Deborah Pickett started reading At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie
An old-fashioned London Hotel is not quite as reputable as it makes out… When Miss …
Book three in the Miss Marple omnibus.
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Technical nonfiction and spec fiction. She/her. Melbourne, Australia. Generation X. Admin of Outside of a Dog. BDFL of Hometown (Mastodon) instance Old Mermaid Town (@futzle@old.mermaid.town). Avatar image is of a book that my dog tried to put on their inside.
My rating scale: ★ = I didn't care for it and probably didn't finish it; ★★ = It didn't inspire but I might have finished it anyway; ★★★ = It was fine; ★★★★ = I enjoyed it; ★★★★★ = I couldn't put it down.
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Deborah Pickett finished reading A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie
In Agatha Christie’s classic, A Pocket Full of Rye, the bizarre death of a financial …
Content warning Spoilers Agatha Christie “A Pocketful of Rye”
More an Inspector Neele book than a Miss Marple book, though it’s interesting to see their two investigative styles in counterpoint. It feels that the nursery rhyme alluded to in the title was grafted on a bit. Pacing was a bit better than “The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side” but the ending was again a mite abrupt.
Deborah Pickett commented on A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie
In Agatha Christie’s classic, A Pocket Full of Rye, the bizarre death of a financial …
Content warning Spoilers Agatha Christie’s A Pocket Full of Rye
Finally Miss Marple turns up in chapter 13!
Deborah Pickett commented on A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie
In Agatha Christie’s classic, A Pocket Full of Rye, the bizarre death of a financial …
Content warning Mild spoilers: A Pocket Full of Rye
Chapter 9 of 28 and still no sign of Miss Marple!
E-book exclusive extras:1) Christie biographer Charles Osborne's essay on The Mirror Crack'd from Side to …
Unexpectedly relevant in this pandemic era
3 stars
Content warning Whodunit spoilers - Agatha Christie - The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side
Till now I'd only read Christie in the form of Poirot stories in an enclosed setting: Murder on the Orient Express where the train is snowed in; Death on the Nile where everyone is stuck on a boat. This one is set in Miss Marple's town of St. Mary Mead, so people could, and do, come and go. I was actually surprised at how little screen time Miss Marple herself actually gets. The biggest part probably goes to Marple's nephew, Chief Inspector Craddock.
The big spoiler for this story is that the victim signs her own death warrant by admitting that she transmitted a German measles infection to a pregnant woman, resulting in the child having permanent physical and intellectual problems, and the mother having lifelong PTSD from that.
Fortunately Rubella is a thing of the past and people don't go around spreading disease because they're afraid of missing out on an opportunity to socialize.
The story snowballs alarmingly as further characters are killed off because they Knew Too Much, right up to the last chapter when there is another unexpected death, and we are left wondering if that one was suicide or also murder, or if the distinction even matters after everything that happened.
This book might have benefited from a bit of a trim at the start and a bit of fluffing up in the middle as the events happened which led to the additional consequential murders. But it was altogether a pretty painless read and the (rushed) conclusion satisfying.
Deborah Pickett started reading A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie
In Agatha Christie’s classic, A Pocket Full of Rye, the bizarre death of a financial …
Number two of four in the Marple omnibus.
Deborah Pickett finished reading The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side by Agatha Christie
E-book exclusive extras:1) Christie biographer Charles Osborne's essay on The Mirror Crack'd from Side to …
Pretty good, but pacing problems marred the last third. Onto the next one in the omnibus!
Deborah Pickett replied to Kat's status
@koosli Super interested to hear what you think of this.
E-book exclusive extras:1) Christie biographer Charles Osborne's essay on The Mirror Crack'd from Side to …
“Well, supposing you went into a shop, say, and you knew the proprietress had a son who was the spivvy young juvenile delinquent type. He was there listening while you told his mother about some money you had in the house, or some silver or a piece of jewellery. It was something you were excited and pleased about and you wanted to talk about it. And you also perhaps mention an evening that you were going out. You even say you never lock the house. You're interested in what you're saying, what you're telling her, because it's so very much in your mind. And then, say, on that particular evening you come home because you've forgotten something and there's this bad lot of a boy in the house, caught in the act, and he turns round and coshes you.” […] “[M]ost people have a sense of protection. They realize when it's unwise to say or do something because of the person or persons who are taking in what you say, and because of the kind of character that those people have. But as I say, Alison Wilde never thought of anybody else but herself— She was the sort of person who tells you what they've done and what they'ye seen and what they've felt and what they've heard, They never mention what any other people said or did. Life is a kind of one-way track—just their own progress through it. Other people seem to them just like—like wallpaper in a room." She paused and then said, "I think Heather Badcock was that kind of person.”
Miss Marple describes a mechanism of how there are people that bad stuff happens to. Bad stuff happened to Heather Badcock.
Deborah Pickett started reading The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side by Agatha Christie
E-book exclusive extras:1) Christie biographer Charles Osborne's essay on The Mirror Crack'd from Side to …
The first in a bound compendium of four Miss Marple novels.
Deborah Pickett reviewed Port out, starboard home by Michael Quinion
What is the true origin of the phrase 'one fell swoop'? Does the word 'honeymoon' …
Fascinating but for a very small target audience
3 stars
Every entry in this book about folk etymology follows the same format: “Here’s this word or phrase. People say it originates with this far-fetched etymology, but they’re wrong, it’s actually this mundane etymology.”
I certainly learned a lot of trivia tidbits from this book, but I couldn’t consume more than a few per day before they got monotonous.
Deborah Pickett finished reading Port out, starboard home by Michael Quinion
What is the true origin of the phrase 'one fell swoop'? Does the word 'honeymoon' …
This is the kind of book that needs to be dipped into for short reads. To consume the thing top-to-tail is a pretty big undertaking.
Deborah Pickett wants to read The silver tide. by Michael Tod
Recommended by Zatty after we were talking about Watership Down.
Deborah Pickett commented on Port out, starboard home by Michael Quinion
What is the true origin of the phrase 'one fell swoop'? Does the word 'honeymoon' …
It's weird that the title of this book is exactly one of the folk etymologies that the author is keen to dispel. I guess it's what sells.
Deborah Pickett started reading Port out, starboard home by Michael Quinion
What is the true origin of the phrase 'one fell swoop'? Does the word 'honeymoon' …
From the tsundoku pile.