One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie

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This month’s theme for the Read Christie challenge is ‘medical professionals’ and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe is the perfect choice as it begins with the murder – or could it be suicide? – of a dentist. His name is Mr Morley of Queen Charlotte Street, London, and our old friend Hercule Poirot just happens to be attending an appointment on the day of Morley’s death. It seems that Poirot has a fear of visiting the dentist, but despite being nervous and preoccupied he still has his powers of observation and notices a young man in the waiting room who ‘looks like a murderer’. Learning of Mr Morley’s death later that day, however, it seems that the young man is not the only suspect. All of the patients who attended appointments in the hours before the body was discovered are under suspicion, along with the dentist’s family and servants.

Poirot works with Chief Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard in the early stages of the investigation, but when Japp uncovers information to suggest that Morley’s death was a suicide, Poirot is not satisfied. Too many things don’t make sense. Why, for example, did Morley’s secretary receive a fake telegram summoning her to an aunt in Somerset, ensuring that she would be absent from work on the day of the death? Poirot decides to continue investigating on his own, but it’s only when he begins to question whether he’s fallen into a trap that he is able to solve the mystery.

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe was published in 1940 and was the final Poirot novel to feature Inspector Japp. I do like the books where Poirot has someone else to work with and discuss some of his theories with, whether that’s Japp or (preferably) Captain Hastings. It’s also one of several Christie novels with titles based on nursery rhymes (Hickory Dickory Dock, Five Little Pigs and A Pocket Full of Rye are some of the others). Christie uses lines from the One, Two, Buckle My Shoe rhyme as the chapter titles and each line has some relevance to the events of the story – for example, in the first chapter we see a buckle fall off a woman’s shoe as she steps out of a car, although we won’t understand the significance of that until much later.

Published during the war, there are strong themes of political and financial instability and people with different views of how the world should move forward. One of the suspects, Alistair Blunt, is a prominent banker; another, Howard Raikes, is a political activist from America; and a third, Mr Barnes, worked for the Secret Service. However, this is only one part of the story and the book never becomes excessively concerned with politics. There are other suspects and other clues and motives as well and although I couldn’t solve the mystery myself, I enjoyed seeing Poirot explain it all in the denouement!

The Read Christie theme for September is ‘religious figures’ and the recommended title is At Bertram’s Hotel, which I’ve read relatively recently. I’ll wait to see what other options they suggest before deciding if I’ll take part.

Book 19/20 for 20 Books of Summer 2025.

No Life for a Lady by Hannah Dolby

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I added to this to my TBR last year after some reviews of the sequel, How to Solve Murders Like a Lady, caught my eye. I always prefer to start at the beginning if possible, so decided to read this one first – and I’m pleased to say I loved it and will be moving on to the second book soon!

The novel is set in Hastings in 1896 and introduces us to Violet Hamilton who, at twenty-eight and still unmarried, looks like becoming an ‘old maid’. She’s not interested in any suitor her father pushes into her path and has more important things on her mind – like finding out what happened to her mother, who disappeared from Hastings Pier ten years earlier. Violet decides to hire a private detective, Frank Knight, but his methods and attitude leave a lot to be desired. As Benjamin Blackthorn, the town’s only other detective, insists that he has given up sleuthing and is happy selling furniture instead, Violet feels she has no choice other than to take matters into her own hands and try to investigate herself.

Violet’s story is told with a lot of warmth and humour. She’s a very likeable heroine: intelligent and resourceful, but also endearingly naïve and innocent, which can lead to some amusing situations and misunderstandings. There’s also some sadness, as the disappearance of her mother all those years ago has clearly had a huge impact on her life and she feels that no one else, not even her father, cares about trying to discover the truth. The mystery element of the novel reaches a climax with some dramatic scenes towards the end, but for the most part I would describe this as a gentle, charming book.

I loved watching Violet’s relationship with Mr Blackthorn develop, as she persists in trying to persuade him to take on her case and he continues trying to refuse. Eventually she convinces him to let her begin working for him as a typist, certain that once she’s established herself in his furniture shop he won’t be able to resist getting involved in the investigation. I found it easy to predict what was going to happen there, but I didn’t mind as I liked Benjamin as much as I liked Violet! It’s interesting, though, that at first Violet is sure she needs a man to do the detecting for her, but as the book progresses it begins to occur to her that maybe she has what it takes to become a Lady Detective in her own right.

If you’re looking for an entertaining read with a mixture of mystery, romance and comedy, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. I thought it had a similar feel to AJ Pearce’s Dear Mrs Bird, so if you enjoyed that book maybe you would enjoy this one too. I’m looking forward to reading the sequel!

Book 18/20 for 20 Books of Summer 2025.

The Game is Murder by Hazell Ward

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Described by the publisher as a murder mystery in which the reader ‘plays the role of the Great Detective’, The Game is Murder sounded fun. I expected an interactive Choose Your Own Adventure style book like Max Nightingale’s Murder in Tinseltown (although hopefully better executed than that book, which didn’t quite work). It turned out to be nothing like that, but something very different.

The novel is written in the second person with an unnamed narrator – presumably the author – directly addressing you, the reader, and positioning you as a character in the story. It begins with you arriving for a murder mystery party at the London home of David Verreman and his brother Daniel:

The lights are on at 8 Broad Way. The steps have been swept and the brass door-knocker has been polished. For this is an occasion. Walk up the steps and tap lightly open the door. They are expecting you.

Before you take your seat at the dinner table, David addresses you and the other guests, explaining the purpose of the party. You’re gathered here tonight to attempt to solve an historic crime involving the Verreman family – one evening in 1974, a servant was found murdered in the basement of 8 Broad Way. Everything points to the killer being Lord Verreman, David and Daniel’s father, who was believed to have mistaken the woman for his wife. Lord Verreman fled before he could be arrested and the crime has remained unsolved ever since. Your fellow guests include suspects, witnesses and medical experts; your task as the Great Detective is to listen to their evidence and try to solve the mystery.

This may sound straightforward enough so far, but you quickly discover that the author is playing games with you and nothing is really as it seems. Without wanting to spoil too much, the direction of the story changes several times and so does your role in it. This is not the sort of book you can really become immersed in as it’s impossible to forget that you are, in fact, reading a book and are being manipulated by the author/narrator into believing or not believing certain things. It’s something people will either enjoy or they won’t and I’m sure it’s a book that’s going to massively divide opinion!

There are lots of nice little touches, such as quotes from classic mystery novels at the start of each chapter, a ‘contract’ between author and reader laying out the rules of the investigation and some games and quizzes (which I suppose form the interactive element of the book). However, there were other things I just found irritating, such as naming characters after real crime authors: Wilkie Collins, Gaston Leroux etc. And there’s no real opportunity for the reader to actually direct the course of the investigation or solve the crime for themselves, which is the impression I’d been given by the blurb (and why I was hoping for more of a choose-your-own-adventure structure).

The mystery itself is interesting, with several suspects and lots of clues, alibis and red herrings. Because it’s a crime that has already taken place, though, we only see it unfold through the statements and testimonies of the people involved, which means things become quite repetitive in the middle as we hear the same incidents described by several different characters. Overall, I found the book entertaining in places, but too ambitious and not really what I’d expected or wanted. I think other readers will love it!

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

Top Ten Tuesday: Very Long Books!

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This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is “Books with a High Page Count

The books I’ve listed here all have more than 800 pages. There are others that I read before I started blogging, but I’ve only included books that I’ve actually reviewed on my blog. Not surprisingly, most of them are classics.

1. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (1536 pages) – I read this epistolary 18th century novel as part of a year-long group read and probably wouldn’t have made it to the end otherwise. I liked it overall but it was so repetitive!

2. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (1456 pages) – I loved the story but could have done without so many digressions. It’s one of the books on this list that I really think could have been a lot shorter!

3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1440 pages) – This was another group read, although I abandoned the schedule after a while to finish it at my own pace. I enjoyed it, but liked the peace sections much better than the war!

4. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1312 pages) – This is one of my favourite books of all time, so I don’t mind the length at all and would have been happy for it to be even longer!

5. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (1168 pages) – This bleak but fascinating Norwegian classic is technically three separate books, but often packaged together in one volume. My edition was translated by Tiina Nunnally.

6. The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman (1080 pages) – This long, detailed and gripping account of the life of Richard III is one of my favourite historical novels.

7. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1056 pages) – I read this slowly, over the course of a year, which suited its episodic structure. I found it much more entertaining than I’d expected.

8. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1024 pages) – I’ve read a lot of very long Dickens novels, but decided to limit my list to one book per author. This is one I remember enjoying.

9. The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye (964 pages) – Another of my favourite historical novels, set in 19th century India and following the story of a British orphan raised as a Hindu.

10. Go Tell the Bees that I am Gone by Diana Gabaldon (930 pages) – I loved the first three or four books in the Outlander series, but I feel that the more recent ones have been getting weaker as they get longer and longer! Still looking forward to book ten, though.

Honourable mentions: The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope (928 pages), Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson (922 pages), The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel (912 pages) Paris by Edward Rutherfurd (848 pages), The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (832 pages).

~

Have you read any of these? What are the longest books you’ve read? Laura is hosting Doorstoppers in December later this year, if any of these books appeal – but better get started now!

The House at Devil’s Neck by Tom Mead

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This is the fourth book in Tom Mead’s Joseph Spector mystery series, but if you haven’t read any of them, don’t worry – they all stand alone and if you wanted to start here, that wouldn’t be a problem. The books are set in the 1930s and are written in the style of Golden Age ‘locked room’ or ‘impossible crime’ novels, with the influence of John Dickson Carr being particularly strong. The series features two detectives: a professional one – Inspector Flint of Scotland Yard – and an amateur one – Joseph Spector, a retired magician.

The House at Devil’s Neck begins in August 1939 with a group of people boarding a coach, ready for a trip to Devil’s Neck, a supposedly haunted house. The house, which can be reached by a causeway at low tide, has a long and dramatic history, but was most recently used as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers during the Great War. The current owner has now opened up the house to tourists and the first party is about to arrive. The guests include Madame la Motte, a medium, and her companion Imogen; a ‘ghost hunter’, Francis Tulp; and a magician – Joseph Spector. No sooner have they reached Devil’s Neck and settled into their rooms, however, than one of the party is found dead.

Back in London meanwhile, Inspector Flint is investigating what appears to be a suicide. The victim is Rodney Edgecomb, a man who, many years earlier, was involved in a high-profile inheritance dispute following the sinking of the Titanic. The circumstances of his death lead Flint to believe this is murder rather than suicide. When he eventually discovers links between Edgecomb and the house at Devil’s Neck, Flint and Spector are able to team up once again to solve the mystery.

I won’t go into the plot in any more detail because it’s such a complex one with so many twists I’m impressed that Tom Mead managed to keep track of it all himself! The murder methods are also very complicated, but the solutions do make sense once Spector explains them. As with his other books, Mead inserts a brief chapter towards the end to warn us that the solution is coming in case we want a chance to try to solve the mystery for ourselves. I think the average reader would find that very difficult – I certainly had no chance at all of solving it! – but the clues are all there and there are references at the end linking back to where you can find them in the text.

What interested me more than the mystery itself was the setting. The descriptions of the house at Devil’s Neck – ‘a hulking shape, a creature waiting at the valley’s nadir’ – are very atmospheric, as the guests arrive in pouring rain and the house quickly becomes cut off from the mainland by the rising water. The house’s history is also fascinating and allows Mead to explore the fate of wounded soldiers and how those left with permanent disabilities struggled to integrate back into society. Spiritualism, the tricks used by mediums and methods of ghost hunting are also subjects touched on in the book.

I loved most of this novel, until I started to feel lost near the end as it became more and more complex! I think the first and third books – Death and the Conjuror and Cabaret Macabre – are still my favourites.

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

Book 17/20 for 20 Books of Summer 2025.

The Greek House by Dinah Jefferies

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I always enjoy picking up a new Dinah Jefferies book and finding out which part of the world she’s going to take me to next! India, Sri Lanka, Italy, Morocco and Malaysia are just some of the places I’ve visited through the pages of her novels and now I can add Corfu to the list. More specifically, Corfu in 1923, when the island is occupied by Mussolini’s Italy following a border dispute between Greece and Albania.

Sixteen-year-old Thirza and her nine-year-old brother, Billy, are caught up in the panic on the streets of Corfu Old Town during the Italian naval attack. Dulcie, their mother, has left them with her cousin, Columbine, while she goes to check on a camp of refugee children with whom she volunteers, and when she returns, she finds that Billy has disappeared. Despite weeks of searching, the little boy can’t be found and is eventually presumed dead. Struggling to cope with the trauma, Dulcie blames both Thirza and Columbine for what has happened and goes home to England, leaving behind her husband Piers, director of the British police training school in Corfu.

In 1930, Thirza returns to the island after a long absence, planning to renovate the old family home, Merchant’s House, in the hope that one day her mother will also feel ready to join her there. A lot has changed in the intervening years – the Italians have left and there’s a new woman in her father’s life – but Thirza still feels the shadow of her brother’s disappearance and decides to renew her efforts to find out the truth.

The Greek House is probably not my favourite Dinah Jefferies book, mainly because I found it too easy to predict some of the plot twists and I also thought the number of explicit sex scenes was a bit unnecessary. I loved the Corfu setting, though; everything comes to life in wonderfully vivid detail, whether the intense purple of bougainvillea or the changing colours of the sea in the sunlight. I also knew nothing about the Italian occupation of 1923, so that was interesting, although it only forms a small part of the story.

The disappearance of Billy happens very early in the novel, but it’s the trigger for everything else that happens and I liked the way Jefferies explores the impact of such a tragic incident on the various family members, depending on their different personalities and circumstances. Although I did naturally feel sorry for Dulcie, I also found it slightly annoying that she never really seemed to accept any responsibility for leaving her child in the middle of an invasion in the care of a teenager and a woman who was drunk at the time. Most of my sympathies were with Thirza, who has to live with the guilt as well as the sense of loss, and who feels that her mother will never truly forgive her. The feelings of Dulcie’s husband, Piers, seem to be largely ignored by everybody due to his hard, aloof exterior, but later in the book he mellows thanks to his relationship with his new girlfriend, Penelope – a character I ended up loving.

In her author’s note at the end, Jefferies hints that we’re going to meet some of the same characters again in her next book. That’s something to look forward to!

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

Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault

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This is the first in Mary Renault’s trilogy of novels about the life of Alexander the Great. It’s been waiting patiently on my shelf for years, since I finished her two books on Theseus, The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea, and I picked it up last month as it would count towards both the 20 Books of Summer challenge and my Classics Club list.

First published in 1969, Fire from Heaven tells, in fictional form, the story of Alexander’s life from early childhood up to the moment he comes to power following the death of his father, Philip II of Macedon. His complex relationship with Philip – and also with his mother, Olympias – forms an important part of the novel as both parents are influential in shaping the character of the young Alexander. Philip is portrayed as a brutal, harsh, arrogant man, who can be very unkind to Alexander, but there are also moments when they bond and discover things they have in common. Their relationship is further strained by Olympias’ insinuations that Philip is not Alexander’s biological father, as well as Philip’s various infidelities and insistence on taking additional wives.

Alexander is devoted to Olympias from an early age and is disturbed by his parents’ tempestuous marriage. Like Alexander, I initially found her sympathetic, but as the novel progresses she is shown to have both positive and negative qualities, being passionate, vengeful and manipulative, as well as involving herself in religious rituals, particularly the worship of Dionysus. Alexander finds solace from his difficult relationships with his parents in his very close friendship with Hephaistion, another important character in the novel. Renault suggests that Alexander and Hephaistion are lovers, drawing comparisons with Achilles and Patroclus, although it seems that historians are divided on this.

Away from his personal relationships, a lot of time is also spent on exploring the education and experiences that made Alexander the great military leader he would later become: the tuition he receives from Aristotle; the first time he kills a man; his taming of the horse Bucephalus; and his participation in some of his father’s military campaigns. Because this book only covers the first half of Alexander’s life, Renault is able to go into a lot of depth and detail. I’m looking forward to seeing how his character continues to develop in the second book, The Persian Boy, which covers the remainder of his life.

This is not a particularly easy book to read; it needs a lot of concentration and I read it slowly over the course of a few weeks so I didn’t miss anything. It’s obviously very well written and thoroughly researched, which I knew it would be, having read other Renault books, and like many older historical novels it’s also very immersive, with no inappropriately modern language or attitudes, which can sometimes be a problem with newer books. Purely from an entertainment perspective, I didn’t find this as enjoyable to read as the Theseus novels, but I did get a lot out of it and am pleased to have added to my knowledge of a man and a period of history I previously hadn’t read much about.

Book 16/20 for 20 Books of Summer 2025.

This is also book 48/50 from my second Classics Club list.