so-soThis is not among my favorites. It feels more like an interesting idea that Christie is exploring in writing than it does a complete story. And Miss Marple doesn't play nearly as large a role as I would prefer her to.
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so-soThis is not among my favorites. It feels more like an interesting idea that Christie is exploring in writing than it does a complete story. And Miss Marple doesn't play nearly as large a role as I would prefer her to.
pickI'm not sure the setting played much of a role in this mystery, and several of the characters feel almost extraneous, but it's a diverting story nevertheless. I like how Christie writes about aging. This one has a feel reminiscent to The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman.
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pickWhen Rex Fortescue falls ill at work, he is rushed to hospital where he unfortunately dies. Inspector Neele is called & tests reveal that Fortescue was killed by taxine poisoning - a poison derived from yew trees. Fortescue's house is called 'Yew Tree House' & there is no shortage of suspects: is it the much younger second wife who is dallying with her tennis coach, or the elder son who has been arguing with his father recently, (continued)
I got myself a bit of a treat that's not in the database: Agatha Christie's England: A Map and Guide from Herb Lester Associates, written and researched by Caroline Crampton. Now I can get a sense of the geography of the Christies I read each month.
pickMiss Marple's friend Elspeth McGillicuddy actually witnesses a man strangling a woman from her train window but despite her alerting the conductor and the railway authorities no corpse is found until Miss Marples hires her former home help to find the body. The woman is unidentified so who killed her and why?
Looking back I should have known who the murderer was but of course I didn't.
pickAlthough I don't quite buy the motive(s), I like the characters in this one quite a bit. Miss Marple is always a delight. I've been reading through Christie's novels for several years and have been reading English lit for decades, and this is the first time I really realized that, unlike with novels set in the US in which I can follow the action on a fairly detailed mental map, I have only the vaguest sense of the geography of UK-set novels.
