Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie

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This month for the Read Christie challenge we are reading Christie novels published in the 1930s and I have chosen Three Act Tragedy from 1934. The book was also published in the US as Murder in Three Acts and that’s not the only difference – apparently the motive for one of the murders was also changed for the US edition. I’m not sure if there are any other Christie novels with significant differences between editions or if this is the only one.

Three Act Tragedy is a Poirot mystery but also features one of Christie’s other recurring characters, Mr Satterthwaite, who appears in The Mysterious Mr Quin and Murder in the Mews. At the beginning of the novel, Satterthwaite and Poirot are both attending a dinner party hosted by the stage actor Sir Charles Cartwright at his home in Cornwall. When one of the other guests, the Reverend Babbington, suddenly drops dead after taking a sip of his cocktail, several people suspect murder – yet there are no traces of poison in his glass. Soon afterwards, another death occurs under similar circumstances at a party attended by many of the same guests, but this time the victim is confirmed to have died from nicotine poisoning. Are the two deaths connected and if so, did the same person carry out both murders?

This is another entertaining Christie novel; maybe not one of her strongest plots, but the motive for the first murder is very unusual and I didn’t guess either that one or the motive for the second murder. I did start to suspect who was responsible, but not until much later in the book, so I can’t claim to have solved the mystery. We don’t see very much of Poirot himself as this is one of the books (like Lord Edgware Dies, which I read last month) where he sits at home and waits for other characters to provide him with information, rather than going out to interview suspects and search for clues himself. Instead, the deaths are investigated by Mr Satterthwaite and Sir Charles, with help from Miss Lytton Gore, affectionately known to her friends as Egg.

I would have liked Poirot to have played a bigger part in the story as although I like the elderly Mr Satterthwaite, he’s not very skilled at detecting, and I never really felt fully engaged with either Sir Charles or Egg. There’s an interesting cast of supporting characters, such as Muriel Wills, who writes plays under a male pseudonym, but I felt that some of these weren’t really used to their full potential. This wasn’t a favourite Christie, then, but I did still enjoy it – and it was good to see Poirot sharing a little bit of his personal history in a conversation with Satterthwaite, as he usually reveals very little about himself.

Next month for the Read Christie challenge (and for August and September as well) we are moving on to the 1940s and 1950s. There are plenty of books I still have to read from those decades, but one I definitely have lined up is N or M?, the third in the Tommy and Tuppence series. I’m hoping to make that one a July read.

This is book 5/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.

The Nightingale’s Castle by Sonia Velton

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Countess Erzsébet Báthory (often anglicised to Elizabeth Bathory) has found her way into vampire folklore as one of the possible inspirations behind Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Known as the Blood Countess for her habit of bathing in the blood of her victims to retain her youthful appearance, she and her servants were accused of murdering hundreds of Hungarian peasant girls, making her one of the most notorious serial killers in history. In her new novel The Nightingale’s Castle, Sonia Velton reimagines Erzsébet’s story and looks at the woman behind the legends.

The novel opens in Hungary in 1610 and introduces us to fifteen-year-old Boróka, who has been raised by an adoptive father in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. When members of the Countess’s household arrive at Boróka’s cottage looking for girls to come and work at Čachtice Castle, she is initially reluctant to go, but her father persuades her that it would be dangerous not to accept. And so Boróka soon finds herself in a carriage heading up the hill towards the castle and a new way of life.

Within the walls of Čachtice Castle, there are other girls like Boróka working as seamstresses, cooks and kitchen maids under the watchful eyes of the Countess’s personal staff, whom Boróka finds to be excessively cruel and vindictive. She struggles to settle in, but when she and Erzsébet Báthory eventually cross paths Boróka becomes a favourite of the Countess’s, which gives her some degree of protection. Then come the accusations of murder and torture and Boróka must try to make sense of what has really been going on in the castle and whether or not the allegations could be true.

I had heard of Erzsébet Báthory before starting this novel, but knew very little about her, so it was good to have the opportunity to learn more. Of course, this is fiction and obviously Sonia Velton will have had to use her imagination to flesh out the plot and characters, but I could see from her very detailed author’s note at the end of the book that she has carried out a lot of research and tried to put some theories together that fit the historical facts. This version of Báthory’s character is more sympathetic than the way she is usually portrayed and the servants who are arrested along with her, particularly Dorottya Szentes and Ilona Jó, are the real villains here. I would probably need to read some non-fiction on the subject before I could say whether I agreed with this or not.

Despite Erzsébet Báthory’s association with vampire legends, there are no vampires in Velton’s novel and for the most part this is a straightforward work of historical fiction. However, there’s a subplot involving a magical rosewood box which I thought seemed out of place; I felt that the book either needed more fantasy elements or none at all. Apart from that, I found The Nightingale’s Castle an interesting read and I’m sure other people will appreciate that little touch of magical realism more than I did.

This is Sonia Velton’s third novel. I haven’t read The Image of Her, which seems to be a contemporary thriller set in Dubai, but I enjoyed her first book, Blackberry and Wild Rose, about a community of Huguenot silk weavers in 18th century London. She does pick interesting subjects and settings for her novels, so I’ll look forward to seeing what she writes next.

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

Book 23/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

Historical Musings #86: More books to look out for in 2024

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Welcome to this month’s post on all things historical fiction!

First of all, congratulations to Kevin Jared Hosein, the winner of this year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, announced at the Borders Book Festival last week. His winning novel, Hungry Ghosts, is the story of a Hindu community in 1940s Trinidad and is one of three books I had managed to read from this year’s shortlist. It’s not a book that I particularly liked as I found it too bleak and miserable, but the writing is beautiful and the setting is fascinating, so I can see why it impressed the judges. I’ll find time to read the other three books on the shortlist eventually!

Moving on, last December I posted a list of upcoming historical fiction being published in 2024. Now that we’re halfway through the year, more titles have been announced so I thought I would post an updated list below for July to December. This is a selection of books that have caught my attention for one reason or another – some are review copies I’ve received, some are new books by authors I’ve previously enjoyed and others just sounded interesting. I hope there’s something here that appeals to you. A lot of the July and August ones are already on my 20 Books of Summer list, so you should be hearing more about them here soon!

Dates provided are for the UK and were correct at the time of posting.

~

JULY

Babylonia by Costanza Casati (4th July 2024)

A Woman of Opinion by Sean Lusk (4th July 2024)

The King’s Mother by Annie Garthwaite (11th July 2024)

The Trouble with Mrs Montgomery Hurst by Katie Lumsden (18th July 2024)

A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith (18th July 2024)

The Lost Queen by Carol McGrath (18th July 2024)

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn (18th July 2024)

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson (18th July 2024)

Maria: A Novel of Maria von Trapp by Michelle Moran (30th July 2024)

AUGUST

Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead (1st August 2024)

The King’s Messenger by Susanna Kearsley (1st August 2024)

Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid (13th August 2024)

The Voyage Home by Pat Barker (22nd August 2024)

Precipice by Robert Harris (29th August 2024)

SEPTEMBER

What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust by Alan Bradley (3rd September 2024)

Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd (5th September 2024)

The Royal Rebel by Elizabeth Chadwick (5th September 2024)

The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier (12th September 2024)

The Hidden Girl by Lucinda Riley and Harry Whittaker (12th September 2024)

OCTOBER

The Bells of Westminster by Leonora Nattrass (17th October 2024)

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Are you interested in reading any of these? Which other historical novels should I be looking out for before the year of the year? And what do you think of Hungry Ghosts winning the Walter Scott Prize?

The Burial Plot by Elizabeth Macneal

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It’s 1839 and Bonnie Fairchild has just killed a man. She didn’t intend to do it, but it has still happened and now she needs to escape from London, quickly, before she is caught. Bonnie is no stranger to crime – since fleeing to London to avoid an arranged marriage, she and her lover Crawford have been making their living through theft and fraud. This is the first time something has gone wrong, but Crawford thinks he has found a solution: Bonnie will apply for the position of lady’s maid at Endellion House, a grand estate outside the city owned by the wealthy Mr Moncrieff. Nobody will ever think to look for her there!

Arriving at Endellion House, Bonnie finds her new employer to be a sad, subdued man who devotes his time to designing mausoleums for his dead wife who drowned several months earlier. Meanwhile, his teenage daughter, Cissie, seems to have retreated into a fantasy world, writing imaginary love letters to herself. Then, just as Bonnie is beginning to make sense of this eccentric, unhappy household, Crawford reappears with another great scheme in mind…

I enjoyed both of Elizabeth Macneal’s previous novels, The Doll Factory and Circus of Wonders, so I was expecting good things from this one and I wasn’t disappointed at all; I think it’s probably my favourite of the three. Although I correctly predicted some of the twists and turns of the plot, there were others I didn’t see coming at all. One of the things that is obvious from the beginning, at least to the reader, is that Crawford is a con man who is using and manipulating Bonnie for his own purposes – and even though Bonnie is at least partly aware of this, she has convinced herself that she’s in love with him and so finds it impossible to free herself of him. The relationship between Bonnie and Crawford is the driving force behind the novel and is what kept me turning the pages, anxious to see what plan Crawford would come up with next and whether Bonnie would ever escape his grip.

The Burial Plot also gives some insights into the Victorian fascination with the rituals of death and mourning. The mourning industry in the 19th century was huge, with large sums of money being spent on clothes, accessories and elaborate funerals. At the beginning of the novel, Crawford has a job managing several private burial grounds in London but these are quickly becoming overcrowded and insanitary, leading to the creation of large, modern cemeteries such as Highgate, further away from central London. When Bonnie arrives at Endellion House, she suggests to Mr Moncrieff that he should build a cemetery like Highgate on his land so that he can bury his wife in style and then make money from selling the other burial plots. This storyline forms an important part of the novel and adds another layer of interest.

I loved this and am already looking forward to Elizabeth Macneal’s next book, whatever and whenever that may be!

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

Book 22/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

This is book 4/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

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I loved Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists but his latest novel, The House of Doors, sounded less appealing and I only decided to read it when I saw it had been longlisted (and then shortlisted) for this year’s Walter Scott Prize. Now that I’ve read it, I have mixed feelings about it; there was a lot to like and admire, but it definitely didn’t captivate me the way The Garden of Evening Mists did.

The House of Doors weaves the fictional story of Lesley and Robert Hamlyn around a real life visit in 1921 by the author William Somerset Maugham to Penang, Malaysia – or Malaya, as it was still known at the time. Lesley has spent her whole life in Malaya, while her husband Robert was born in Britain and moved to Penang as an adult. Maugham, referred to as Willie throughout the novel, is an old friend of Robert’s and has come to stay with them at their home, Cassowary House. Leaving his wife behind in England, he is accompanied by Gerald, his lover and secretary.

At first Lesley is not very happy about having visitors and it takes her a while to warm to Willie, but she eventually finds herself confiding in him and sharing with him stories about her past. She tells him about her involvement with Sun Yat Sen, the Chinese revolutionary who came to Penang to raise funds, and about her friend, Ethel Proudlock, who was charged with the murder of a man. Some of the things Willie hears and experiences during his time with the Hamlyns will later find their way into his fiction.

The book is beautifully written, which I had expected from my previous experience of Tan’s work, and the descriptions of Penang itself are particularly lovely and evocative. I can only think of one or two other novels I’ve read set in Malaysia, but it’s a setting I love and I enjoyed revisiting it through Tan’s descriptive writing. The book deals almost entirely with British characters and we learn a lot about the colonial lifestyles and attitudes of the time, but although Tan Twan Eng himself is a Malaysian author, if you’re hoping for a Malaysian perspective you won’t really find that here. Through the Sun Yat Sen storyline, we are given a little bit of insight into Chinese revolutionary politics, but again we see this from Lesley’s point of view, through her interactions with Sun Yat Sen and his associates.

The plot moves quite slowly, maybe because so much of the story is told in the form of flashbacks. At times I was bored, but one part of the book that I did find gripping was the Ethel Proudlock storyline. It’s based on a real murder case which I knew nothing about before reading this novel, so I had no idea what the outcome was going to be. Maugham used the case as the inspiration for his 1927 play The Letter, which was made into a film starring Bette Davis. There are references to other Maugham stories, novels and plays throughout the book as well, but they meant very little to me because I haven’t read any of his work apart from The Painted Veil. I think if I’d had more familiarity with Maugham’s writing it’s possible that I would have been able to get more out of this book. I had similar experiences with Colm Tóibín’s The Magician and Damon Galgut’s Arctic Summer, novels about Thomas Mann and E.M. Forster respectively (I haven’t read much of their work either and was left with the feeling that I’d missed something).

The House of Doors wasn’t a huge success with me, then, but the setting and the beautiful writing made it worth reading. The Walter Scott Prize winner is due to be announced later this week and of the shortlisted titles I’ve read so far, My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor is still my favourite with this one second above Kevin Jared Hosein’s Hungry Ghosts. Maybe the winner will be one of the three I still haven’t read!

Book 21/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

Thomasina by Paul Gallico – #ReadingtheMeow2024

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When I saw that Mallika of Literary Potpourri was hosting her second Reading the Meow event this week – a celebration of cats in books – I knew exactly what I wanted to read. The Disney film The Three Lives of Thomasina was a favourite of mine as a child, but it never occurred to me to read the book on which it was based until I noticed that Lory of Entering the Enchanted Castle had read it for last year’s Reading the Meow so onto the list it went!

Published in 1957, Paul Gallico’s Thomasina is set in the fictional Scottish town of Inveranoch. Having lost his wife a few years earlier, veterinarian Andrew MacDhui has moved to the town from Glasgow and opened a surgery there, where he treats the pets of the townspeople, as well as looking after the health of the livestock on the surrounding farms. When the novel begins, MacDhui has only been living in Inveranoch for eighteen months and has already gained a reputation as a cold, bitter man who is good at his job but not mentally suited for it:

The gossips allowed that Andrew MacDhui was an honest, forthright and fair-dealing man, but, and this was the opinion of the strictly religiously inclined, a queer one to be dealing with God’s dumb creatures, since he appeared to have no love for animals, very little for man, and neither the inclination nor the time for God.

Since his wife’s death it seems that MacDhui has given what little love he still possesses to his seven-year-old daughter, Mary Ruadh, who is devoted to her ginger cat, Thomasina. When Thomasina becomes ill with a suspected meningeal infection, Mary takes her next door to her father’s surgery and begs him to save her pet’s life. Not pleased at being interrupted at his work and distracted by a difficult operation on a blind man’s dog, MacDhui tells her that Thomasina can’t be cured and orders his assistant to put the cat to sleep. Heartbroken, Mary vows never to speak to her father again and seems to really mean what she says. As the days go by and Mary’s silence continues, a desperate MacDhui pays a visit to Lori, a young woman who lives alone in the forest and is said to be a witch. Can Lori help repair the relationship between father and daughter or has too much damage been done?

Although I was already familiar with the plot, I found that this novel had far more depth than the Disney version and also a stronger religious element. There’s a lot of focus on MacDhui’s internal struggles as he tries to confront the loss of faith that has been with him since his wife died and on the efforts of Lori and the minister, Angus Peddie, to restore his belief in God and the power of love. Lori, a gentle, compassionate woman who tries to heal injured wild animals that others see as worthless, is a lovely character and reminded me a lot of Froniga in The White Witch by Elizabeth Goudge. However, I didn’t find the book overly sentimental because it’s balanced by the darker themes of loss and grief, as well as animal cruelty and its consequences for those who perpetrate it.

I’m sure younger readers will enjoy the chapters written from Thomasina’s own perspective, where she gives amusing descriptions of life in the MacDhui household, but I never really felt that I was reading a ‘children’s book’ and I think there’s enough here for readers of all ages to enjoy. Finally, without wanting to spoil too much, if you think Thomasina’s fate sounds too sad, I can assure you that her story is a happier one than you might expect.

This is book 3/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.

The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye by Briony Cameron

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The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye is an unusual novel because it’s based on the ‘true story’ of someone who may or may not have actually existed! One of a very small number of 17th century female pirates, Jacquotte Delahaye is not mentioned in any contemporary sources and appears in writing, possibly for the first time, in the 1940s in stories by Léon Treich, a French fiction writer. However, she has become part of pirate folklore and although her existence hasn’t been proved, it hasn’t been disproved either. In this new novel, Briony Cameron has taken the few ‘facts’ about Jacquotte that have found their way into the legends – such as her place of birth and the colour of her hair (red, leading to the nickname Back from the Dead Red) – and imagined a story around them.

At the beginning of the book, twenty-year-old Jacquotte is living in the town of Yáquimo, Santo Domingo, in 1655. As the daughter of a Frenchman exiled to the Caribbean for treason, all Jacquotte knows about her mother is that she was a free black woman who died after giving birth to her younger brother. When her father is implicated in another treasonous plot, Jacquotte’s world falls apart and she is forced to flee the island. Her life of piracy begins when she is captured by the brutal Captain Blackhand and finds herself an indentured servant aboard his ship, but eventually Jacquotte will become a pirate captain in her own right, with her own ship and crew to command.

There’s also a romantic element to the novel, with Jacquotte falling in love with Teresa, wife of the Governor of Yáquimo, but this was one of my least favourite aspects of the book. They seemed to rush into things very quickly, with no time for the reader to see their feelings for each other developing and I felt that the relationship lacked emotional depth. In fact, apart from Jacquotte herself, I thought all of the characters in the book lacked depth – the good characters were very good and the bad ones were very bad, with little in between. I would describe this as much more of a plot-driven book. Although it takes a while to get started, once Jacquotte is at sea there’s lots of action, with sea battles, fight scenes and all the swashbuckling adventure you would expect from a pirate novel.

Sadly, despite the fascinating protagonist, I wasn’t very impressed with this book. I did enjoy the first section, which describes Jacquotte’s life in Yáquimo and the events that lead to her becoming a pirate, but as I read on I felt I was reading the author’s fantasy of how she would have liked 17th century society to have been, rather than how it actually was. I don’t think many people in the 1650s had such progressive ideas on race, gender and sexuality, however nice it is to imagine that they did! If you’re not too bothered about historical accuracy and just want to read an entertaining story, then you’ll probably enjoy The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye, but it wasn’t really for me. On a more positive note, I liked the descriptions of the various ports Jacquotte and her crew visit as they sail around Hispaniola, Jamaica and Tortuga, which is the closest I’ll get to visiting the Caribbean this summer!

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

Book 20/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

This is book 2/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.