flat prose - but as he says, that's not the point of Christie's work nor the secret of her popular success. The point is the puzzle - the reader's pleasure, like that of the detective, of taking the pieces of information available and trying to work out what the complete picture is.
I can go with that. A lot of science fiction works in the same way - take the given clues about a situation and work out what's going on. Asimov's and Clarke's writings aren't a million miles away from this, and they too have a bit of a tendency to skimp on character depth and atmospheric description. But all the As You Know, Professors in the world aren't going to knock them off SF's top pedestal.
Intriguingly, Barnard also mentions the Interesting Theory about Five Little Pigs (he downplays it), and his book was published two years before Charles Osborne's. This not only gives me even less reason to spend money on my own copy of Osborne's book, it also makes me wonder who actually first suggested the theory, and when.
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, Agatha Christie
Dodgy dealings at the top of the banking industry - who'da thunk it?! It's not generally a good idea to get Christie onto the subject of politics, but here she's not too bad. In fact this might be the best of the political Poirot novels, not that it's up against much competition. The solution is completely out of a hat, though.
Hickory Dickory Dock, Agatha Christie
The second book in this month's Spurious Nursery Rhyme In The Title Double Bill is better than its reputation would suggest. The attempted foreign characters are a little regrettable, but by no means horrifying - could have been a lot worse if Christie had written it twenty or so years earlier. There's a lot going on in this novel, so it doesn't flag in the way the '60s Poirots do, and it even has a touch of atmosphere to it.
The comedy scene with the brandy bottles may have been recycled from Dumb Witness, but it's still good for a chuckle.
Hallowe'en Party, Agatha Christie
This year, I will be mostly imitating Dennis Wheatley. Christie's definitely past her best by this stage - the character work is pretty terrible (Poirot visits the bereaved mother and two young siblings a day or two after the murder to find them all nonchalantly carrying on as before, and let's not start on the Precocious Child), it's not difficult to spot the murderer, and whole chapters of the book are just extruded ramblings. Does not bode well for the even later Elephants Can Remember. I'd still say it's better than Third Girl, though.
Evil Under the Sun, Agatha Christie
Ah, much better. This one's high on the border between second tier and top rank, and what's doubly pleasing is that it made a first rate TV adaptation too. A successful combination of love triangle, crime from the past repeated with variation, and a rather original bit of jiggery-pokery. Throw in a Famous Five subplot about Cornish smugglers and you've got all the bases covered.
Amusingly, this book actually includes a scene where a policeman tastes a suspicious powdery substance. Happens all the time in TV cop shows, but I think this might be the first time I've seen it in print. I could be wrong; it may just have stuck because the policeman here actually seems to react to the drug.
Dead Man's Folly, Agatha Christie
This is practically a self-parody. The lord and lady of the country manor and their household are relics of a (by then) dead age, and I think they and Christie know it. The comedy socialist is past his best before date as well, and completely superfluous to the story throughout. Watch out for wacky rustic accents and Those Pesky Foreigners too. Worst of all, the resolution includes a double whammy of two of Christie's most infuriating plot devices - surprise bigamy and one character working two identities simultaneously right in front of everyone without anyone noticing. Still, once again I have to say it's not as bad as Third Girl. That book's definitely the low benchmark.
The Labours of Hercules, Agatha Christie
Is it an anthology or is it a novel? Perhaps we should put it in a special intermediate category with The Big Four. Considered as a whole it's varied and lively, and I can't really pick out any duff bits. Remember, kids - the longer the Christie short story, the better, and you certainly get your money's worth (or in my case, my library reservation fee's worth) with this one. The prince of Christie anthologies.
It is slightly amusing to see Poirot planning his retirement to grow vegetable marrows, since he already tried this back in the '20s and swore never to do it again. But perhaps we can write this detail off as it was only bolted on in the all-new prologue when the stories were collected. Or perhaps this is the crime fiction equivalent of those reboots Marvel and DC superhero comics go through every couple of decades?
Monday, June 29, 2009
Books read in June
Lord Edgware Dies, Agatha Christie
Dammit, James Blunt's been at it again! First I find him in Richard III, and now here he is on the guest list to Sir Montagu Corner's dinner party. Damn your fictional antics, Blunt!
Another high second-ranker. It's extremely easy to guess the identity and method of the killer - even more so than in Three Act Tragedy - and working out the motive is only a matter of time, but this book scores with its engaging prose and lively story. Amusingly, this must be the only Christie novel that ITV made less licentious when they adapted it - Lord Edgware's legendary cruelty clearly extends into rooms other than his study, as his proudly displayed collection of de Sade books suggests, not to mention the fact that he picked up his effete butler in a dodgy nightclub. Not a hint of it in the Suchet adaptation. They couldn't even allow themselves to cast the butler that way.
Dumb Witness, Agatha Christie
This book is (in)famous for its cutesy dog "dialogue", and I can now reveal that it's almost as trying as people say. Almost, but not quite. There's much to recommend it, not least the little side jokes and the light relief of Market Basing's "hearty old woman" character. And Poirot's harsh yet compassionate handling of the denouement makes a refreshing change from the all too familiar everyone-in-the-parlour ending. High third tier, perhaps.
Death in the Clouds, Agatha Christie
So, here's another story that relies heavily on a favourite social truism of Christie's... does nobody ever simply look up and make eye contact at the wrong moment? Still, it's a lively story, and it's nice to see the old Train Murder concept transferred to the modern airliner (is this the only example in crime fiction? not aware of any others). Another high second-tier story.
Also contains my favourite instance of casual racism in all the Christies I've read so far, when the two romantic leads bond over their mutual dislike for "negroes". Well, it was the 1930s, you've got to make allowances, etc etc.
Peril at End House, Agatha Christie
Perhaps a slightly lower rating for this one. It chunters along fairly happily, and then all the revelations just kind of tumble out at the end, probable and improbable alike, as though someone had opened an overstuffed overhead locker. It's also pretty hard by this stage in the Poirothon not to spot when the murderer fulfils one or more of the Suspicious Criteria, and the murderer here doesn't do it by halves. At the time of publication it may have been a different story, but now... Still, it's a good middler.
Poirot's Early Cases, Agatha Christie
I don't think Christie's quite as good in ten or fifteen pages as she is over the length of a novel. It's not so much that a crime story as short as these has to be nearly all puzzle and little else; it's rather that Christie's puzzles benefit from the leisurely build-up and resolution that a novel affords. That said, there's enough variety to make it possible to read this collection over a couple of days - a few murders, a few thefts, two fireside stories told by Poirot to Hastings, and even some of Poirot's Late Early Cases from the 1930s.
Third Girl, Agatha Christie
Stodgy, very stodgy. It's something like five sixths of the way into the book before we're even sure that there's anything to investigate; in the meantime, Poirot has spent pretty much all of his time having no clues and bemoaning, at great length, the fact that he has no clues. When we do get there, though, things more or less come together. Perhaps the greatest asset the plot has in terms of misdirection is the reader's absolute certainty that Christie, notorious Daily Mail reader that she is, won't be able to resist turning the denouement into a tirade against drug culture - pleasingly, she does something more interesting.
There is, however, plenty of hippie action, and of 1960s atmosphere in general. Whoever it was who said that Christie's work is timeless can't have been paying much attention. There's also what looks suspiciously like a theme, that of coincidence - on the face of it, it's just lazy for Ariadne Oliver to magically land the various bits of information she passes on to Poirot, but when Poirot takes two pages out to lecture on the subject of coincidence, it all starts to look a bit more significant. Perhaps Christie was aiming for something a bit artier than mere thrillers at this stage of her career. Which is a bit of a shame when most of us lot are just after thrillers.
The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie, Charles Osborne
This month's reference book is quite a bit more substantial than last month's - Osborne combines story synopses, brief opinions, occasional insights and plenty of background detail into a book-by-book biography of Christie. It's interesting, although not quite as perfect as it thinks it is - Osborne spends a couple of footnotes, apparently without irony, taking down his fellow critical writers for mistakes in their works, then goes and claims that Poirot appears in A Pocket Full of Rye (Marple), or crows about a supposed flaw in The Murder on the Links that's entirely due to his own misreading. Let's just say it's unfortunate. Maybe the paperback edition included corrections, but sadly I'm not able to check. Still 'n' all, a good read, and he has a very compelling theory about the writing of Five Little Pigs that I might relate when I get round to reading the book.
The Hollow Man, John Dickson Carr
Just to keep things interesting, a non-Christie. This is apparently the greatest locked room mystery of them all. It's highly readable, and goes all-out to present an apparently supernatural murder. I'm tempted to describe the solution as absurd, but it does all add up. I'm not quite sure whether it's supposed to be set in the 1930s, when it was written - it comes across as entirely Victorian. What the lecture-chapter on locked room mysteries has to do with any of it I don't know, although I suspect it's there purely to cushion the reader against the more absurd elements of the denouement - can't be a good sign when a character makes a direct appeal to the reader to suspend their disbelief. Still, it might be worth reading more of Carr's work.
Dammit, James Blunt's been at it again! First I find him in Richard III, and now here he is on the guest list to Sir Montagu Corner's dinner party. Damn your fictional antics, Blunt!
Another high second-ranker. It's extremely easy to guess the identity and method of the killer - even more so than in Three Act Tragedy - and working out the motive is only a matter of time, but this book scores with its engaging prose and lively story. Amusingly, this must be the only Christie novel that ITV made less licentious when they adapted it - Lord Edgware's legendary cruelty clearly extends into rooms other than his study, as his proudly displayed collection of de Sade books suggests, not to mention the fact that he picked up his effete butler in a dodgy nightclub. Not a hint of it in the Suchet adaptation. They couldn't even allow themselves to cast the butler that way.
Dumb Witness, Agatha Christie
This book is (in)famous for its cutesy dog "dialogue", and I can now reveal that it's almost as trying as people say. Almost, but not quite. There's much to recommend it, not least the little side jokes and the light relief of Market Basing's "hearty old woman" character. And Poirot's harsh yet compassionate handling of the denouement makes a refreshing change from the all too familiar everyone-in-the-parlour ending. High third tier, perhaps.
Death in the Clouds, Agatha Christie
So, here's another story that relies heavily on a favourite social truism of Christie's... does nobody ever simply look up and make eye contact at the wrong moment? Still, it's a lively story, and it's nice to see the old Train Murder concept transferred to the modern airliner (is this the only example in crime fiction? not aware of any others). Another high second-tier story.
Also contains my favourite instance of casual racism in all the Christies I've read so far, when the two romantic leads bond over their mutual dislike for "negroes". Well, it was the 1930s, you've got to make allowances, etc etc.
Peril at End House, Agatha Christie
Perhaps a slightly lower rating for this one. It chunters along fairly happily, and then all the revelations just kind of tumble out at the end, probable and improbable alike, as though someone had opened an overstuffed overhead locker. It's also pretty hard by this stage in the Poirothon not to spot when the murderer fulfils one or more of the Suspicious Criteria, and the murderer here doesn't do it by halves. At the time of publication it may have been a different story, but now... Still, it's a good middler.
Poirot's Early Cases, Agatha Christie
I don't think Christie's quite as good in ten or fifteen pages as she is over the length of a novel. It's not so much that a crime story as short as these has to be nearly all puzzle and little else; it's rather that Christie's puzzles benefit from the leisurely build-up and resolution that a novel affords. That said, there's enough variety to make it possible to read this collection over a couple of days - a few murders, a few thefts, two fireside stories told by Poirot to Hastings, and even some of Poirot's Late Early Cases from the 1930s.
Third Girl, Agatha Christie
Stodgy, very stodgy. It's something like five sixths of the way into the book before we're even sure that there's anything to investigate; in the meantime, Poirot has spent pretty much all of his time having no clues and bemoaning, at great length, the fact that he has no clues. When we do get there, though, things more or less come together. Perhaps the greatest asset the plot has in terms of misdirection is the reader's absolute certainty that Christie, notorious Daily Mail reader that she is, won't be able to resist turning the denouement into a tirade against drug culture - pleasingly, she does something more interesting.
There is, however, plenty of hippie action, and of 1960s atmosphere in general. Whoever it was who said that Christie's work is timeless can't have been paying much attention. There's also what looks suspiciously like a theme, that of coincidence - on the face of it, it's just lazy for Ariadne Oliver to magically land the various bits of information she passes on to Poirot, but when Poirot takes two pages out to lecture on the subject of coincidence, it all starts to look a bit more significant. Perhaps Christie was aiming for something a bit artier than mere thrillers at this stage of her career. Which is a bit of a shame when most of us lot are just after thrillers.
The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie, Charles Osborne
This month's reference book is quite a bit more substantial than last month's - Osborne combines story synopses, brief opinions, occasional insights and plenty of background detail into a book-by-book biography of Christie. It's interesting, although not quite as perfect as it thinks it is - Osborne spends a couple of footnotes, apparently without irony, taking down his fellow critical writers for mistakes in their works, then goes and claims that Poirot appears in A Pocket Full of Rye (Marple), or crows about a supposed flaw in The Murder on the Links that's entirely due to his own misreading. Let's just say it's unfortunate. Maybe the paperback edition included corrections, but sadly I'm not able to check. Still 'n' all, a good read, and he has a very compelling theory about the writing of Five Little Pigs that I might relate when I get round to reading the book.
The Hollow Man, John Dickson Carr
Just to keep things interesting, a non-Christie. This is apparently the greatest locked room mystery of them all. It's highly readable, and goes all-out to present an apparently supernatural murder. I'm tempted to describe the solution as absurd, but it does all add up. I'm not quite sure whether it's supposed to be set in the 1930s, when it was written - it comes across as entirely Victorian. What the lecture-chapter on locked room mysteries has to do with any of it I don't know, although I suspect it's there purely to cushion the reader against the more absurd elements of the denouement - can't be a good sign when a character makes a direct appeal to the reader to suspend their disbelief. Still, it might be worth reading more of Carr's work.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Books read in May
Notes & Counter Notes: Writings on the Theatre, Eugene Ionesco (translator Donald Watson)
A collection not only of Ionesco's own writings, but which also includes a famous (in its day) exchange of letters and articles between Ionesco and his critics. This is a highlight of the book and a valuable piece of commentary on Ionesco's theatre. It's nice to read it in the original English - in the book's original French, this section had to be translated... Touch of irony there.
This is another book that replaces the French version on my shelves. The funny thing is, there was one specific Ionesco quote that I remembered from this book, concerning his fascination with language: "Ils se parlent. Ils se comprennent. C'est ca qui m'etonnait." ("People talk to each other - they understand each other. It's that which astonished me.") But damned if I can find it anywhere in here. I can't even find it on Google now. Has the memory cheated?
There then followed a bout of Poirot-mania. The Lovely Jo and I have progressed from watching ITV3's patchy Poirot repeats to renting and buying the DVDs (and renting other "1930s detective" DVDs, of which more may follow), to re-reading the books.
There's a catch here in that at the start of the month we didn't own any of the books - readers may recall that I once went through a Christie phase, but all the books went down to the second-hand shop years ago for reasons of space. The books that both of us have read this month and are likely to read over the next few months as well are therefore a mix of library copies, friends' copies, and a few select titles that I decided I would actually like to own after all.
(I've discovered a very attractive edition of Christie's novels that was apparently sold as a partwork about five years ago, several hundred copies of which have since ended up in second-hand bookshops. However, as seems to be the way with partworks, the later issues had smaller runs and it doesn't look as though anybody who stuck it out as far as Curtain is prepared to sell their copy second-hand. I'm keeping my eye on Abebooks, but in the meantime a cheap paperback edition is holding its place on the shelf.)
They're pretty good reading - light, entertaining, only a couple of hundred pages long. They're like book candy. You can pop a couple in in a week without difficulty.
Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, Agatha Christie
This one's a keeper. I could go on about it all day - the murderer's unusual method, the startling ending (so who's really won - Poirot? the murderer? both?), the whole dramatic scope of it (it's really Poirot vs the very idea of murder itself, as much as it's Poirot vs the murderer).
The only problem with it is that it's very definitely set in the 1940s (when it was written and then locked away, just in case Christie didn't survive WW2 - it seems to be set just after WW2, although at the time this must just have been wishful thinking on Christie's part), which doesn't fit too well with Poirot's continued career during the '50s, '60s and '70s. Apparently this is a well-known problem within Christie fandom, which most fans prefer to address by fudging the dates in this one book and simply pretending that he wasn't over 100 years old when he died. Personally I prefer ITV's solution of setting the entire rest of the series in an endlessly repeating 1936.
The Life and Times of Hercule Poirot, Anne Hart
Looked like it might be an interesting overview of the Poirot stories, but it doesn't go far enough for my liking. It's descriptive, but not interpretative (it doesn't even try to tackle the Poirot age problem). It does, however, give a good analysis of Poirot's character, and it's very light reading. Also manages to avoid spoiling the endings of the books, for the most part.
Murder in the Mews, Agatha Christie
Four novellas - or at least, three novellas and a moderately long short story. The short story is fairly negligible, but the other three are pretty good.
Mrs McGinty's Dead, Agatha Christie
Better than I'd remembered. It's got quite a lively sense of humour, which contrasts with ITV's idea that their more recent adaptations should be darker to reflect the allegedly more serious tone of the later books. Also gives a very good picture of small town life in the 1950s, and the everyday characters are a profound contrast with the upper class set of Poirot's '30s adventures.
The Clocks, Agatha Christie
First time of reading this one. A little bit turgid, and Poirot doesn't even show up until halfway through. When he does show up, he's on a dare to solve the case without leaving his flat, so in effect this is Christie trying to please the readers by including Poirot while pleasing herself by sidelining him. Poirot also plucks the final revelations out of the air rather more than he usually does, which makes for unsatisfying reading.
What is interesting is the way that this book comes across as a spy thriller (but thankfully not in the line of Christie's other, slightly dodgy spy thrillers) for most of its length. It almost feels like an attempt to spoof James Bond, who at the time of publication (1963) would have been stealing the crime-lovin' public's attention away from Christie's old-fashioned detectives. The Colonel Beck material is brilliant, though. I'd love to see him turn up in a Jasper Fforde novel. He's so obviously a Jurisfiction agent working undercover.
Three Act Tragedy, Agatha Christie
A middling novel. For no particular reason it features Mr Satterthwaite, crime fiction's greatest undiagnosed split-personality sufferer, although he takes a back seat to Poirot and doesn't actually solve anything here. Bizarrely Christie tells you right up front exactly whodunnit, and then trusts you to forget she said anything. Hey ho. Even if she hadn't, it'd be pretty easy to guess it outright.
The Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie
The second ever Poirot novel, and the one in which she marries off Captain Hastings. The prose is still at an early stage of development - characters and the narrator repeat entire phrases within paragraphs of each other in a way that's somewhat awkward for the reader. There's also a certain amount of melodramatic shennanigans between Hastings, the future Mrs Hastings and Poirot that doesn't sit too well with me. I'm inclined to think that the ITV scriptwriter made the right changes with this one. Can't really see the love interest's daring denouement acrobatics working in any way.
Murder in Mesopotamia, Agatha Christie
Halfway through this one. First time of reading, but I know how it ends thanks to the TV adaptation. So far the prose is good and the backstory is only a little bit improbable (it'll get more so by the end...). Subject to a final opinion after finishing, I'd place this in the second tier of Christies.
Edit: Yes, not quite the top ten but a high second-ranker.
A collection not only of Ionesco's own writings, but which also includes a famous (in its day) exchange of letters and articles between Ionesco and his critics. This is a highlight of the book and a valuable piece of commentary on Ionesco's theatre. It's nice to read it in the original English - in the book's original French, this section had to be translated... Touch of irony there.
This is another book that replaces the French version on my shelves. The funny thing is, there was one specific Ionesco quote that I remembered from this book, concerning his fascination with language: "Ils se parlent. Ils se comprennent. C'est ca qui m'etonnait." ("People talk to each other - they understand each other. It's that which astonished me.") But damned if I can find it anywhere in here. I can't even find it on Google now. Has the memory cheated?
There then followed a bout of Poirot-mania. The Lovely Jo and I have progressed from watching ITV3's patchy Poirot repeats to renting and buying the DVDs (and renting other "1930s detective" DVDs, of which more may follow), to re-reading the books.
There's a catch here in that at the start of the month we didn't own any of the books - readers may recall that I once went through a Christie phase, but all the books went down to the second-hand shop years ago for reasons of space. The books that both of us have read this month and are likely to read over the next few months as well are therefore a mix of library copies, friends' copies, and a few select titles that I decided I would actually like to own after all.
(I've discovered a very attractive edition of Christie's novels that was apparently sold as a partwork about five years ago, several hundred copies of which have since ended up in second-hand bookshops. However, as seems to be the way with partworks, the later issues had smaller runs and it doesn't look as though anybody who stuck it out as far as Curtain is prepared to sell their copy second-hand. I'm keeping my eye on Abebooks, but in the meantime a cheap paperback edition is holding its place on the shelf.)
They're pretty good reading - light, entertaining, only a couple of hundred pages long. They're like book candy. You can pop a couple in in a week without difficulty.
Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, Agatha Christie
This one's a keeper. I could go on about it all day - the murderer's unusual method, the startling ending (so who's really won - Poirot? the murderer? both?), the whole dramatic scope of it (it's really Poirot vs the very idea of murder itself, as much as it's Poirot vs the murderer).
The only problem with it is that it's very definitely set in the 1940s (when it was written and then locked away, just in case Christie didn't survive WW2 - it seems to be set just after WW2, although at the time this must just have been wishful thinking on Christie's part), which doesn't fit too well with Poirot's continued career during the '50s, '60s and '70s. Apparently this is a well-known problem within Christie fandom, which most fans prefer to address by fudging the dates in this one book and simply pretending that he wasn't over 100 years old when he died. Personally I prefer ITV's solution of setting the entire rest of the series in an endlessly repeating 1936.
The Life and Times of Hercule Poirot, Anne Hart
Looked like it might be an interesting overview of the Poirot stories, but it doesn't go far enough for my liking. It's descriptive, but not interpretative (it doesn't even try to tackle the Poirot age problem). It does, however, give a good analysis of Poirot's character, and it's very light reading. Also manages to avoid spoiling the endings of the books, for the most part.
Murder in the Mews, Agatha Christie
Four novellas - or at least, three novellas and a moderately long short story. The short story is fairly negligible, but the other three are pretty good.
Mrs McGinty's Dead, Agatha Christie
Better than I'd remembered. It's got quite a lively sense of humour, which contrasts with ITV's idea that their more recent adaptations should be darker to reflect the allegedly more serious tone of the later books. Also gives a very good picture of small town life in the 1950s, and the everyday characters are a profound contrast with the upper class set of Poirot's '30s adventures.
The Clocks, Agatha Christie
First time of reading this one. A little bit turgid, and Poirot doesn't even show up until halfway through. When he does show up, he's on a dare to solve the case without leaving his flat, so in effect this is Christie trying to please the readers by including Poirot while pleasing herself by sidelining him. Poirot also plucks the final revelations out of the air rather more than he usually does, which makes for unsatisfying reading.
What is interesting is the way that this book comes across as a spy thriller (but thankfully not in the line of Christie's other, slightly dodgy spy thrillers) for most of its length. It almost feels like an attempt to spoof James Bond, who at the time of publication (1963) would have been stealing the crime-lovin' public's attention away from Christie's old-fashioned detectives. The Colonel Beck material is brilliant, though. I'd love to see him turn up in a Jasper Fforde novel. He's so obviously a Jurisfiction agent working undercover.
Three Act Tragedy, Agatha Christie
A middling novel. For no particular reason it features Mr Satterthwaite, crime fiction's greatest undiagnosed split-personality sufferer, although he takes a back seat to Poirot and doesn't actually solve anything here. Bizarrely Christie tells you right up front exactly whodunnit, and then trusts you to forget she said anything. Hey ho. Even if she hadn't, it'd be pretty easy to guess it outright.
The Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie
The second ever Poirot novel, and the one in which she marries off Captain Hastings. The prose is still at an early stage of development - characters and the narrator repeat entire phrases within paragraphs of each other in a way that's somewhat awkward for the reader. There's also a certain amount of melodramatic shennanigans between Hastings, the future Mrs Hastings and Poirot that doesn't sit too well with me. I'm inclined to think that the ITV scriptwriter made the right changes with this one. Can't really see the love interest's daring denouement acrobatics working in any way.
Murder in Mesopotamia, Agatha Christie
Halfway through this one. First time of reading, but I know how it ends thanks to the TV adaptation. So far the prose is good and the backstory is only a little bit improbable (it'll get more so by the end...). Subject to a final opinion after finishing, I'd place this in the second tier of Christies.
Edit: Yes, not quite the top ten but a high second-ranker.
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