#MurderEveryMonday Crime fiction title with a word associated with funerals
For today’s #MurderEveryMonday I’m sharing Nice Day for a Funeral by Hartley Howard and His Burial Too by Catherine Aird. I have read other books from both authors and like them, although I preferred Aird books, which I want to read more of.
Check Kate Jackson’s blog to know more about the hashtag and give her a follow.
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#MurderEveryMonday Christie, Stout, & Wentworth
For #MurderEveryMonday crime fiction originally published in 1955, I’m choosing Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie, translated to Portuguese as Poirot and the mistakes of the typist. The title is from a nursery rhyme, and the story sees Poirot investigate a series of strange stolen items in a student’s hostel. We also know in this book that Miss Lemon has a sister.
I’m also adding to the pile, Before Midnight by Next Stout, and The Gazebo by Patricia Wentworth. I’ve read many Nero Wolfe books a long time ago and like them in general. I never read anything by Wentworth, but I’ve told you before that I want to go through her Miss Silver series, so this is one on my TBR.
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#MurderEveryMonday Cover with a Zoo animal Elephants can Remember: Is it good?
I know, I know: my choice to this #MurderEveryMonday is probably again too obvious, but it also gives me the opportunity to talk about this book. Check Kate’s blog to know more about the hashtag.
Agatha Christie was 82 years old when she wrote Elephants Can Remember. This is the last novel she wrote with Poirot as the detective and it was published in November of 1972. Poirot’s Early Cases (1974) and Curtain (1975), both published afterwords, were written in the 1920s and 1930s, for the short stories, and for the last case of Poirot in the 1940s, the book being kept unpublished in a bank vault.
Even at the time of publication, the book received some less kind reviews, with some pointing out inconsistencies about times and ages, which quite frankly could (and should) have been avoided by the editors and publisher of the book. Still, many today consider this a lesser work, but I find several reasons to like it.
The book starts with Mrs. Ariadne Oliver going to a literary luncheon. Oliver is the alter-ego of Agatha Christie: she likes apples, she is always trying hair styles, writes crime fiction, and complains about her Finn detective, lamenting inventing him, since she doesn’t know anything about Finland. It’s always a delight to have her as a character in a book. In the first chapter, Mrs. Oliver tell us about her problems with making speeches, the questions people always ask her, the letters she receives from her readers, and how she tries to deal with all of this. And I found this a delight because it seems clear we’re given a glimpse of something Christie also struggled with and knew first hand.
At that lunch, a woman asks Mrs. Oliver if she is the godmother of Celia Ravenscroft and after corroboration, the woman continues: “Did her mother kill her father or was it the father who killed the mother?”.
And I still remember, when I first read this book (which is more than I can say for so many other books), I was as puzzled as Mrs. Oliver. I mean, why would it matter if it was the father or the mother? Why would it be so important to know? But this also tell us something about the beliefs and obsessions of the people in the past (in this case, in the 1970s). I think Agatha Christie was more observant than a talkative person, and because of that she noticed things more. And I love her books have these snippets she took from her observations: it can be something she heard someone saying, or it can be something being discussed in a newspaper, some new advance in science, something she remembers her family doing when she was a child, etc.
This is also a book about a murder in the past and deals with the people’s memory (the elephants), sometimes people remember certain things, but not others, or they remember things differently. And it’s Poirot job to make sense of all this.
I didn’t re-read this one for some time now, but I remember liking it. And now that I’ve talked about what I liked about it, I’ll be re-reading it again shortly. So, tell me, did you read Elephants Can Remember? Did you like it or not? And why?
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#MurderEveryMonday Cover with a series sleuth
For today’s #MurderEvryMonday I decided to start with Miss Marple, here with The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and A Crime is Announced (a favorite).
Then, we continue with Lord Peter Wimsey (also a favorite). The Portuguese edition being the short story collection Lord Peter Views the Body.
And finally a depiction of Father Brown.
It’s quite interesting to see how characters are depicted in book covers and how/if they differ from our own imagination.
If you want to know more about #MurderEveryMonday check Kate Jackson’s blog, see the next themes, and share your covers using the hashtag.
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#MurderEveryMonday Crime fiction title with an evaluative adjective
When Kate reminded us of this week’s #MurderEveryMonday theme, my first thought was for H. R. F. Keating because I had noticed a pattern in some of his books:
These are standalone’s and I never read anything by Keating, but I’m curious about his writing. He was president of the Detection Club between 1985 and 2000. I do have two related books in my immediate TBR: Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime, essays edited by him, and The Verdict of Us All – edited by Peter Lovesey, a collection of short stories by The Detection Club’s members in honour of Keating’s 80th birthday, which include before each work a memory or contact these writers had of H.R.F. Keating.
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It’s Weekend, Let’s Read: Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice was first published on 28th of January of 1813 and is one of my (and so many others) favorite novels of all time. If you never read it, do not go thinking it is a love story. Well, it’s kind of, but it’s so much more: It’s a comedy of manners and social criticism.
“I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least I do not know.“
Jane Austen in a letter to her sister Cassandra on the 29th of January of 1823
Elizabeth Bennet is one of my favourite characters: she is intelligent, witty, has no problems to recognise she was mistaken, but also she embodies women independence and resistance. We can see this when she decides to walk to Netherfield, instead of waiting for the carriage, to check on her sister or, when in Rosings, Elizabeth is playing the piano and says to Mr. Darcy:
“My fingers,” said Elizabeth, “do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I would not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman’s of superior execution.”
There are many editions of Pride & Prejudice, some with introductions or annotated that give more insights on the text, but if you want to read it right now, head over to Project Gutenberg that has the edition with the illustrations by Hugh Thomson. You can read it or download it here.
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#MurderEveryMonday Crime Fiction Novel made into a film
For today’s #MurderEveryMonday I’m choosing two of my favourite book adaptations into a film:
Check Kate’s blog to know more about the hashtag and share your covers.
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#MurderEveryMonday title hints to something not visible
Today’s #MurderEveryMonday is a “crime fiction title which hints that something has disappeared or is not visible”.
I went through my shelves and the majority of books I could find were about someone disappearing, instead of something, but I decided to go with it.
My first thought went to The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristol and Bruce Manning, published in 1930, with a close setting where people start dying. Later, Agatha Christie worked the same idea for And Then There Were None. Loved both books, and I thank Dean Street Press (check the link to see their crime fiction titles) to republished the Host so we could read it today. Do you know other books with a similar idea? Let me know in the comments, I would love to read them.
My second thought was The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin because while maybe “moving” doesn’t hint to a disappearance, the blurb at the back is very clear: this toyshop vanishes during the night. How and why would a toyshop vanish? Read the book, it’s a good one and the Oxford Professor Gervase Fen is on the case. It’s also the only book that hints at something instead of someone.
Then, I thought of “Poirot loses a Client” (the book in the middle, same title both in Portuguese and American English). Mainly because this Christie Portuguese publisher used already made translations from Brazil, back in the 1950/60s, probably cheaper than to get a translation from scratch, and I also have this idea that Brazil would use the American editions to translate, maybe because they were closer and was easier to negotiate with the American publishers than with the UK ones. But this one is the UK’s Dumb’s Witness. And it reminded me that John Curran published in his Secret Notebooks, for the first time, a similar short story that was later found in Agatha Christie papers, called The Incident of the Dog’s Ball (albeit the culprit is different).
You know I love Poirot, but it does seem he’s a little bit careless sometimes with this thing of loosing clients. And while the titles don’t hint at it, it also happens in the short stories A Cornish Mystery and How does Your Garden Grow?, both from the Poirot’s Early Cases (first book in the photo) and also in the novel Murder on the Links.
Someone engages Poirot to look into or do something and then, they’re gone. Where did his clients go or why? I’m not spilling it. Read the books :-)
Finally, I found The Phantom Lady by William Irish that starts with a man talking to a woman in a bar, without catching her name. When he returns home something happens and then he needs to find the woman of the bar to do something, but she vanished.
The Raymond Chandler one is translated as A Woman was Lost, and is in fact Farewell, My Lovely. With Chandler, I’m never sure if I know Philip Marlowe (the detective) from the movies, the old time radio shows, or the books. This is the melancholic, cynic, private eye, whiskey, guns, and the femme fatale. If you like the sub-genre hardboiled, Chandler is always a good option.
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