The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie

‘Light-hearted’ thriller lacks detailed plot 

This 1929 novel is the second book Agatha Christie wrote following her divorce from her adulterous first husband, Colonel Archibald Christie, from whom she was separated in 1927. Looking back on this time in her life, she has commented: “I was gaining confidence over my writing and felt that I would have no difficulty in producing a book every year, and possibly a few short stories as well.”

She also said that she found "light-hearted, thriller type" novels easy to write as they didn't require too much plotting or planning. This is a very revealing comment and may resonate with some readers if they have found they don’t enjoy her thrillers as much as her detective stories.

I read The Seven Dials Mystery for the second time recently because I am working through Agatha Christie’s novels in chronological order to review them all for my blog.

Although I have found her Poirot novels keep getting better as I have been going along, I didn’t think The Seven Dials Mystery was as enjoyable as her previous thrillers, The Secret Adversary and The Man in the Brown Suit.

I found the dialogue at the opening of the book reminiscent of a Bertie Wooster novel by P G Wodehouse, when a group of young people are enjoying breakfast together at a country house party, and characters called Ronny, Pongo, and Socks, are coming up with a jolly idea for a joke to play on one of their fellow guests.

Agatha Christie can just about convince readers that the police are grateful for the help of Poirot or Miss Marple with their cases, but to believe that Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard is eager to enlist the help of Bundle, aka Lady Eileen Brent, for espionage work later in the book, is perhaps stretching credibility too far.

The novelist Val McDermid writes, In her introduction to the 2017 paperback edition of The Seven Dials Mystery, that Agatha Christie is deliberately subverting the thriller genre to poke fun at it. This may be true, or it could be that Agatha Christie was enjoying her new freedom following her divorce and felt like writing something fun and frothy rather than putting in the hard grind to produce one of her clever, tightly plotted, detective stories that would keep the reader guessing until the end.

The review in the Times Literary Supplement of 4 April 1929 was for once markedly unenthusiastic about a Christie book, saying: "It is a great pity that Mrs Christie should in this, as in a previous book, have deserted the methodical procedure of inquiry into a single and circumscribed crime, for the romance of universal conspiracy and international rogues.”

However, my slight disappointment with The Seven Dials Mystery, which was Agatha Christie’s ninth novel, won’t deter me from reading her other thrillers when I finally get to them.

I’m looking forward now to re-reading Number 10 on the chronological list, which is Murder at the Vicarage. This 1930 mystery novel introduces her amateur detective, Miss Marple, who is my favourite Agatha Christie detective character.

 

Murder After Christmas by Rupert Latimer

Serving up mystery, mince pies and merriment

Murder After Christmas is a
treat for cosy crime fans

This Christmas-themed whodunit was out of print for 75 years, meaning cosy crime fans have been missing a festive treat all that time.

First published in 1944, the little-known detective novel Murder After Christmas by Rupert Latimer has finally been made available to today’s readers by being published in the British Library Crime Classics series, and I found it an enjoyable read in the cold days after Christmas this year.

A family invite their rich old uncle to stay at their country house because, they joke, Mussolini had made it impossible for him to visit his Italian villa at Christmas as usual. He has written to them saying that his hotel in London has also been commandeered because of the war.

There are humorous remarks made about murdering the old man for his money by some members of the household before his arrival and therefore it is not much of a surprise for the reader when ‘good old Uncle Willie’, is found dead in the snow on Boxing Day dressed as Santa Claus.

His hosts, the Redpath family, appear to be kind-hearted people who had said before his arrival that they would like to give the 90-year old a good time over Christmas so that he might remember them in his will.

Other distant relatives also take an interest in Uncle Willie and visit him at the Redpath’s house in the run up to Christmas and send him parcels. Uncle Willie is known to have a sweet tooth and he enjoys lots of mince pies and chocolates before Christmas.

After his body is found, the police suspect he has been poisoned and because he is found dead during a Christmas party there are plenty of suspects for Superintendent Culley to choose from as he carries out a complex and thorough murder investigation.

Rupert Latimer tells the story in a light-hearted way, putting in plenty of seasonal touches. Only one set of footprints in the snow lead to the body. Two people are dressed as Santa Claus at the Boxing Day party to add to the confusion. And why are a stash of mince pies found sewn up inside the seat of a chair in the old man’s bedroom?

Latimer was born at Wildernesse Park in Kent, 
the home of his grandmother, Lady Hillingdon
 

Unusually, the Redpaths helpfully invite Superintendent Culley to stay with them in the dead man’s room to see if he can take suspicion away from them by solving the mystery.

Rupert Latimer was the pen name of Algernon Vernon Mills, who was born in 1905 at Wildernesse Park in Kent, the home of his grandmother, the Dowager Lady Hillingdon. 

Despite his privileged background, he had an unfortunate experience as a child during a holiday in France. After eating some strawberries growing wild, he contracted typhoid fever.

His elder sister and their nurse both died, but although he survived, he was lame afterwards and suffered from epilepsy.

As a young man, he pursued a career on the stage, working in repertory, where he met the playwright Arnold Ridley, who later became famous for his part in Dad’s Army.

Latimer also wrote some humorous novels and the detective story Death in Real Life, but then his health declined and he was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died in 1953.

It was to take until 2022 for Murder After Christmas to be reissued by British Library Crime Classics. I found it to be entertaining and well written with a satisfying ending and it was a good distraction from my own left over mince pies!

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Come Away Death by Gladys Mitchell

 

Trip to Greek temple is both eventful and educational

Come Away, Death is one of
Mitchell's more bizarre mysteries

In what I found to be the most bizarre detective novel by Gladys Mitchell I have read so far, Mrs Bradley goes on a strange tour of Greece led by an amateur archaeologist, who is the husband of one of her friends, Marie Hopkinson.

Sir Rudri Hopkinson, who is regarded by many people as eccentric, but is suspected of being deranged by others, takes his children and some of their friends, a rival scholar, a photographer to record events, and psychoanalyst Mrs Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, to the Temple of Eleusis to try to recreate ancient rituals as closely as possible in the hope of summoning the goddess Demeter.

Some strange events occur during the journey and, after one of the group disappears, and a severed head turns up in a box of snakes, Mrs Bradley decides she needs to investigate what is going on.

In her eighth novel to feature the psychoanalyst and amateur detective Mrs Bradley, Gladys Mitchell breaks with convention by letting the inevitable murder occur a long way into the story, which was unusual at the time the novel was written.

Mrs Bradley makes friends with some small boys who are in the party and enlists their help with her sleuthing. She once again shows herself to be at ease with young people, perhaps reflecting qualities possessed by Gladys Mitchell, who was a teacher for many years.

One of the boys had been quick to point out to her at the start of the expedition that the number of travellers in Sir Rudri’s tour group was an unlucky thirteen, but Mrs Bradley says she is not superstitious.

Gladys Mitchell took her title from the
lyric of a song in Twelfth Night

And another member of the party, who claims to have the gift of seeing into the future, has said she could foresee death.

When the inevitable demise occurs, Mrs Bradley, who is herself highly educated, uses both her knowledge of Greek mythology and background in psychology to help her solve the case.

I found the way Gladys Mitchell tells the story, without losing my interest despite the many references to Greek mythology made along the way, is testimony to her talent as a writer.

The title of the 1937 mystery, Come Away, Death, was taken from a line in the lyric of a song in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. One of the characters sings: 

'Come away, come away, death, and in sad cypress let me be laid; Fly away, Fly away, breath, I am slain by a fair cruel maid.'

It is interesting to note that Agatha Christie may have got the idea for the title of her 1940 Poirot novel, Sad Cypress, from the same song written by Shakespeare.

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A Happy 10th Anniversary to Death in the High City

Successful decade for Bergamo’s first British crime novel 

Death in the High City, the first detective novel written in English to be set in Bergamo in Lombardy, was published ten years ago this summer. 

The novel came out in Kindle format in May 2014 and a paperback version was released in July 2014.

It has since sold copies in the UK, Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, America, Australia, Canada, and Mexico. 

To mark the tenth anniversary, East Wind Publishing have issued a new edition of the mystery with a front cover showing Bergamo’s historic Via Colleoni at night. The street in the Città Alta, Bergamo’s upper town, features as a key location in the novel.

Referred to as un romanzo giallo in Italian, Death in the High City centres on the investigation into the death of an English woman who was staying in the Città Alta in Bergamo while working on a biography she was writing of the opera composer Gaetano Donizetti, who was born and died in the city. 

The novel was the first in a series to feature the characters of Kate Butler, a freelance journalist, and Steve Bartorelli, a retired Detective Chief Inspector, who is of partly Italian descent. 

The dead woman had been living in an apartment in Bergamo’s Città Alta and much of the action takes place within the walls of the upper town. At first the local police do not believe there is enough evidence to open a murder enquiry and so journalist Kate Butler, the victim’s cousin, arrives in Bergamo to try to get some answers about her relative’s death. 

Kate visits many of the places in Bergamo with Donizetti connections and her enquiries also take her to nearby Lago d’Iseo and into the countryside around San Pellegrino Terme. But after her own life is threatened and there has been another death in the Città Alta, her partner, Steve Bartorelli, joins her to help unravel the mystery and trap the killer.

The reader can enjoy Bergamo’s wonderful architecture and scenery from the comfort of their own armchair, while savouring the many descriptions in the novel of local food and wine. 

Author Val Culley has been delighted with the level of interest shown both at home and in Italy in what was her first novel.

She was invited to present Death in the High City to an audience in San Pellegrino Terme and sign copies of the book, as a guest at the fifth anniversary celebrations of Bergamo Su e Giù, a group of independent tour guides based in the city. During the evening, she was presented with a book about San Pellegrino Terme by the town’s mayor. 

Val has also made two appearances on Bergamo TV to talk about the novel with presenter Teo Mangione during his daily breakfast programme. During one of her visits to the studios, she presented a copy of the book to the Mayor of Bergamo, Giorgio Gori, who took office the year the novel was published. Val was invited to Bergamo for a further visit by the Cambridge Institute to give a talk about Death in The High City to a group of 80 Italian teachers of English and to sign copies for them. 

She has also formally presented a copy of Death in the High City to the Biblioteca Civica (Civic Library), a beautiful 16th century building in white marble, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi, situated in Piazza Vecchia, a location that features frequently in the novel.

Val was later invited to give a talk about Death in the High City at a sixth form college in Zogno, a comune in Valle Brembana set in beautiful countryside in the hills above Bergamo. 

She has given talks about Death in the High City to members of the Dante Alighieri Society in Nottingham and members of Voglia d’Italia, a society for Italy enthusiasts in south Yorkshire. 

Another highlight was when the New York Times referred to Death in the High City in a travel feature about Bergamo. 

The book has been purchased by Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire Libraries for the benefit of their readers and is available for sale on both Amazon and Waterstones on line. The novel will interest readers who enjoy the ‘cosy’ crime fiction genre or like detective stories with an Italian setting.

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Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham

 

Readers see Campion at work when his emotions become involved

Campion is called in to investigate when the leading man in a hit West End musical becomes the victim of spiteful, practical jokes.

The actor and dancer Jimmy Sutane is starring in a show based on a best-selling book written by William Faraday, who is one of Campion’s oldest friends. Campion is taken to see the show by Faraday and introduced to Jimmy after the performance.

The star asks Campion to discreetly look into the pranks, which are beginning to cause him and his family distress, in this eighth novel by Margery Allingham to feature her mysterious, clever sleuth.

Campion goes with Faraday to stay at Sutane’s country home, where he meets the star’s family and some of his show business friends.

During Campion and Faraday’s visit, an unpopular actress is accidentally run over by Sutane in his own car. Everyone seems happy to believe that this was an accident, but Campion is not so sure.

As the increasingly unpleasant practical jokes continue, Sutane’s ambitious understudy is killed, along with several innocent bystanders. Campion liaises with the police about this unpleasant development while carrying on with his own investigation.  

When the butler in charge of the Sutane household resigns, Campion has to call on his own unconventional butler, valet, and bodyguard, Magersfontein Lugg, to help restore peace and order to the now chaotic country residence, while he continues to investigate the mystery. Lugg gets on well with the Sutane family, teaching the daughter of the house to pick locks.

In this novel, which was first published in 1937, Campion finds himself torn, wanting to uncover the facts, but trying to avoid upsetting a woman he has just met and fallen in love with. However, the determined detective sticks to his task and it is only at the end of the story that he finds out the truth.

This is another gripping novel from Margery Allingham, which slowly unveils Campion’s character, showing his human side. It draws the reader into Campion’s world and makes us want to find out more about him.

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Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay

No Oxford degree for author but she found a good setting for a crime novel

The murder at the heart of this mystery occurs on the
River Cherwell, still popular with students today

Death on the Cherwell, a classic Golden Age detective story by Mavis Doriel Hay published in 1935, is set in a fictitious women’s college in Oxford. The novel appeared during the same year as Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers, which was also set in a women’s college in Oxford. Both settings were loosely based on the colleges the authors had attended themselves.

Mavis writes at the beginning of the first chapter: ‘Undergraduates, especially those in their first year, are not, of course, quite sane or quite adult.’ The students featured in this novel come across as very young indeed, more like the girls in boarding school stories than intelligent students. Nevertheless, they make good amateur sleuths, who are as entertaining as they are industrious.

A group of first year girls, who have formed a secret society that meets on the roof of the Persephone College boathouse, come across the dead body of the college bursar lying in her canoe. She is later discovered to have drowned in the river but it is a mystery how her body ended up back in her own boat.

The police are called in but to begin with they assume it is a student prank that has got out of hand. However, the group of young ladies who found the body immediately suspect foul play and take the investigation into their own hands. 

Led by Sally Watson, whose older sister, Beryl, appeared in Murder Underground, the first crime novel by Mavis Doriel Hay, the undergraduates uncover the tangled secrets that led to the bursar’s death and follow up clues that point in the direction of a fellow student.

The British Library Crime Classics
edition of Death on the Cherwell

Mavis Doriel Hay, who was born on either 12 or 13 February 1894, 130 years ago, in Potters Bar in Middlesex, attended St Hilda’s College in Oxford between 1913 and 1916. She published three mystery novels within just three years in the 1930s, Murder Underground, Death on the Cherwell, and the Santa Klaus Murder. 

After Murder Underground was published, Dorothy L Sayers wrote a review in the Sunday Times saying: ‘This detective novel is much more than interesting. The numerous characters are well differentiated, and include one of the most feckless, exasperating, and lifelike literary men that ever confused a trail.’

That exasperating literary man, Basil Pongleton makes an appearance in the author’s second novel, Death on the Cherwell, when he and his wife, Beryl, are visiting Beryl’s sister, Sally, in Oxford. But Sally doesn’t need any help from him to uncover the truth about the bursar’s death and her sleuthing efforts even earn her the respect of the investigating officer in the case, Detective Inspector Braydon.

Like Dorothy L Sayers, Mavis attended Oxford when women were allowed into the university to study, but were not allowed to graduate, and so she left the university empty handed. But because she was interested in the industries and handicrafts of rural Britain, she was later sponsored by the Agricultural Economics Research Institute of Oxford University to collaborate with another writer, Helen Fitzrandolph, on a series of works surveying rural industries

She went on to marry Helen Fitzrandolph’s brother, Archibald Menzies Fitzrandolph, in 1929. Sadly, he was killed in a flying accident during World War II. 

Mavis, who was also interested in quilting, went on to publish several books on crafts during her life. She died in 1979 at the age of 85.

Nearly 90 years after it was first published, Death on the Cherwell was republished by British Library Crime Classics. In his introduction to the novel in 2014, crime writer Stephen Booth regrets that Mavis Doriel Hay had such a short literary career and published just three detective novels. He says it is ‘even sadder’ that she was almost forgotten by crime fiction readers for so many years after her death and he was delighted that the British Library editions of her books were finally remedying that oversight.

I am sure lovers of classic crime novels will be glad to have the opportunity to get to know this author and will be fascinated by her portrayal of life inside a women’s college in Oxford, in the days when female students weren’t even considered worthy of being awarded degrees by the university they attended. 

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(River Cherwell pic by Steve Daniels via Wikimedia Commons)

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The Clock Strikes 12 by Patricia Wentworth

Victim sets a New Year deadline for his own murder

The Clock Strikes Twelve is the
seventh Miss Silver mystery

James Paradine, a wealthy businessman, announces at a family dinner on New Year’s Eve that valuable blueprints have been stolen from his study and he will give the culprit until midnight to come to him and confess.

It will come as no surprise to seasoned readers of the classic crime novel that early the next morning Paradine is found dead in the grounds of his home.

In The Clock Strikes 12, the seventh mystery by Patricia Wentworth to feature her prim governess-turned-private detective, Miss Silver, there are plenty of suspects for the reader to consider. The late James Paradine had a grown-up family, some of who are married, and many of them are actively involved in his business.

The characters and different situations of the family and staff living in the house are well described by the author, making them seem real to the reader, something that was unusual for a Golden Age classic crime novel.

There is also a strong subplot about the thwarted relationship between Phyllida, the beautiful adopted daughter of Paradine’s sister, and Elliot, a talented young designer working for Paradine who is crucial to the success of the family firm. The couple were married briefly, but have been apart for nearly a year for reasons that are slowly and cleverly revealed by the author.

Miss Silver is called in by a member of the family to try to help solve the murder and she is allowed by the police to work alongside their investigating officers. She has to unravel an elaborate tangle of alibis, motives, and clues to get to the truth.

Patricia Wentworth was
fond of quoting poetry

Placidly sitting knitting in the background, Miss Silver emerges as a more distinct personality in this novel, which was first published in 1945, than she perhaps did in the earlier stories about her investigations.

The novelist Patricia Wentworth, who was born in 1877 in British India, wrote 32 novels in the classic whodunnit style featuring her character Maud Silver, a retired governess and teacher who has set up as a professional private investigator in London.

Fond of quoting from the poetry of Lord Tennyson, Miss Silver often works closely with Scotland Yard. She sees and hears everything and has a brilliant mind. From her observations, she cleverly works out what has happened in each of her cases and is able to explain how to expose the murderer.

IThe Clock Strikes 12 is a clever, well plotted mystery, perfect for reading in the days after Christmas while relaxing in front of the fire.

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Miss Silver Intervenes by Patricia Wentworth

A blend of blackmail, murder and romance makes for an intriguing mystery

Miss Silver Intervenes is
the sixth Miss Silver mystery

We learn more about the character of Miss Silver in this sixth book by Patricia Wentworth featuring the ex-governess turned private investigator.

She is no longer just a little old lady sitting in the background knitting, but is shown to be well respected by the police, who treat her as an equal and give her full access to their investigation in this story.

The mystery involves residents who live in eight flats in Vandeleur House, an old converted mansion in Putney. The characters are beautifully drawn by Patricia Wentworth and I found myself enticed into their world and wanting to keep turning the pages of the novel to find out more about them.

Miss Silver comes into the story when one of the residents, Mrs Underwood, who she has met once through mutual friends, calls on her unexpectedly at her flat. Although Mrs Underwood is reluctant to admit why she has come to see Miss Silver, she eventually reveals that she is being blackmailed and needs help.

Mrs Underwood can't bring herself to tell Miss Silver the full details of what has been happening to her, but later, when Miss Silver reads that another resident living in the same block of flats has been murdered, she decides to take matters into her own hands and manages to get herself invited to stay at Vandeleur House.

Mrs Underwood is living there with her niece by marriage, Meade, who is recovering from the shock of being in a shipwreck in which her fiancé, Giles, was drowned. Then one day while she is out shopping, Meade encounters Giles, who was rescued from the sea but has now lost his memory.

Patricia Wentworth (above) again
spins an intriguing mystery

Miss Silver wastes no time in getting to know the other residents in the flats and finding out about their relationships with each other using her considerable skills as a conversationalist.

There is a middle aged couple whose marriage has been put under strain by the husband’s obsession with the attractive young woman who lives in the flat above them. A pleasant young woman is clearly being bullied by the domineering mother she lives with. An elderly spinster is struggling to survive financially because of her income being affected by the wartime economy. An elderly woman is being cared for by her maid and a companion, and there is a single man who keeps himself to himself so that no one knows what his occupation is.

When the police investigating the murder find out that Miss Silver is staying with her friend, Mrs Underwood, they invite her to join forces with them but the relationship becomes somewhat strained when they opt for a simpler explanation for the murder than the theory Miss Silver has put forward.

However, they eventually have to admit they were wrong when the old lady, with a fondness for the poetry of Tennyson, manages to unravel what has been going on at Vandeleur House while simultaneously knitting a pair of socks for her relative in the air force.

During the story, Miss Silver also makes a new friend in one of the investigating officers, Sergeant Frank Abbott, who is invited to the celebratory tea party in her flat at the end of the novel.

I would say the only weak point in the plot is that Miss Silver uses her knowledge of a previous blackmailing case to help her identify the murderer, which gives her an advantage over the police and the reader. But nevertheless, I found Miss Silver Intervenes, first published in 1944, to be extremely well written and enjoyable.

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The Devil at Saxon Wall by Gladys Mitchell

Madness and witchcraft in a village that seems to be living in the Middle Ages

The Devil at Saxon Wall is
the sixth Mrs Bradley mystery

Probably the most bizarre Mrs Bradley mystery yet, The Devil at Saxon Wall, the sixth novel about the eccentric psychoanalyst and amateur detective, published in 1935, is the first of a number of Gladys Mitchell’s books to feature the theme of witchcraft.

The story was inspired after Gladys heard a lecture on witchcraft by her friend, the detective fiction writer Helen Simpson, and she dedicated this book to her.

Mrs Bradley has advised her best-selling novelist friend, Hannibal Jones, who has had a breakdown and is suffering from writer’s block, to retreat to a quiet, rustic village to find rest and inspiration for his work. 

Although the village of Saxon Wall might seem the perfect rural escape to begin with, Jones soon finds himself intrigued by the odd characters among the villagers and their pagan beliefs.

He also finds himself compelled to try to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Neot House, a place where a young couple died soon after the birth of their first child.

It is a hot summer and the villagers are desperate for rain because they are short of water. They decide the local vicar is to blame for the lack of water and Jones has to step in to defend him when their anger drives them to march on the vicarage armed with weapons.

Gladys Mitchell tells the story with
the skill that was her hallmark

Jones makes some enquiries to try to sort out what happened to two babies who he thinks may have been swapped at birth, but when a man from the village is found bludgeoned to death, he decides he must call in Mrs Beatrice Lestrange Bradley to help him.

The strangely dressed old lady with her hideous cackle is more than a match for the angry villagers and she proceeds to root out the devil at Saxon Wall using her own unique and unorthodox methods.

At the end of the novel, Mrs Bradley expresses the opinion that the inhabitants of Saxon Wall are incapable of making straightforward statements. She thinks that this peculiarity dates back to the days of the Norman conquest when the Saxons of those parts, too cunning to tell direct lies to their overlords, resorted to maddening half statements and obscure pronouncements, which made them difficult to understand.

Although the characters and situations are bizarre, the novel presents an intriguing mystery which Mrs Bradley skilfully unravels and the story is well told by Gladys, who helpfully provides ‘End Papers’ to clarify issues for the reader.

I found The Devil at Saxon Wall entertaining and enjoyable and well worth reading.  

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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

An award winning masterpiece by the Queen of Crime

The latest HarperCollins reprint
of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Agatha Christies’s sixth novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, was voted ‘the best crime novel ever’ by the British Crime Writers’ Association in 2013.

Published in 1926, the book remains Agatha’s best known and most controversial novel because of its ingenious final twist, which had a significant impact on the detective fiction genre and has been imitated by many other writers since.

Agatha, who died on 12 January, 1976 - 47 years ago today - has become famous for being the supreme exponent of the old-fashioned English crime novel. Her skill in constructing complex and puzzling plots and her ability to deceive readers until the very last page, or paragraph, are unequalled.

But this third Poirot novel, narrated by the local physician, Doctor Sheppard, in the absence of Captain Hastings, who has gone to start a new life in the Argentine, is considered by many readers and critics to be her masterpiece.

Wealthy businessman turned country squire Roger Ackroyd lives in a charming English country village, where dark secrets and dangerous emotions lurk beneath the apparently calm surface.

When Ackroyd is murdered, stabbed in the neck while sitting in his study after a dinner party at his home, there are, as usual, plenty of suspects.  

Poirot, who has just come to live in the village, after retiring to grow marrows, lives next door to Dr Sheppard. He is asked by a member of Ackroyd’s family to investigate the murder because they are worried the police will get it wrong. Suspicion has fallen on Ackroyd’s stepson, Ralph, who is a popular young man locally.

Agatha Christie died 47 years
ago today at the age of 85

After many twists and turns, Poirot gathers all the suspects together in his sitting room after dinner one night and reveals the extraordinary and unexpected identity of the killer.

According to The Home of Agatha Christie, the author’s own website, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was ‘the book that changed Agatha Christie’s career’. It was the first of her novels to be published by William Collins, which later became part of HarperCollins, who remain Agatha’s publishers today and attracted enormous attention in the media at the time.

Following her death, Agatha Christie's body was buried four days later after a service at St Mary’s Church in the village of Cholsey in Oxfordshire.

The inscription on her tombstone is a quotation from Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queen:

‘Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,

Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please.’

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Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon

A ‘creepy’ Christmas story with all the classic festive ingredients

John Jefferson Farjeon was a journalist who
went on to be a successful novelist

When a group of passengers trapped on a snowbound train on Christmas Eve decide to take their chances in the ‘curtain of whirling white’ to try to find shelter, the scene is set for an intriguing seasonal mystery.

No one answers the bell at the first house they find, but when they try the door handle it turns and they stumble inside with relief. The fires are lit, the table is set for tea, but surprisingly there is nobody at home.

It is obvious the occupants would not have ventured out in such extreme weather conditions unless there had been an emergency and the house has clearly been prepared for guests, so despite uncomfortable feelings of guilt, the train travellers warm themselves by the fire, eat the tea that has been prepared and set out to solve the mystery.

The main sleuthing brain belongs to an elderly gentleman, Mr Edward Maltby, of the Royal Psychical Society, who uses a mixture of reasoned logic and psychic intuition to try to work out what has happened to the occupants of the house.

He is ably assisted by a bright young man, David Carrington and his cheerful sister, Lydia, who has practical skills. A chorus girl, Jessie, who has fallen in the snow and sprained her ankle, a young clerk called Thomson who succumbs to ‘flu, Hopkins, an elderly bore, and Smith, a rough man who turns out to be a criminal, complete the Christmas house party.

Mystery in White is published as
a British Library Crime Classic

The author of Mystery in White, Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, was a crime and mystery novelist, playwright, and screen writer. Born in 1883, Farjeon worked for ten years for Amalgamated Press in London before going freelance. He went on to become the author of more than 60 crime and mystery novels, short story collections and plays.

He was a major figure during the Golden Age of murder mysteries between the two world wars and Dorothy L Sayers praised him for being ‘quite unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures.’

Farjeon was named after his maternal grandfather, Joseph Jefferson, who was an American actor. His father, Benjamin Farjeon, was a successful novelist, one of his brothers was a composer, another a drama critic and director, and his sister, Eleanor Farjeon, wrote poems, including the words for the hymn, Morning Has Broken.

Originally published in 1937, Mystery in White was republished as a British Library Crime Classic in 2014. Like most Golden Age mysteries, it has a satisfying, logical conclusion, brought about by the deductive powers of Mr Maltby and the heroics of David.

At the end of the story, the police inspector, who manages to reach the house on Christmas Day, remarks to his sergeant: “Four murders in a dozen hours! I reckon I’ve earned my bit of turkey.”

When the owners of the house return they are happy to forgive the intrusion by the party from the train. As Lydia had said earlier to the chorus girl, Jessie: “Suppose this house belonged to you and you returned to it after the world’s worst snowstorm, would you rather find your larder empty or seven skeletons?" 

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Death at the Opera by Gladys Mitchell

Inoffensive’ female victim had a long list of enemies

The Death at the Opera edition
published by Vintage Publishing

Mrs Bradley uses all her skills as a psychoanalyst to find out who is guilty of the murder of a teacher during a performance of the comic Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Mikado at an experimental co-educational school.

Author Gladys Mitchell evokes the school setting very well, revealing what she thought of some of the work and the rituals she herself was involved in during her long career as a schoolteacher.

Eccentric sleuth Mrs Bradley is called in to investigate by the headmaster of Hillmaston School after a young arithmetic teacher is found drowned in a cloakroom before she can make her entrance during the opera production in the role of Katisha.  Another teacher had to take over the part at the last minute and gave a magnificent performance.

Mrs Bradley is very clever in the way she talks to both staff and pupils and persuades them to open up to her. Gladys comes up with some believable, if eccentric characters, revealing what she must have thought about some of her teaching colleagues over the years.

The author brings back the Reverend Noel Wells, who was Mrs Bradley’s ‘Watson’ in her fourth novel, The Saltmarsh Murders. He becomes Mrs Bradley's sleuthing partner again when she travels to Bognor Regis to investigate the murder victim’s past. At one stage he puts his own life in danger to test one of her theories.

They encounter a man who has been acquitted in court of murdering his wife and Mrs Bradley, showing no fear, offers herself as bait in order to see what he is capable of. With the help of Noel, she ends up solving a different murder.

Author Gladys Mitchell keeps the
reader guessing until the final pages

Death at the Opera, originally published in 1934, is written in a very elegant and witty style and Mrs Bradley is presented as a more rounded person and less of a caricature than she was in the earlier books.

The detective cleverly draws up a list of people with a motive, and a list of those with the opportunity to commit the crime. She eventually dismisses all the people with a motive and all the people who had the opportunity. She then makes a list of all the attributes the murderer must have had to commit the crime and not give themselves away. This helps her to solve the case.

Mrs Bradley also solves the offstage murder of a woman who has drowned in an ornamental pond in the grounds of a mental hospital, who had been the wife of the music teacher at the school.

Gladys keeps the reader guessing until the last pages of the book, when she produces an incredible surprise.

I would agree with a review in the Observer newspaper, which said: “Mrs Lestrange Bradley is by far the best and most vital English female detective.” I think her fifth outing in Death at the Opera shows her at her most bizarre and brilliant.

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Vintage Murder by Ngaio Marsh

Novelist draws on her love for New Zealand and the theatre

Vintage Murder begins as Roderick Alleyn
makes a train journey across New Zealand 

Ngaio Marsh transports her upper class, English sleuth, Roderick Alleyn, to her native New Zealand in Vintage Murder, her fifth novel to feature the Scotland Yard detective.

Alleyn is on holiday while recovering from an operation and the story begins as he makes a long journey by train across New Zealand. On the train, he encounters a travelling theatrical troupe and among them is Susan Max, a character actress he had met in Enter a Murderer, Ngaio’s second novel. The detective had encountered the actress while he was investigating a murder that occurred on stage during the performance of a play at a West End theatre.

He gets talking to different members of the troupe, which is run by Incorporated Playhouses, and it is not far into the story when Alfred Meyer, the owner of Incorporated Playhouses, who is married to the leading lady, Carolyn Dacres, reveals to Alleyn that someone has tried to push him off the train.

After the train has arrived at its destination, Carolyn invites Alleyn to see the first night of the play and to her birthday celebrations with the rest of the company on the stage afterwards. At the party, as a surprise for his wife, Meyer has arranged for a jeroboam of champagne to descend gently on to the dinner table from above, but something goes horribly wrong and the theatrical manager is killed.

The latest HarperCollins edition
of Ngaio Marsh's Vintage Murder

It soon becomes obvious that the mechanism set up for the stunt has been tampered with and Alleyn is invited by the local police to sit in on their investigation. He sets aside his holiday plans to try to help them catch the murderer.

Vintage Murder, which was published in 1937, enables Ngaio Marsh to describe the scenery of her homeland as seen through Alleyn’s eyes. He meets a Māori doctor, Rangi Te Pokiha, and buys a Māori fertility pendant, a ‘tiki’, which plays an important part in the plot.

Vintage Murder was one of four Alleyn novels adapted for New Zealand television in 1977, when the role of Alleyn was played by the actor George Baker.

Ngaio’s inspiration for the travelling theatrical troupe was the Alan Wilkie Company, which she was once a part of, so it is not surprising that the characters and their behaviour come across as so real in the story.

The story does consist of a long series of interviews conducted by Alleyn along with the New Zealand police officers, which many on line reviewers have complained about, but I still think it is a well written novel that presents a good mystery for the armchair detective to try to solve, and I would recommend it.

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