Agatha Christie

[ssk7882]

Devin wrote:

> Elkins, are you sure it was called Three Little Pigs?  I thought it 
> was Five Little Pigs (and I remember that being also called Murder 
> in Retrospect)...

Ugh.  Yes, of course there were Five Little Pigs, and not Three
Little Pigs.  They're the five little pigs of the toe-counting
game ("This little piggie went to market..."), not the three little 
pigs of "I'll huff and I'll puff.."

Sorry 'bout that.  But yeah, it's the same one you're thinking
of.  I just love that one.

Evil Under the Sun is a fairly standard Poirot, really -- there's
nothing wacky or striking about it, as there is with Orient Express
or Ackroyd -- but I find it a highly satisfying one.

> I never cared for Murder on the Orient Express because it's the 
> only Christie I figured out before the solution came out.  

Alas, I saw the film on television in my youth, and so never got
the chance to find out if I would have guessed it or not.  I enjoy
that one mainly for the humor: Poirot's frustration cracks me up, the 
nationalist stereotyping is delightful, and the utter absurdity of
the plot appeals to me in some strange perverse fashion.  Also, I
like trying to imagine all of the feverishly whispered "off-screen" 
conversations the people on that train must have been having.

But I think you're right: it is a little pat.  Not to mention 
strikingly implausible.  Even for a Christie.

You don't like figuring out the solution, eh?  Funny.  I'm always
very smug with myself when I do that -- although of course, if it's
too easy, then it's just irritating.  I guessed Ackroyd, but I loved 
it anyway.  That one with the home for wayward boys, though -- Murder
With Mirrors?  Was that what it was called? -- I found annoyingly
predictable.

> It's definitely telling that Marple holds little or no weight in my 
> favorites (I'd pick The Moving Finger--I think that's what it's 
> called--as my favorite Marple, it's good but not quite ranking 
> among the Poirots).

I always find the Marples frustrating, because while I really enjoy
her as a character concept, she tends to get decidedly inferior 
mysteries.  I also find her habit of resolving the plot by tricking 
the murderer into a confession through some silly entrapment strategy 
extremely irritating.  I actually quite liked the mystery in _A 
Murder Is Announced,_ but the endgame -- with Miss Marple resorting 
to her previously-undisclosed magical powers of *mimicry* to get the 
murderer to confess (huh?) -- was just plain embarrassing.

Also, in the later Marples, Christie started building her plots so 
faithfully around the literary reference or the nursery rhyme that 
half the time if you know the reference, then you've solved the 
mystery.  And that's really just no fun at all.


> I'll tell you a couple of lesser-knowns I love: Cards on the Table 
> because it's the only Christie where EVERY suspect was 
> realistically red-herringed up till the very end.  

I found Cards on the Table a bit difficult, because I don't play 
bridge or indeed know anything about it.  There was a lot of bridge
talk in the book, and while it wasn't absolutely essential, I 
suspected throughout that I was missing a lot of the fun.  I did 
like the characters, though, and there was a definite appeal to the
melodramatic set-up.  Talk about just plain *asking* for it!

> Three Act Tragedy for reasons that concern the solution and which I 
> will not divulge here.  

I first read Three Act Tragedy in England and absolutely *loved* it.
Then I picked up a copy here in the States, only to discover that
not only the title (which had become Murder In Three Acts), but also 
the entire *ending* had been changed, and that the story no longer 
made very much sense at all.  Forget about the HP publishers changing 
their "Mum"s to "Mom"s and the like, what on earth do you think could 
have led an editor to think it a good idea to change a Whodunnit 
murderer's entire *motivation?*  

But yes, in the original version I really liked that one too.  The
American rewrite, though, I thought was fairly lame. 

Oh, yikes!  Sorry to cut this short, but I must fly -- late
for a meeting.


-- Elkins