Used Bookstore Treasures

I bought this paperback at a church book sale. It was the best 50 cents I've ever spent.

Beware of People with Accents

I've finally finished a cycle of short stories and am glad to be starting the next novel, The Man in the Brown Suit. I'm behind on my reviews and will post some soon, but for now I'll give you a few brief impressions.

Poirot Investigates and Poirot's Early Cases were uniformly good: engaging but brief, clever yet not so clever that the readers feels cheated. The first Harley Quinn story, included in Master Pieces in Miniature: The Detectives, was very promising and I'm itching to read more of them.

The rest of the stories I read were contained in either Masterpieces of Mystery and the Unknown or While the Light Lasts and Other Stories. A couple of the lesser known short stories could charitably be called The Case of the Vaguely Foreign Boogie Man, but mostly the stories I read seem to be cautionary mysteries for credulous youth with a thirst for adventure.

It is unfair of me to judge the collection While the Light Lasts and Other Stories after only reading a few of the works. But, so far I understand why most of these stories remained unpublished in book form for decades. I am not saying that they are bad, they just aren't Agatha Christie's best works.

Short Story Round-Up!

I've competed reading the first batch of Poirot short stories and I'm glad I put The Murder on the Links aside to do so. First off, based only on what I've read so far, it seems that agathachristie.com was wrong: Hercule Poirot's Early Cases should be read before Poirot Investigates. Or at least The Affair at the Victory Ball should be read before Poirot Investigates at is references stories contained in Poirot's Early Cases.

Eventually I will review the individual stories here, but right now, I begin the second Poirot novel.

A little snag...

Even if I haven't been posting, I'm still reading but I'm a little behind. By the end of May I should have read at least 4 novels and 2 books of short stories. I'll be lucky if I complete 3 books period. This is a failure of my own making and there is really nothing and no one to blame but my procrastination, YoVille and my tendencies toward obsessive compulsion.

I began reading before I completed all my Agatha Christie research and settling on a reading order. I started reading Murder on the Links only to discover that I should have read several short stories that were published after The Secret Adversary but before the second Poirot novel. The genie was already out of the bottle, I couldn't unread the first 8 chapters, but I decided to finalize at least the first 10 stories in the list. Gathering the raw data alone has been difficult. There is no way for me to know which were written first but the publication order seems to be a little less murky, even if there is a general lack of decisive information on the internet.

This is my reading order until I hit the snag of not having sourced the next set of short stories:

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Secret Adversary

"The Affair at the Victory Ball"

"The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan or The Curious Disappearance of the Opalsen Pearls"

"The King of Clubs"

"The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim"

"The Plymouth Express"

"The Adventure of the Western Star"

"The Tragedy of Marsdon Manor"

"The Kidnapped Prime Minister"

Murder on the Links

Next on the agenda, sourcing a copy of While the Lights Last and Other Stories and The Harlequin Teaset

(I eventually found both While the Light Lasts and The Harlequin Teaset, only to discover in Canada they appear to be identical. Grrr)

The Secret Adversary

The first thing that struck me about The Secret Adversary is how different it was from The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Hastings' narration is very straightforward and very English while the first Tommy and Tuppence story takes its cue from American pulp fiction and moves along at a clip. The writing is chatty and the dialogue humorous and full 1920s slang. This isn't a stayed who-dunnit, but a fast-paced spy thriller.

The plot centres around a vague set of documents that in the wrong hands could DESTROY ENGLAND, and two would be adventurers, who through chance and circumstance, are fated to find a missing girl that will SAVE ENGLAND FROM ANARCHY AND CHOAS. Not precisely original ideas, but Agatha Christie cleverly uses crime story conventions and American cinematic cliches to her advantage making The Secret Adversary an engaging yarn.

Our heroes, Tommy and Tuppence, have recently been relieved of their wartime duties and are looking for work. Pickings are slim, so on a lark they decide to advertise their services as "adventurers" in the 1920s mercenary-blackmailing-jewel-theif sense of the word. Their ad stating that they are "willing to do anything, go anywhere" would have landed them careers in porn in 2010, but instead they end up entangled in a nefarious ring of counter-establishment criminals with bolshevik tendencies led by the enigmatic and titular secret adversary Mr. Brown. No one is to be trusted in this interwar Red Scare tale. In other words, a whole lot of silly fun that should be taken at face value.

I really enjoyed how of its time The Secret Adversary is. The depiction of the general uncertainty in post-WWI England, the vague racism and lingering fears over Germany and Russia, and the "what now" feeling of a newly demilitarized population. The Americans are brash and the good guys are all from the upper classes. Tuppence is the new liberated woman who, because she is a woman, still manages to be incredibly naive and far too trusting. Tommy, a former soldier who seems to crave adventure as much as he wants to leave it behind in the trenches, still trusts that the British sense of decorum will prevail despite having a keener sense of the danger.

My favourite part of the writing is the subtle formality of the narrative voice: it is more often Mr. Beresford and Miss Cowley than Tommy and Tuppence. I look forward to the next story for these two detectives. It will interesting to see how time alters Tommy and Tuppence.

Story: The Secret Adversary

Detectives: Tommy and Tuppence

Observation: First cousins get married? Ew!

Verdict: Great fun! Five stars!

NEXT: The Murder on the Links

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Memory is a funny thing: when I began reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles I thought I would remember who the murderer was. I actually remembered who Agatha Christie wanted me to think was the murderer, and despite being able to recall a few significant plot points, I was genuinely please to have overestimated myself. This proved to me that despite having already read this book and watching the ITV David Suchet television adaptation, Christie still delivers a good read and a few surprises.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles gives you just enough information and character to keep the story going. Although there are a few twists on the way, Christie cleverly doesn't withhold much in terms of plot; instead it is reader's natural desire to outwit her that conceals the murderer's identity.

This book, aside from introducing Poirot and Hastings, also introduces (Chief) Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard. His character also appears in Christie's next book, The Secret Adversary. I wonder if she has an entire back story for Japp and how much she'll reveal over the course of her writings? I almost wish she had written a biography for him; I think there would some interesting information there.

I enjoyed the relative simplicity of Christie's depiction of Poirot in The Mysterious Affair at Styles. This is early on and she hasn't written herself into any corners yet. Hasting as the slightly hapless old boy allows readers to acknowledge and move past Poirot's quirky idiosyncrasies without dwelling on them. The writing style to me was clean and straight forward. It is easy to see why Agatha Christie became the "Queen of Crime".

Book: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

Detectives: Poirot, Hasting, Japp

Observations: How do you lock a busted down door?

Verdict: Fantastic! Four Stars!

Next: The Secret Adversary

Let the Reading Begin!

Well technically the reading has already begun. I was tired researching a reading order and sourcing the books when all I really wanted to do was read. I was camping with my sister and it was bright and sunny and there was a bench by the lake and The Mysterious Affair at Styles was just lying there taunting me. I couldn't help it. I had to pick it up.

I began reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles May 5, 2010. By May 5, 2011 I will have read all of Agatha Christie's mystery novels, stories and plays in roughly the order they were written.*

*I will finish by reading the two books that Agatha Christie intended to be her last: Sleeping Murder and Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, both of which were written in the 1940's.