On her way by train to visit her old friend Jane Marple for Christmas, Mrs Elspeth McGillicuddy is shocked to realise that she’s witnessing a murder in the train running parallel. A tall, dark man in a dark coat is strangling a blond woman in a fur coat and there is nothing Mrs McGillicuddy can do. As soon as the train stops, she notifies the ticket inspector and the station master of what she saw, and when she arrives at Miss Marple’s, the two talk […]
The Adventures of Anne, NOT the Perils of Pamela
Anne Beddingfeld’s father is a famous archaeologist and anthropologist. He dies, leaving Anne mostly penniless, but hungry for adventure. She kindly rejects the proposal of the village doctor and accepts her father’s solicitor’s invitation to stay with him and his wife for a time in London. Shortly after her arrival in the capital, she is witness to an accidental death. A man in a large overcoat reeking of mothballs falls onto the tracks of the train station, and a tall, bearded man claiming to be […]
An adventure spy novel more than a murder mystery – also Cannonball!
In this book, we meet the adventurous Victoria Jones, a young woman with a knack for lying frequently and convincingly, who shortly after being fired from her most recent position as a mediocre shorthand typist, meets a handsome and charming young man in the park. They strike up a conversation, he confides that he is about to go to Baghdad and asks to take a couple of photographs of her as a memento. Victoria is smitten, and as the young man she’s fallen head over […]
The Little Gray Cells Ride Again
I picked this up from the library on a whim, ‘how is it possible for a new Hercule Poirot to exist?!?‘ The estate approved a new title by a new author, bestselling Sophie Hannah. So money, an effort to revive interest in her existing works, perhaps. The first thing I noticed, after the shock wore off, is the sheer size of this book. Agatha Christie novels are never longer than 150, 175 pages maximum. This large book is 320 pages long. Hmmmm… We begin with […]