Agatha Christie Short Stories 2024 JULY #AgathaChristieSS24

Halfway through our #AgathaChristieSS24, we are going to have double fun: a treasure hunt and a party. Yeah baby, bring it on! 🥳

MANX GOLD

Two cousins eagerly return to the Isle of Man for the reading of their uncle's will. Having grown up hearing tales of buried treasure on the island they are excited when the will reveals their uncle had found it. But where?

This story is probably the most exciting we've read so far. Not only about the story itself, its background is no less interesting. So, in 1930 Christie accepted the grand sum of £60 to write this story. It came as a request from the people responsible for boosting tourism on the Isle of Man. The clues were written in a ‘treasure hunt’ format and were published by Manchester’s Daily Dispatch, and distributed in pamphlet form to hotels throughout the island. Imagine what an exiting moment it was for the visitors! But no worry, we would be able to have a little taste of the excitement by reading and review this story!

THE GENTLEMAN DRESSED IN NEWSPAPER

From a treasure hunt to a party. And we're going to it with Tommy and Tuppence, who discovered a secret invitation to a ball in the newspaper.

Tuppence was in boredom. She wants to go dancing and is reading the paper in search of a party. That is until she discovers a secret message in one of the articles. Just what does it mean to “finesse the king”? This story, which was published by Collins in the collection Partners in Crime, 1929, does sound like a jolly one to read, does it?

Six Books Saturday #10: Memorable Horses in Books

#SixBooksSaturday is my personal monthly bookish meme, inspired by Six Words Saturday, which I've stumbled upon @ Travel with Intent. It's basically to list six books of random category, which I'd decided on the spot. Anything is possible according to my whim. I post Six Books Saturday on last Saturday of each month. If you're interested, you are, of course, welcomed to join me. There's no rule, really. You can post six anything about books.

I just realized that I have been reading more than a few books about horse lately. I always love horses - in books or movies I mean. I tend to love every book with horse that I've read so far, so why don't I feature the creature in this month's Six Books Saturday? Here they are...

SIX MOST MEMORABLE HORSES IN BOOKS

Beauty in Black Beauty (Anna Sewell)

My love for the equine was probably started when I read Black Beauty. Anna Sewell did a fantastic job in bringing the horse to life. A beautiful book about a beautiful creature!

Joey in War Horse (Michael Morpurgo)

Joey the War Horse is probably the most sensitive horse I've read so far. His personality made the book shone, more than his handsome appearance, with chestnut color, four equally white socks and a white Cross on his forehead.

Gabilan in Red Pony (John Steinbeck)

I think Gabilan's memorable feature for me is his color - red (he must look quite striking!) and his name. Poor Gabilan the red pony!

Paras in Perestroika in Paris (Jane Smiley)

(I have just finished reading the book for Paris in July, but the review would be up next week.)

Paras, short of Perestroika (what a name for a horse!), is a horse with the most interesting character I've ever read. She's so cheerful and inquisitive that her life as a racehorse didn't dampen her spirit at all. She's also kindhearted and amiable that her presence is always uplifting for others. I love her!

Battaile in Germinal (Emile Zola)

Okay, Germinal isn't about horse at all. Battaile is a minor character too, and there's little of him that we know of, apart from his being brought down to the coalmine from his early life. But his plight is so touching that makes him very memorable. The miners are able to go up again after work, but Battaile never see the sun again for the rest of his life, and that broke my heart more than the miners' sorrows!

Misty in Stormy, Misty's Foal (Marguerite Henry)

What I love most about Misty is... her name! Misty is such a gentle soul, that the name Misty matches her perfectly. |

Honorable mention:

Potato Chip in Aunts aren't Gentlemen (P.G. Wodehouse)

I have to mention this one, even though his (or her? I think it's a he) role isn't that important. But how can you forget a racehorse called Potato Chip in a Wodehouseian universe who won't prance unless his BFF of a cat is present. Cute, isn't it? 

Have you read any of them? Which one is your favorite?

Next Six Books Saturday: 27th July 2024.

The Blue Geranium by Agatha Christie #AgathaChristieSS24

💙 We meet once again with Miss Marple in this short story we are reading for June. And as usual, she only appears as a secondary character; like a shadow in the room that no one noticed at first, but then it shines for just a few seconds, to be faded into the background again.

💙 Miss Marple was invited to a dinner party at the Bantrys only to even the number of the guests. It was first suggested by one of the guests, and even Mrs. Bantry was skeptical at first. But she was invited, attended the dinner, and solved the mystery that Colonel Bantry told the guests after dinner about his friend.

💙 George Pritchard's late wife was an invalid with difficult character - you know the type - who always fuss about her health and prone to have tantrums. Many nurses had come and gone, and the last one was Nurse Copling. Mrs. Pritchard was also fascinated by fortunetellers. One calls Zarida warned her to avoid blue flowers: "Beware of the full moon. The blue Primrose means warning, the blue Hollyhock means danger, the blue Geranium means death."

💙 Days later, during full moon, some primroses in the wallpaper pattern in Mrs. Pritchard's room turned blue over night. It made her afraid, though her husband thought it's just a childish joke. On the next full moon she went to sleep in her locked room in apprehension. The next day she found, as before, the Hollyhocks in the same wallpaper turned blue.

💙 You know the rest. The next full moon, Mrs. Pritchard - who had been resigned to her faith by that time - was found dead inside a locked room, with a faint smell of gas and some Geraniums in the wallpaper turned blue. It was Miss Marple who eventually offered the solution. All in all, it's a fun mystery to read; light and simple - I guessed it quite right though not the details.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

#MurderEveryMonday: Cover with Name of Job in the Title

Murder Every Monday was created by Kate @ Crossexamining Crime and @ArmchairSleuth. Put simply, the plan is for readers to take a photo of a crime fiction book (novel or short story collection) which meets a given week’s theme criteria and to then share it online, using the hashtag #MurderEveryMonday.

This week's theme is probably one of the easiest ones I've been doing so far, these are seven I could think of:

Cover with the name of a job in the title

Have your read any of them? Which cover(s) do you like most?

If you want to participate, here's the list of the weekly theme:

The Wheel Spins (1936) by Ethel Lina White #20booksofsummer24

🚄 Iris Carr is a spoiled English girl who is on holiday with her friends in Croatia. They are the type of noisy and selfish tourists that annoyed others. When her friends left the country, Irish stayed behind. Now she'd had enough with this foreign country, and can't wait to go back alone to England by train. At the station, however, she's knocked down by something or other, and is unconscious. Fortunately she's revived just in time to catch the train anyway. We never know what had struck Iris down at the station, was it really sunstroke as she thought, or other more sinister cause? She didn't know, and we don't know either.

🚄 Iris found herself sharing a compartment with a snobbish foreign lady - a baroness - and her compatriots. Fortunately there was another English lady, a plain looking spinster called Miss Froy, who had worked as governess in the baroness' house. She's the type that is chattering all the time. Irish found her irritating, but Miss Froy was very kind to her. As Iris' headache got worse, she took a pill and was asleep. When she woke up, Miss Froy was nowhere to be found - she's just vanished.

🚄 Iris experienced a nightmare since then, since neither passengers nor crews acknowledged that a spinster governess had ever boarded the train. Was Miss Froy only Iris' imagination or hallucination, due to her sunstroke? For if she does exist, where would she's been hiding on board a running train that long? Suicide was impossible because Miss Froy was the most cheerful person you might imagine, plus she's been longing to come home to her lovely parents and dog whom she missed so much. But if not voluntarily, it means something sinister - a lot sinister - was happening here.

🚄 Even the two English men Iris got acquainted with and were gentlemanly enough to try helping her, were at last skeptical too. Now it's up to Iris alone to solve the mystery and letting free Miss Froy from whoever's been capturing her and, no doubt, wanted to get rid of her. The question is, can Iris do that, what with her headache, self doubt, and psychological strain?

🚄 This is a psychological thriller, rather than mystery. And thus, if you are focusing in the denouement, you might be a bit disappointed. For until the end, I'm still in the dark to what or who really struck Iris at the station. Is it sunstroke as Iris thought? And what crime did Miss Froy had inadvertently witnessed to cause her enemy to get rid of her? No, in term of solving a mystery, the ending isn't satisfying at all. But as a psychological thriller, it was superb! I also loved the little back story of the Froys, a simple, loving, and happy family of an old father and mother, and a faithful dog. They reminded me a little of my parents. That's how I imagined their excitement were whenever I went abroad (very rarely, but still).

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Read for:

20 Books of Summer 2024

hosted by Cathy @ 746 Books

Death Comes As the End (1944) by Agatha Christie #20booksofsummer24

🐍 This was the only historical mystery story Agatha Christie had ever written. I remember from her autobiography, that she took her friend's challenge to write a mystery in Ancient Egypt (2000 BC), while the friend provided facts and knowledge of the daily household and cultural background. I have been wondering whether I could relate to it as much as her contemporary ones. But I am not disappointed, because this one could have just been any other Christie's mystery, except that the characters and setting are not of our time and background.

🐍 Also, its premise and characters reminded me a lot of Hercule Poirot's Christmas. It follows a family of a Ka Priest (someone who had authority to perform funerial rites to the deaths) in Thebes. Imhotep is a bit tyrannical widowed father to four siblings. The eldest son, Yahmose, is Alfred in Hercule Poirot's Christmas, an always obedient son; while Sobek, the second son, is the rebellious Harry. Renisenb is the only daughter, the most intelligent and stable of the children, while Ipy is the youngest and most passionate son. Then Yahmose's and Sobek's wives and children, together with Imhotep's old mother, and a family retainer called Henet, completed the household.

🐍 The family's rupture began with the arrival of Imhotep's young, proud, and very beautiful concubine, Nofret. Nofret is really the trigger, the seeds of dissatisfaction, and for one of them, silent evil, were already germinating there among themselves, unnoticed. Nofret's malice presence has just unleashed them. She was the first victim, of course, we know from the beginning it would come. Except for Imhotep, they all hated her. But then Yahmose's wife was murdered, and then somebody else. Someone within the family is a murderer, but which one?

🐍 If you are familiar with Christie's books, you'll recognize this trope of bottled up pressure snapped into murder which she used pretty often. And that's what I always love about her, the psychological effect of a murder. By choosing a large household as the setting, Christie played beautifully with the characters' psychology, which was the central point of this mystery, rather than the plot.

🐍 For me, this psychological element is the main attraction of this book. I couldn't relate very well with the setting, as it feels like it's just an unimportant accessories. The crime could have happened in the 20th century England all the same.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐1/2

Read for:

20 Books of Summer 2024

hosted by Cathy @ 746 Books

The Bookshop (1978) by Penelope Fitzgerald #20booksofsummer24

📚 Florence Green is a middle-aged widow lived in a small English seaside town of Hardborough, in the 1959. Alone in the world, Florence was forced to do something she knew she's capable of, in order to have a comfortable life. She was aspired to open a bookshop, something that the secluded town didn't have. She had formerly worked in a bookshop, so she knew enough how the business work, so, why not?

📚 Her first step was buying the premise, an abandoned damp place called the Old House. She had a difficult task of convincing the patronizing bank manager for a loan, but in the end she persisted and won. But that wasn't her only problem. The most influential lady of the town, a Mrs. Gamart, tried to persuade her to change her mind, as she had her own plan to use the Old House as an art centre. We all know why Mrs. Gamart did that - etty jealousy! If she, indeed, wanted to have an art centre, she could have proposed to use any other building, right? Why must an old damp haunted house be her only choice? And why now? It's simply that she's afraid that Florence would have become a more important figure in town than herself.

📚 At last Florence got to open her dream bookshop. Amidst all the obstacles - namely the 'rapper' (poltergeist) and some slow furnishing process, Florence was on business. She hired a local girl as helper. Her first - and in the end proved to be the only one - is a recluse who admired her brave action, and even suggested of starting a library. Her enemy, though, hasn't ended her subtle yet relentless campaign to defame the bookshop.

📚 In the end, the presence of a new bookshop and library, which the town needed very much, was nothing compared to the cheap small town politics, just because an arrogant woman couldn't endure being outshone by another woman. Florence should have been wiser in treating the lioness - customer is, nevertheless, always the king - she should have remedied what her staff has done to Mrs. Gamart. Though, I believe, the lioness would have won her cause anyway, whatever Florence done.

📚 My only regret is that Florence's only benevolent supporter's heroic action had gone unnoticed, especially by Florence. It would have meant a lot to her. All in all, this novella is a sad and thought provoking satire of the power of small town politics.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Read for:

20 Books of Summer 2024

hosted by Cathy @ 746 Books