Agatha Christie, five classic murder mysteries Book

The Secret Adversary is only the second novel Christie ever published and is thus the first chronologically, but it doesn't make for a strong start. If this had been my first Christie novel, I might never have read another. This is the first "Tommy and Tuppence" adventure. Christie didn't write as many mysteries with them as Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, but she did write several, and unlike those detectives they aged from book to book--from young twenty-something flappers to aged married partners in a book 50 years later. They're likable together and separately and there's an exuberant young spirit to the book--this is only the second novel she wrote, published in 1922. This is a tale of espionage and secret treaties and far fetched coincidences. And four chapters in, the couple walks into an interview with someone Tommy recognizes as in British intelligence--and without any security clearance or background check at all, without their having any intelligence training or experience as detectives, because they fell into some information regarding a sensitive case they're given classified information and hired. Oh, and it involves a supervillain who is inciting a "Bolshevik Revolution"--in England. Maybe that was a credible plot line in 1922, but in 2011 that flunks the laugh test. I guess this should be taken as just a light-hearted romp, but this story strained my credibility much too far too fast. One and a Half Stars

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is one of a few Christie's I've read--indeed one of the very few mysteries I've read--with such a jaw-dropping resolution that you want to scream, "I don't believe she did that!" When I first read it, I was tempted to read it again immediately upon finishing to make sure Christie played fair--she does. One thing that struck me on reread was not only how smoothly this was written--it's first person and that's important--but also how much humor there is, despite it being a murder mystery. Although certainly there are aspects to detective Hercule Poirot's personality that lend itself to comedy. This is a perfect puzzle box tale, a classic "locked room" mystery in a country manor complete with butler. The kind of mystery Raymond Chandler in an essay naming Christie complained were "contrived" and "arid formula." Literary critic Edmund Wilson even wrote an essay attacking mysteries titled "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" Go ahead and sniff disdainfully at me if you like for my rating of a full five stars. It's not Dostoevsky with complex characters and profound thoughts on the human condition(tm) but it's entertaining and clever and there's good reason it's been in print for over 80 years. (And I like it a hell of a lot more than Chandler's The Big Sleep.) Five Stars

The Boomerang Clue, which is also known as Why Didn't They Ask Evans is not, to put it mildly--one of Christie's best. I really liked it at first. Bobby Jones is a amiable young man, a vicar's son, who finds a dying man at the foot of a cliff. The man's last cryptic words were, "Why didn't they ask Evans?" Soon there's an attempt on Bobby's life and he and his childhood friend, Frankie, aka Lady Frances Derwent, are on the case. There's a great chemistry between them, wit and humor to be had in the tale, a breezy readable style, action and suspense, and of course I was drawn in by the mystery. But there are a number of problems I wouldn't expect from a Christie, although I guess when you write over 80 novels in a career, some are bound to be misfires. One question that occurred to me early on and is a pet peeve in many a mystery is why they didn't immediately go to the police with their suspicions, rather than start sleuthing on their own. But then that might go nicely with problem number two--that they were both too stupid to live--on several levels. One being of the Jeez, don't-walk-into-the-obvious-ambush kind. Another even more serious was that the obvious villains...were obvious--but Christie's sleuths remain oblivious. This is one Christie (the only one I can remember) where right from the first I met the characters involved I was sure whodunnit and was right. Although there were some ins and outs I didn't learn until the end. Despite their stupidity, I did like Bobby and Frankie and that and those loose ends I wanted to see tied up kept me reading--but really, below average for a mystery and seriously sub-par for the writer of Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None. Two and a Half Stars

The Moving Finger is vintage Christie. Ranked against her own competition of jaw-dropping books, such as And Then There Were None, this is a tad less memorable, but it still kept me guessing to the end while playing fair with the reader. Otherwise it's more than solid and has all the hallmarks of her best. There is the picture of life in a small English village in the mid-20th Century, Lymstock, which has been suffering from a series of poison pen letters culminating in murder. There's all the clues that come together in the end like clockwork, the red herrings, the plausible suspects, some of whom you favor, and others you come to care about you so hope didn't do it. There's humor, a nice element of romance, suspense--and oh, and Christie's elderly spinster detective Miss Marple. Although she mostly features at the end with the solution, not coming into the tale until Chapter Six of Eight, only a few dozen pages before the end. The story is the first person account of Jerry Burton, staying at the village with his sister while he recovers from an accident, and he's an appealing character through which to follow the tale. Four Stars

Death Comes as the End might not be Christie's most impressive novel, but of all the Christie novels I've read, this one is my personal favorite, and probably for the reason it's unique among her novels. All her other mystery novels were set in the present day of when they were published--this one is set in Ancient Egypt, as the Author's Note tells us, "on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes in Egypt about 2000 B.C." Renisenb, a young widow, returns to her family. When her father, Imhotep, a ka-priest, brings a beautiful young concubine, Nofret, into the household, she "touched off smoldering jealousies" which lead to murder. According to the biography in the back of the text, Christie's second husband was an archeologist and after her marriage she spent part of each year in the middle east. So unsurprising that she conveys her setting very vividly and gives us a vintage twisty well-plotted mystery. But she also wrote what I found among her most memorable characters and an affecting romance. I find this book a treat to read. Five Stars