Category: Thriller

The Big Four by Agatha Christie

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The November theme for the Read Christie 2025 challenge is spies. I’ve already read the recommended book, Cat Among the Pigeons, and most of the suggested alternatives – I don’t want to read Postern of Fate yet as it’s the final Tommy and Tuppence book and I’m working through that series in order – so I looked for one I hadn’t read that featured international intrigue and espionage. The Big Four seemed suitable but I was a bit wary about reading it as it seems to have a bad reputation. I needn’t have worried, though, because although it’s clearly not one of her better books, I still enjoyed it!

The novel is narrated by Arthur Hastings, which is always a good thing – I love Hastings! – and he plays a big part in the story, having adventures of his own, not just as narrator and sidekick to Poirot. The book begins with a man arriving unexpectedly in Poirot’s doorway, appearing feverish and exhausted. Unable to speak, he writes the number 4 several times on a sheet of paper, and when he recovers he explains that he was referring to an international crime ring consisting of the Chinese mastermind Li Chang Yen, an American, a Frenchwoman and a mysterious fourth person known only as ‘the Destroyer’. Together they form the Big Four, a group trying to cause global unrest so that they can take over the world.

The rest of the book takes the format of a series of loosely connected episodes, as Poirot, with the help of Hastings, tries to identify the other three members of the Big Four. Of course, with their own spies and agents in every corner of the world, the Big Four know that Poirot and Hastings are on their trail and set various traps for them, some of which they fall into and some they don’t. Poirot attempts to set traps of his own, but although he manages to identify the American and the Frenchwoman fairly quickly, Number Four proves much more elusive.

I found The Big Four more entertaining than I expected, considering that Christie herself described it as “a rotten book”. It’s understandable why she would feel that way as the book was published in 1927, during a time when Christie was struggling financially and emotionally and had disappeared from her home for several days. She felt she had to force herself to complete this book and the next one, The Mystery of the Blue Train. This also explains the episodic nature of the book, because it was based on twelve previously published short stories which Christie reworked into a full-length novel rather than trying to come up with a completely original idea while she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to do so.

Despite the book’s origins and its silly, far-fetched plot, I think it’s better than some of her later thrillers, such as Destination Unknown, but I can see why it’s not well regarded and it certainly doesn’t feel like a typical Poirot novel. As I’ve said, though, it has Hastings in it, which is always a bonus, and we also get to meet – sort of – Poirot’s twin brother, Achille! It was a fun, undemanding read for me in this busy month of November, but probably not one I’ll want to revisit.

The Predicament by William Boyd

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After finishing last year’s Gabriel’s Moon, I was pleased to learn that William Boyd was writing a second book about Gabriel Dax. I’ve now read it and enjoyed it even more than the first.

The Predicament begins in March 1963 with travel writer Gabriel trying to lead a peaceful life in a small East Sussex village. However, his parallel life in the world of espionage just won’t leave him alone. His Russian contact, Natalia Arkadina of the KGB, still believes he is a double agent working on behalf of Russia and has requested a meeting with him to give him his latest assignment. Meanwhile, Faith Green of MI6 has also approached him with a new mission: to go to Guatemala and interview Padre Tiago, the man expected to win the upcoming presidential election there.

Gabriel is not thrilled about getting involved in spying again, but agrees to the Guatemala plan as he’ll be able to combine the trip with some research for his new book on the world’s rivers. Unfortunately, things go badly wrong and he leaves the country in a hurry, having made himself the target of some unscrupulous people. It’s not long before he is given a new task, though – this time he must go to Germany and try to prevent an assassination attempt on President Kennedy, who is visiting West Berlin.

I don’t often choose to read spy thrillers, but one of the things I find compelling about this series is that Gabriel is such a reluctant and accidental spy. He never intended to get mixed up in international espionage and is really not very good at it! We do see him adding to his skill set in this book, though, being trained on how to lose someone who is trying to follow him and how to use everyday items as weapons. And although his Guatemala mission is disastrous, he does play a part in foiling the conspiracy to kill JFK in Berlin (I’m sure it’s not a spoiler to say that it was foiled as everyone knows that he wasn’t assassinated in Germany). Boyd does a good job of creating tension in the Berlin sections, despite it already being obvious what the outcome is going to be!

Gabriel’s Moon probably had slightly more depth, as it also featured a storyline about a childhood trauma that affected Gabriel’s mental health, but I preferred this book overall – possibly because when I read the first one I was comparing it unfavourably with Boyd’s previous and very different novel, The Romantic, which I loved. And although the mental health storyline is pushed into the background in this book, Gabriel does find himself facing some other personal predicaments: he is being accused of plagiarism by another travel author, who is not pleased that Gabriel has written about the same group of islands; his ex-girlfriend Lorraine is trying to rekindle their relationship; and Gabriel himself is continuing to struggle with his feelings for his MI6 handler, Faith Green. Faith is an enigmatic character – is she really romantically interested in Gabriel or is she just stringing him along for her own purposes?

The Predicament is an entertaining read with some fascinating settings – Guatemala on the brink of a political revolution and post-war Berlin shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Throughout the book, Gabriel’s Russian contacts, Natalia and Varvara, keep pushing for him to also visit Moscow, so maybe that will finally happen in the next book! This is apparently intended to be a trilogy, so hopefully we’ll get answers to some of the other questions in the final novel too. Something to look forward to.

Thanks to Viking for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith

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Virago have just reissued ten of the books from their Modern Classics range with new green cover designs, including Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston – and this one, Patricia Highsmith’s This Sweet Sickness. I’ve been meaning to try another Highsmith novel since reading Strangers on a Train a few years ago, so when I spotted this book on NetGalley it seemed the perfect opportunity.

This Sweet Sickness was first published in 1960 and takes us inside the mind of David Kelsey, a young man who lives in a boarding house in the town of Froudsburg, New York, and works as a scientist at a fabrics factory. At least, this is his life from Monday to Friday. When the weekend comes around, David leaves for his own house in nearby Ballard, where he becomes William Newmeister, a freelance journalist. For two whole days he locks himself away and imagines he is happily married to Annabelle, the love of his life. He has decorated the house the way he thinks Annabelle would have wanted it, prepares the meals he’s sure she would like and has even bought her a piano. The only problem is, Annabelle ended their relationship two years earlier and married another man. She and her husband, Gerald Delaney, live in Connecticut with their baby son and Annabelle has never even visited the house in Ballard, let alone lived in it.

David thinks he has successfully covered up his dual identities, having convinced everyone at work and at the boarding house that he visits his elderly mother at her nursing home every weekend. His mother has actually been dead for many years, but he’s sure no one will ever find out! However, two of his friends – a work colleague, Wes Carmichael, and a fellow boarder, Effie Brennan – begin to grow suspicious and decide to investigate. They are right to be concerned, because David is becoming increasingly unstable. He can’t and won’t accept that his relationship with Annabelle is over and bombards her with letters and phone calls, urging her to leave Gerald and marry him. Eventually, things take a more sinister turn and David finds himself in trouble. Is his double life about to be exposed at last?

I loved this book and although the first half is quite slow, I was completely gripped by it all the way through. It’s definitely a disturbing read, though, particularly as the whole book is written from David’s perspective (in third person). I was so impressed by the way Highsmith changed my perception of him several times throughout the book. At first I saw him as a basically decent person who’d had his heart broken and was struggling to move on, then I quickly lost sympathy for him when it became clear how dangerous his obsession was and how relentlessly he was stalking Annabelle, and finally, despite his actions, I began to pity him again because by then he had completely lost his grip on reality and desperately needed help.

Annabelle, although we do meet her occasionally, exists mainly as a fantasy woman in David’s mind and it seems obvious that if he got his wish and married her he would find that the real Annabelle didn’t quite live up to the imaginary one. Annabelle frustrated me because she could have been much more firm with David; instead, at least at first, she seems to be encouraging him, speaking to him on the phone, agreeing to meet him and letting him think there’s still hope. It would have been interesting to have seen things from Annabelle’s perspective, I think. Did part of her still care about David and not want to hurt him? How did she really feel about Gerald?

Effie is another character who interested me. She’s clearly in love with David, but he’s too preoccupied with his delusions and obsessions to pay her much attention. He becomes more and more irritated by her persistence and her ‘spying’, without acknowledging that he is behaving the same way towards Annabelle. Effie and the other characters in the book are seen only through David’s eyes which almost certainly doesn’t give us a true or fair picture of what they are really like.

This Sweet Sickness is an unsettling novel and not very comfortable to read, but it’s also fascinating from a psychological point of view and I found it very immersive. I liked it better than Strangers on a Train and look forward to reading more of Patricia Highsmith’s books.

Thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK/Virago for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Red Lacquer Case by Patricia Wentworth – #DeanStreetDecember24

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This month, Liz at Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home is hosting another Dean Street Press December. I have several books published by DSP that I would like to read but I decided to start with this one, a standalone Patricia Wentworth novel from 1924. I really enjoyed it, so it was a good choice!

The Red Lacquer Case is a spy thriller and like many books of its type it’s probably best not to take it too seriously. Accept it for what it is, though, and it’s great fun. Our heroine is Sally Meredith who, as the novel opens, is listening to her uncle, the scientist Fritzi Lasalle, telling her about a formula he has developed for a potentially dangerous new gas. Lasalle has become paranoid about the formula falling into enemy hands, so he has locked it inside a red lacquer case which has a secret opening mechanism. After showing Sally how it works, he explains that an attempt to open it in any other way will release acid into the case, destroying the contents.

During the night, Lasalle walks out of the house and disappears, leaving behind a note for Sally telling her that the red lacquer case is hidden on a bookshelf. When she goes to look for it, however, she discovers that it’s been stolen. It seems that Lasalle’s worst fears have come to pass and enemy agents now have the case – but they don’t know how to open it and for that they’ll need Sally’s help.

The rest of the novel follows Sally as she tries to evade the enemy, who are determined to capture her and force her to open the case. Unfortunately, although she’s a brave, plucky heroine (thankfully the complete opposite of the infuriating Loveday Leigh in Fool Errant, the only other Wentworth novel I’ve read), she’s too trusting and unobservant and walks straight into every trap set for her. It makes the plot more exciting, I suppose, but it’s also quite frustrating. It’s one of those books where you keep wishing you could jump into the story for a moment and shout “No! Don’t do it!”

Sally has some help from Bill Armitage, a former love interest who now works for the War Office and coincidentally also happens to be on the trail of Uncle Fritzi’s secret formula. He’s not as much help as he could have been, however, because he and Sally spend most of the book embroiled in a series of misunderstandings, being caught out by fake telegrams and other deceptions used by the enemy agents. Luckily for Sally, she find some unlikely allies at the enemy hideout, including a temperamental Polish violinist who conveniently falls in love with her and an elderly aunt who’s completely unaware that she’s sharing her house with spies.

I think you can probably see why I’ve said this isn’t a book to be taken seriously! It’s great escapism, though, and very entertaining. Just be aware that it’s not really the ‘Golden Age mystery’ the cover indicates, as there’s very little mystery involved (although there is a twist at the end, which I didn’t see coming but should probably have guessed). I’m looking forward to reading more of the Patricia Wentworth books available from Dean Street Press!

Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie – #1970Club

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My second book for this week’s 1970 Club (hosted by Karen and Simon) also counts towards the Read Christie challenge where, for the final three months of the year, we are focusing on Agatha Christie books from the 1960s and 70s. I was a bit dubious about reading Passenger to Frankfurt as it seems to be widely considered one of her worst novels, but I want to read all of her books eventually anyway, so this seemed as good a time as any.

The novel begins with Sir Stafford Nye being delayed at Frankfurt Airport on his way home to England from a diplomatic mission in Malaya. When he is approached by a young woman who tells him that her life is in danger, Sir Stafford finds himself agreeing to lend her his passport and cloak so she can safely board the next flight to London in disguise. This is to be the first of several encounters Sir Stafford has with this woman; after he returns to London himself, having claimed to have been the victim of a theft, he places an advertisement in the newspaper in the hope of tracking her down, and their paths soon cross again.

None of this may seem particularly plausible, but at least it’s fun. Once Sir Stafford begins to learn more about his new acquaintance and her mission, however, things start to go downhill. He is pulled into a web of espionage and intrigue, which should be exciting but unfortunately isn’t, partly because there’s not much action – instead there are lots of long passages in which various people hold meetings and conferences to discuss the rise in youth movements and rebellions around the world. There are discussions of fascism, neo-Nazis, student protests, anarchy, drugs and weapons; Christie was eighty years old when this book was published and it seems that her view of the future was a very bleak one, in particular regarding the role young people would play.

This could still have been interesting, but Christie doesn’t manage to balance her political commentary with any kind of coherent plot, so all those conversations about youth unrest do become very repetitive and tedious, especially as the various conspiracy theories that arise are too outlandish to take seriously. There’s also a large number of characters, many of whom are introduced and then disappear again a few pages later. Apart from Sir Stafford and his mysterious female friend, the only one who really stands out is Sir Stafford’s Aunt Matilda, one of those no-nonsense old ladies Christie writes so well. Intriguingly, Matilda has an assistant, Amy Leatheran, who I assume is the same character who appeared in Murder in Mesopotamia, although no reference is made to her earlier adventures!

I often enjoy Christie’s thrillers and spy novels (They Came to Baghdad and The Man in the Brown Suit are favourites), but this one was a big disappointment and certainly the weakest of all the Christie novels I’ve read so far. I don’t regret reading it for 1970 Club, though, because, as I’ve said, I was going to read it at some point anyway. Definitely one for completists, in my opinion, and not the place to start if you’re new to Christie’s work.

Midnight in Vienna by Jane Thynne

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It’s 1938 and Stella Fry has just returned to London from Austria, where she has been working as a private tutor for a Jewish family in Vienna. With the worsening political situation in Europe, the family decided to leave for the safety of New York, and Stella has found herself back home with no job. Famous mystery writer Hubert Newman is advertising for someone to type up his new manuscript and Stella applies for the position. After meeting with Newman and being offered the job, she is shocked when she learns the next day that he has been found dead. Another shock follows twenty-four hours later when she receives the manuscript of his new book, Masquerade, and finds that he has dedicated it To Stella, spotter of mistakes.

Harry Fox is a former Special Branch detective who left the police force under a shadow, but is still carrying out unofficial intelligence work, spying on suspected communists. He has reason to believe that Hubert Newman’s death was not a natural one and when his path crosses with Stella’s and he discovers that she had lunch with the author the day before he died, the two team up to investigate.

I really enjoyed Midnight in Vienna; the only negative thing I can say about it is that Stella was a bit too trusting of strangers and too quick to put herself in dangerous situations without thinking of the consequences. The biggest example comes very early in the novel when, having only just met Harry Fox, she agrees to travel back to Vienna alone on the trail of someone possibly implicated in Hubert’s murder – at a time when everyone else is trying to get out of Austria. However, I can forgive this because the Vienna sections of the book are so well done, perfectly illustrating the mood in Austria during that period which followed the annexation by Nazi Germany.

With Hubert Newman being an author, there’s also a literary element to the novel. Newman (a fictional character, by the way) is a member of the Detection Club, a real-life society of prominent British mystery writers, and Harry Fox’s investigations lead to a meeting with one of the founding members, Dorothy L. Sayers. She only makes a brief cameo appearance but I thought the way Thynne portrayed her character was very convincing. As well as the literary world, we also get a glimpse of the theatrical world of the 1930s through Stella’s actress friend, Evelyn, so there’s a lot going on outside of the central mystery.

This is the first of Jane Thynne’s novels I’ve read. It seems that most of her previous books are similar wartime/espionage thrillers and having enjoyed this one so much I’m sure I’ll be reading more of them. I’m also wondering whether there will be a sequel to this book as I think there’s plenty of scope for some of these characters to return for a second adventure.

Thanks to Quercus for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 44/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

Precipice by Robert Harris

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Robert Harris became a must-read author for me after reading and loving An Officer and a Spy, the Cicero trilogy and Conclave, but some of his more recent books have left me feeling slightly disappointed. His new one, Precipice, sounded promising, but would it be a return to form?

The novel opens in London in the summer of 1914 and introduces us to Venetia Stanley, a twenty-six-year-old woman from a wealthy, aristocratic family. Venetia is growing bored with the aimlessness of her days and the spoiled, shallow group of friends, known as the Coterie, that she has fallen in with, so when Herbert Henry Asquith begins an affair with her she sees it as a welcome escape. Not only is Asquith more than twice her age, he is also the Prime Minister and Venetia finds it flattering that he seems to value her opinion on politics and includes her in discussions on important matters of state.

Asquith is currently preoccupied with the situation in Ireland where the Nationalists are campaigning for Home Rule, but soon he has an even bigger problem to deal with as tensions begin to escalate in Europe and it looks increasingly possible that Britain could be pulled into a war. At this crucial moment in British history, it seems that the security of the nation is being put at risk – several confidential documents giving details of the government’s military and diplomatic plans have been found by members of the public and handed to the police. Only a small number of high-ranking government ministers have access to this information so, unlikely as it seems, one of them must be responsible for the leaks. Detective Sergeant Paul Deemer is given the task of investigating and it’s not long before he makes a shocking discovery.

Although I’ve read many novels set during WWI, they’ve usually dealt with ordinary people rather than politicians and certainly haven’t been written from the perspective of the Prime Minister. I knew nothing about H.H. Asquith’s private life, what he was like as a person or how he was viewed by his friends, colleagues and the public, so I learned a lot from this book. Harris draws on Asquith’s published letters to Venetia Stanley as one of his main sources and quotes from them extensively throughout the novel (Venetia’s letters to Asquith were apparently destroyed, so Harris uses his imagination to recreate them).

The impression I got of Asquith from this book, as a politician, was of a generally well-meaning man who was competent enough as a peacetime Prime Minister (apart from where the challenge of Ireland was concerned) but definitely not the right person to lead the country through a war. His overly cautious approach in the early stages was very frustrating to watch; it’s likely that the outbreak of war was inevitable and nothing he could have done would have averted it, but he didn’t seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation at all and refused to commit Britain one way or the other when he was being pressed from all sides to take decisive action. Even when war did break out, it seemed to be of less importance to him than his relationship with Venetia and again it was frustrating to see him sitting composing letters to her during cabinet meetings and plotting ways to escape from political duties to go and visit her. Although the general public weren’t supposed to know about the affair, it was an open secret amongst their family members and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Margot, Asquith’s wife.

The thriller element of the novel is weaker and although I was never bored, the book never quite became unputdownable either. There’s no real mystery surrounding the security breaches because both we and Paul Deemer know from very early on who is responsible, but it’s still interesting to see how Deemer approaches the situation and there’s an entertaining section where he goes undercover in Wales in search of more information. There’s also a small twist towards the end of the book, which I hadn’t really seen coming, although it had started to occur to me that something wasn’t quite right!

Precipice is definitely more historical fiction than thriller, which may or may not appeal depending on your personal taste. Although it hasn’t become one of my absolute favourites by Robert Harris, I really enjoyed it for the fascinating insights into Asquith and his government.

Thanks to Hutchinson Heinemann for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 42/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024