Tag: Agatha Christie

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie

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Cat Among the Pigeons Cat Among the Pigeons, published in 1959, is one of Agatha Christie’s later Poirot mysteries and combines a girls’ school setting with the story of a revolution in Ramat, a fictional country in the Middle East. I still have a lot of reading to do before I’ll have finished all of the Poirot books, but this is one that I’ve particularly enjoyed.

Most of the action takes place at Meadowbank School, an exclusive girls-only school in England which is still run by its two founders, Miss Bulstrode and Miss Chadwick, but first we visit Ramat, where Prince Ali Yusuf is preparing to escape the uprising in his country. In an attempt to keep some of his fortune safe, the Prince gives some valuable jewels to his pilot and asks him to smuggle them out of the country. The pilot’s sister and young niece, Jennifer, have been visiting Ramat but are due to return to England the next day, so he hides the jewels in their luggage without telling them what he has done.

Back in England, Jennifer begins attending Meadowbank School, one of several new girls to join the school that term. There are also some new teachers, a new secretary and a new gardener. When a murder takes place at the school a few weeks later, it seems that whoever committed the crime may have been trying to find the missing jewels. Is there someone at Meadowbank who shouldn’t be there? In other words, is there a ‘cat among the pigeons’?

Well, I was completely fooled by this one! While I found it very easy to guess the hiding place of the jewels, I did not guess who the murderer was until the truth was revealed. The most annoying thing was that I did originally suspect the right person but was thrown off the scent halfway through the book and decided I must have been wrong. After that, I think I suspected almost everybody!

As I was reading I kept wondering when Hercule Poirot himself was going to enter the story and I was surprised to find that he doesn’t actually make his first appearance until the final third of the book. By the time he arrives on the scene the mystery has already been partially solved and while he does unravel the rest of the clues and identify the murderer, I’m not sure Poirot’s involvement really added anything to the story.

Although the mystery was a good one that kept me guessing, the reason I enjoyed this book so much was the setting rather than the plot. Like many British children I grew up reading Enid Blyton books and still have very fond memories of them. I loved her two school series, St Clare’s and Malory Towers, and in Cat Among the Pigeons Agatha Christie captures the same sort of atmosphere. The school setting, the focus on the lives of the girls and their teachers, and the very late appearance of Poirot, gives this book a slightly different feel from the others I’ve read.

Have you read this one? Which is your favourite Poirot mystery?

Towards Zero by Agatha Christie

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Towards Zero is one of only a few Agatha Christie novels to feature the detective Superintendent Battle. There’s no Poirot or Miss Marple in this one (although there is a TV adaptation – which I haven’t seen – where Miss Marple does appear) but even without them I thought this was an excellent murder mystery novel that deserves to be more popular. The story revolves around the murder of an elderly woman, Lady Tressilian, who has invited a group of guests to her seaside home at Gull’s Point.

With this novel, Christie takes a slightly different approach to normal. Instead of beginning with a murder and then following the detective’s attempts to solve it, she chooses to spend half the book describing the backgrounds of the characters, some seemingly unconnected episodes from their pasts, and the sequence of events that lead to the murder finally being committed and the murderer’s objective being achieved (what one of the characters refers to as ‘Zero Hour’).

“I like a good detective story,” he said. “But, you know, they begin in the wrong place! They begin with the murder. But the murder is the end. The story begins long before that – years before sometimes – with all the causes and events that bring certain people to a certain place at a certain time on a certain day.”

So by the time the murder takes place halfway through the book, the characters are quite well-developed and we know a lot about each of the possible suspects. Could the murderer be the tennis player, Nevile Strange, one of Lady Tressilian’s guests? Or his beautiful wife, Kay? Or could it be his first wife, Audrey, who happens to be visiting at the same time? Maybe it’s Thomas Royde, who is secretly in love with Audrey – or Ted Latimer, a friend of Kay’s. And what about Mary Aldin, Lady Tressilian’s companion?

I thought the mystery was a difficult one to solve and I think I suspected all of the above people at some point in the story! I thought I’d figured it out once or twice but was proved wrong and there were at least two big plot twists towards the end of the book that took me by surprise. Looking back, there were plenty of clues, but plenty of red herrings too.

Towards Zero is atmospheric, very cleverly plotted, and although it’s not one of my favourite Agatha Christie novels it’s still one that I would highly recommend.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

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2011, among other things, was the year I discovered that I do actually like Agatha Christie, having read a few of her books in the past which I didn’t enjoy very much. I think I had obviously just been choosing the wrong books because I read five in 2011 and loved all but one of them (The Mystery of the Blue Train).

This one, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, is set in the fictional village of King’s Abbott, home to our narrator, Dr James Sheppard, and the retired detective Hercule Poirot. When Roger Ackroyd is found stabbed to death in his study, Poirot comes out of retirement to investigate the murder. The suspects include Ackroyd’s stepson, his secretary and butler, a big-game hunter and one of the parlourmaids. With Dr Sheppard’s assistance, Poirot begins to piece together the evidence to solve the mystery.

I loved this book and it might even have become my favourite Christie novel so far, if not for one little problem: I guessed the solution to the mystery very early in the story. Now, this is not something that usually happens – I’m normally completely mystified by Agatha Christie’s novels and don’t even bother trying to solve them. This is the first one I’ve ever figured out correctly, but it did mean that in some ways the book was spoiled for me. Not completely spoiled – it was still fun watching for more clues that would confirm whether I was right or not – but it would have been nice to have been surprised when the solution was finally revealed, as the author had intended.

As most Poirot novels are written either in the third person or narrated by Captain Hastings (who does not appear in this book) it took me a while to get used to the new narrator. It gave this book a slightly different feel to the other Poirots I’ve read. I also thought the characters had a bit more depth than usual and I loved the scenes with the doctor’s irritating gossip-loving sister, Caroline, who added some humour to the story. And even though the ending of the story didn’t have quite the impact for me that I would have liked it to have done, I could still appreciate how cleverly constructed the mystery was. There were plenty of suspects, all hiding secrets of their own, lots of red herrings and some plot twists. I’m looking forward to reading more Poirot throughout the year ahead!

The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie

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Ruth Kettering is an American heiress who receives a set of valuable rubies as a gift from her father. Despite his warnings to keep them somewhere safe, Ruth takes the jewels with her on a trip to Nice. During her journey through France on the famous Blue Train, Ruth is found strangled to death in her compartment – and the case containing the rubies has disappeared. Hercule Poirot, who also happens to be travelling on the same train, promises to help Ruth’s father solve the crime and identify the killer. Suspicion falls first on Ruth’s husband, Derek Kettering, whom she had been about to divorce, and then on the mysterious Comte de la Roche. Is one of them the murderer?

I grabbed The Mystery of the Blue Train from the library shelf without really knowing anything about it. A bit of research now tells me it’s one of Agatha Christie’s less popular Poirot novels and now that I’ve read it I think I can see why. It was written quite early in her career and at a troubled time in her personal life, and apparently the author herself was unhappy with it. The book does have all the elements that should have added up to a classic Christie novel (a rich heiress, a journey on a luxury train, jewel thieves, the South of France – and Hercule Poirot himself, of course) but while I did enjoy it, I still felt there was something missing.

Compared to the other Agatha Christie books I’ve read, which admittedly isn’t all that many, this one was much longer and seemed to take a while to really get started (the actual crime doesn’t take place until about 100 pages into the book). There was a very long wait before Poirot made his first appearance and instead we spend a lot of time being introduced to other characters, which would have been okay had I liked these characters, but I found them a bit stereotypical, from the American millionaire to the French count to the old antiques dealer.

There were also a few sub-plots that I felt didn’t really add much to the story, although I did enjoy the dialogue between Poirot and Katherine Grey, a young woman he meets on the train who becomes involved in the murder investigation. The mystery itself kept me guessing, though I think there were probably enough clues to be able to work out at least part of the solution, if you were paying more attention than I was! The Mystery of the Blue Train was entertaining in places but is probably my least favourite Christie novel so far.

Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie

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Continuing my recent forays into the novels of Agatha Christie, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? is another one that I’ve really enjoyed and one of my favourites so far. This is one of Christie’s standalone novels (i.e. not Poirot, Marple or any other series).

Bobby Jones, son of the vicar of Marchbolt, is playing golf near the sea one day when he discovers that a man has fallen over the cliff. Left alone with the body while his friend goes to get help, Bobby is the only person who hears the man’s dying words: “Why didn’t they ask Evans?” As soon as Bobby informs the dead man’s family of his last words, a number of strange incidents start to occur, ending in Bobby’s beer being poisoned. After consulting with his friend Lady Frances Derwent (known as Frankie), they decide that someone must be trying to silence Bobby before he uncovers the truth behind the man’s death. As Frankie and Bobby attempt to find out what’s going on, they find themselves caught up in a mystery which leads them to a sanatorium run by the sinister Dr Nicholson.

The plot quickly becomes very far-fetched and ridiculous with lots of disguise-wearing, last-minute rescues and amazing coincidences. Frankie and Bobby constantly stumble upon clues and it seems that people give confidential information to them very freely – if it was really that easy to get people to tell you things, every crime would be solved in no time! Frankie and Bobby themselves even remark on the unreality of the situation and that they feel as if they’ve fallen into the pages of a novel.

Due to the number of red herrings and twists in the plot, the mystery is a more complex one than I thought it would be at first. If you could work out the significance of the phrase “why didn’t they ask Evans?” before it is revealed you must be a genius! I would never in a million years have guessed who Evans would turn out to be as it’s not something that can easily be deduced until you’ve been given all the pieces of the puzzle.

Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? is a fast-paced, light-hearted read with a very likeable pair of amateur detectives (particularly the courageous, quick-thinking Frankie). The melodrama and silliness are all part of the fun – this book never takes itself too seriously and despite topics of murder, drug use and kidnapping it never becomes too dark. Be prepared to suspend disbelief for a while, then sit back and be entertained.

Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie

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Death in the Clouds, first published in 1935, is one of Agatha Christie’s many novels featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

Ten people are travelling on a plane flying from Paris to London. During the flight a woman is found dead in her seat – apparently a murder has taken place without anyone seeing it happen. Among the other passengers is Poirot, who can’t believe a crime has taken place right under his nose! The mystery proves a difficult one to solve and after landing in England the suspects are allowed to go back to their everyday lives. As Poirot continues to investigate, he uncovers some secrets about the murdered woman and discovers that more than one of her fellow passengers had a reason to want her dead…

Like many classic mysteries, the crime takes place in a confined space so that we know from the beginning who the suspects are. The fact that this novel is set on a plane makes a nice change from the usual country house! The suspects include a beautiful aristocrat with a cocaine addiction, two prominent archaeologists, a doctor, a dentist, a businessman, a hairdresser – and my personal favourite, a crime novelist, whose inclusion gives Christie a chance to have some fun at the expense of her own genre. The characters don’t have a lot of depth and there are only a few that we get to know well, yet Christie makes it easy to remember who is who. There are plenty of red herrings to make the reader suspect first one person and then another; it’s even possible that Poirot himself could have committed the murder!

I enjoyed studying the seating plan at the front of the book and the list of the contents of the passengers’ luggage in an attempt to work out what had happened – but as usual, I didn’t even come close to solving the mystery. In a way I’m glad that my crime-solving skills are so bad because it means I can be surprised by all the twists and turns of the plot as the author intended.

I’m having fun working through all the Agatha Christie books available from my library’s ebook section, so you can expect some more Christie posts from me in the near future. It’s funny because her books had never held much appeal for me in the past, though maybe I was just unlucky with the ones I was choosing to read. Although Death in the Clouds is not one of the best that I’ve read so far, it was still an enjoyable read.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

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Although I usually enjoy mysteries, I’ve never considered myself to be a big fan of Agatha Christie. I didn’t really like the Poirot books I’ve read (though admittedly I’ve only tried a few of them) and Miss Marple didn’t appeal to me either. If only I had started with this one instead!

At the beginning of the book we are introduced in quick succession to ten people who have all been invited to a house on Soldier Island, off the coast of Devon. Each person has been given a different reason as to why their presence on the island is required, but on arriving at the house the group discover that their hosts are mysteriously absent. When, one by one, they begin to suffer gruesome deaths in accordance with the children’s rhyme “Ten Little Soldiers” it becomes obvious that one of the ten is a murderer.

The thing that makes this book such an exciting and suspenseful read is that all ten characters seem suspicious and the more you learn about them the more it appears that any one of them could be the killer. Halfway through the book I thought I had worked it out as there was one character in particular that I had suspected from the start (although it was more just an instinct rather than anything specific that he or she had done). As the story moved towards the conclusion it looked as if I was going to be right…

Do I need to tell you that I got it entirely wrong? I admit that solving whodunits is not one of my strong points, but I think most people would be baffled by this one! Christie expertly leads you to believe one thing, then a few pages later proves you wrong. I was sure that as more and more of the ten were eliminated one of them would emerge as the most obvious suspect, but that didn’t happen.

Have you read this book? Did you guess the solution to the mystery?