My New Love: Agatha Christie

Can we start again? Pretend like I don’t keep abandoning you? Like I’m always on top of new content and religiously blog to keep you updated with awesome things to read?

OK. Let’s do that then.

In return for your continued patience while I sort my sh*t out, I will treat you to a double review. In one post. I know. I spoil you.

I recently had the opportunity to spend about 10 collective hours in airports between Las Vegas and Vancouver which meant that I had a lot of time to kill. Having just finished the mammoth The Kennedy Women (post to follow. I’ll give you a hint – it was tremendous), I made sure to have adequate reading material with me for the trip home.

I brought: The Body in the Library and The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie and The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg.

You may notice a theme. This seems to be the year of Crime Fiction for me. I recently discovered that Agatha Christie is amazing. Before the 2 titles mentioned above, I recently read 4:50 From Paddington and was basically hooked. Miss Marple. She just.

There are no words. Agatha Christie. Add any or all to your reading list. I haven’t managed a Poirot just yet but I am loving me some Miss Marple. They are so brilliant, I haven’t been able to solve one before the end yet! And that is just delicious. And they are funny! They stand the test of time.

So The Body in the Library. Basically this respectable older couple is woken up with the news that the body of a young woman has been found in their library. And they have never seen her before in their lives, they have no idea who she is! So Miss Marple is brought in (because this is what you do when you have a body in your library) and she puts the whole thing together. But not before we encounter a delightful cast of shady characters including a cripple with a massive fortune and a highly strung bachelor with a missing car and a lack of alibi.

In The Moving Finger Jerry Burton and his sister Joanna are sent to live in the country to get very interested in their neighbours’ business after Jerry has a flying accident. They manage to rent a lovely big old house and are settling in nicely when they get an anonymous letter insinuating some not very nice things about Jerry and his sister. Lots of people in the village have reported getting these disturbing letters but it isn’t until one recipient commits suicide that things start to get really serious. Miss Marple doesn’t make an appearance in this one until nearly the very end and the story is told, unusually so far, from the first person perspective of a man, but I loved it. Jerry Burton was a most adequate narrator. Funny too.

As for The Ice Princess – I’m afraid you will have to wait for a complete post on that one. I’m only halfway through. But I will say this: in the tradition of the Swedish crime fiction that has seen such popularity of late, Camilla Lackberg is in a class of her own. She is spectacular.