The Pale Horse (1961) was my choice for the #ReadChristie challenge for this month, and though it was one of the picks for the challenge, it seems I interpreted the visual prompt completely differently to the official interpretation. The Pale Horse presents an interesting mystery where it isn’t only the whodunit that keeps one puzzled…
Book Review: The Body in the Library (1942) by Agatha Christie
The third of the Miss Marple books, The Body in the Library (1942) is a book I reread last week as part of a challenge with one of my Goodreads groups which is reading books set in different ‘Scenes of Classic Crime’ across the year. As morning dawns in Gossington Hall, residence of Col and…
Book Review: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Many nursery rhymes, much like fairy tales, even though they are now largely read by children, have rather dark and sinister meanings and undertones, whether it is ‘Three Blind Mice’ or ‘Ring a Ring o Roses’ or ‘Mary Mary Quite Contrary’ dealing with themes like the plague or religious persecution. Agatha Christie is quite the…
Book Review: The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont
My thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for a review copy of this book. Nina de Gramont weaves a rather interesting and very readable tale in The Christie Affair but while I enjoyed reading it a lot, I had some reservations which have prevented me from rating it as high as I might have otherwise.…
Book Review: The Sittaford Mystery (1931) by Agatha Christie
The Sittaford Mystery (or The Murder at Hazelmoor), a standalone by the Queen of Crime, first published in 1931, is a quite perfect read for the season with a murder in a snowed-in English village difficult to navigate, a fair few suspects, and a touch of spookiness! Our story opens in the small village of…
Book Review: Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie
Destination Unknown, first published in 1954, is a standalone by Christie that falls firmly into her thriller category, in fact even more so than some of her other thrillers I have read/reread recently as we have no murder mystery at the start (as for instance, in The Man in the Brown Suit, They Came to…
Book Review: Endless Night by Agatha Christie
A haunting, creepy mystery from the pen of the Queen of Crime. Endless Night (1967) is a standalone by Christie, and a book very different from her others, more in the realm of her stories that have a dreamy, creepy quality and yet do have their feet in the human realm. This story is told…
Book Review: Crooked House by Agatha Christie
There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile…. And they all lived together in a little crooked house. Like Five Little Pigs; One, Two Buckle my Shoe (also published as The Patriotic Murders); and A Pocket Full of Rye, among many others Crooked House (1949), a standalone Christie novel too, takes inspiration…
Book Review: Midsummer Mysteries: Secrets and Suspense from the Queen of Crime by Agatha Christie
My thanks to Harper Collins UK and NetGalley for a review copy of this book. Agatha Christie being one of my favourite authors, when I got this one from NetGalley, I couldn’t help but bump it up on my TBR pile! Midsummer Mysteries: Secrets and Suspense from the Queen of Crime is a collection of…
Book Review: They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie
They Came to Baghdad, first published in 1951, is one of Agatha Christie’s espionage/thriller novels which very much centres around the issues of the day—the post war environment, and ideas prevalent at the time. I read the book for a Goodreads group with which I’m reading through 12 lesser known Christies this year. This is…
Literary Potpourri 