“You couldn’t turn on the TV without hearing about the missing teenage girl. Sixteen years old. White. Middle class. Very pretty. No one ever seemed quite as outraged when an ugly woman went missing.” I will admit I was not immediately into this book. It opens from the point of view of a father writing to his dead daughter which was a bit overly emotional to me. Then cut to one insufferable woman who hates on the other mother’s at her daughter’s basketball game all […]
Christie takes a very old trope and makes it work.
I love listening to Agatha Christie books when it’s cold outside. It’s so cozy and comforting and British. This one didn’t disappoint, although it’s not my favorite of hers so far. The dead body found in the library conceit was old even back in 1941 when The Body in the Library was first published. Good old Agatha got ahold of it and decided to make it her own. There is indeed a body found in a library at the start of this book, but in quite […]
Is this the best Agatha Christie book? I’m still partial to ‘And Then There Were None.’
Up until the ending, I really did not understand why this book is widely considered to be the best (or at least the top five) of Christie’s books. Then it happened, and I was like WHAT!? Actually it was more like a double what, because not only was it a really daring ending, especially for being published in 1926, but I actually guessed the murderer! That has never happened to me before. I am THE WORST at guessing mystery endings. I am gullible and trusting […]
Midsomer Marple tries her hand at ghostbusting
The other day, I looked at my “Already on the Kindle” shelf over on Goodreads and I thought to myself “you know, I have a LOT of crime books here. Like a LOT”. So I decided, there and then, to make 2015 my Year of Crime. While I’m not going to devote myself solely to reading crime novels, they will make up the majority of my Cannonball 7 input. The plan originally was to end Cannonball 6 with Station Eleven, but it was so good I burned […]
Actually not that much of a mystery….
Now, as my blog title tells you, I really do read a lot. But it’s an odd gap in my book life that I haven’t read very many Agatha Christie novels. Those I have read, I read when I was in my teens and don’t really remember them anyway. So I decided to address this and read all the Poirot and Marple books, as well as her most famous stand alone novels like And Then There Were None. So what better place to start than at the […]
Flavia de Luce is all growed up. Kinda.
Flavia de Luce, we meet again. I’ve been nuts about the magnificently precocious 12 year old amateur sleuth ever since the opening pages of the first book, when she looked at the cook employed by her father at their huge country house and thought “will no-one rid us of this turbulent pastry chef?” She is an absolute delight of a character, though the series has shown signs of stalling, as Flavia continues to be the same age and remain in the same location, edging ever […]