Genre: Crime

Review – Poirot Investigates

Posted September 30, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Review – Poirot Investigates

Poirot Investigates

by Agatha Christie

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Short Stories
Pages: 265
Series: Hercule Poirot #3
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

The very first collection of superb short stories featuring Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastingsā€¦

First there was the mystery of the film star and the diamondā€¦ then came the ā€˜suicideā€™ that was murderā€¦ the mystery of the absurdly cheap flatā€¦ a suspicious death in a locked gun-roomā€¦ a million dollar bond robberyā€¦ the curse of a pharaohā€™s tombā€¦ a jewel robbery by the seaā€¦ the abduction of a Prime Ministerā€¦ the disappearance of a bankerā€¦ a phone call from a dying manā€¦ and, finally, the mystery of the missing will.

What links these fascinating cases? Only the brilliant deductive powers of Hercule Poirot!

The unfortunate thing about this collection of short stories (from my perspective at least) is that unfortunately, Poirot’s fairly dense sidekick Hastings is a major player in each. Poirot himself is not so bad in the short stories of Agatha Christie’sĀ Poirot Investigates, and even Hastings doesn’t have much room to make an ass of himself, but I still don’t like the character.

There are some interesting mysteries here, but I can’t say any of them really jumped out at me and stuck in my memory. The one where Poirot recounts a case where he fails and Hastings gently tries to pierce his ego afterwards made me laugh, though.

Another thing to be wary of with Agatha Christie is the casual racism that gets sprinkled around. I noticed it quite a bit in these short stories.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Murder on the Links

Posted September 12, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – The Murder on the Links

The Murder on the Links

by Agatha Christie

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 273
Series: Poirot #2
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

On a French golf course, a millionaire is found stabbed in the backā€¦

An urgent cry for help brings Poirot to France. But he arrives too late to save his client, whose brutally stabbed body now lies face downwards in a shallow grave on a golf course.

But why is the dead man wearing his sonā€™s overcoat? And who was the impassioned love-letter in the pocket for? Before Poirot can answer these questions, the case is turned upside down by the discovery of a second, identically murdered corpseā€¦

The Murder on the Links is the second Poirot book, and mercifully gets rid of Hastings by marrying him off. He’s just unbearable — one can believe there’s someone so self-absorbed and unable to learn from mistakes, but one would rather not have to. Not that I love Poirot as a character, either, but Hastings’ deficiencies are much more aggravating.

The plot here is a bit over-convoluted, to my mind, and of course relies on characters appearing and disappearing like jack-in-the-boxes. “Cinderella” and Hastings’ relationship is based on less than nothing, and Poirot’s posturing toward Giraud does him no credit in my eyes.

There’s a satisfaction in seeing the plot work out, but it wasn’t enough for me. I wonder if I’ll get along better with Poirot without Hastings — I know I likedĀ The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, back when I read that.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Posted September 5, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Mysterious Affair At Styles

by Agatha Christie

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 298
Series: Poirot #1
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

With impeccable timing Hercule Poirot, the renowned Belgian detective, makes his dramatic entrance on to the English crime stage.

Recently, there had been some strange goings on at Styles St Mary. Evelyn, constant companion to old Mrs Inglethorp, had stormed out of the house muttering something about ā€˜a lot of sharksā€™. And with her, something indefinable had gone from the atmosphere. Her presence had spelt security; now the air seemed rife with suspicion and impending evil.

A shattered coffee cup, a splash of candle grease, a bed of begonias... all Poirot required to display his now legendary powers of detection.

For someone who loves Golden Age mysteries, I’ve read shockingly little of Agatha Christie’s work. So when I had the random thought to try using the app Serial Reader again, the first serial I picked was Christie’sĀ The Mysterious Affair at Styles. In the past I haven’t been the greatest fan of Poirot per se (while thinking that The Murder of Roger AckroydĀ was pretty genius), and I can’t say my mind was changed like a lightning bolt by this one.

Which is not to say it’s not a fun mystery, but I disliked Hastings quite a bit. It’s the whole trope of a helper to the detective, who is a lot less clever, draws wrong conclusions, and both leads the reader astray and bigs up the detective in comparison. It’s a trend that started with Holmes and Watson (though Watson’s cleverer than many of the type, including Hastings), and just… not one I particularly enjoy. Perhaps that’s why, by and large, I prefer Sayers and Lorac.

Still, the solution is fun, and I enjoyed the read — it’s just inclined to make me think that Christie’s enduring popularity is in part due to her sheer prolific output, and thus the memorability of her name. Lorac is, for my money, a better writer, and much less well-known.

This does come across as rather negative, evaluating the book by what it’s not, but I find I have very little to say about the book in and of itself. It’s a fun mystery, I didn’t immediately see the solution, and if you’re interested in the Golden Age of crime, it’s definitely of interest.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Trent’s Last Case

Posted August 9, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Trent’s Last Case

Trent's Last Case

by E.C. Bentley

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 224
Series: Philip Trent #1
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Written in reaction to what Bentley perceived as the sterility and artificiality of the detective fiction of his day, Trent's Last Case features Philip Trent, an all-too-human detective who not only falls in love with the chief suspect but reaches a brilliant conclusion that is totally wrong.

Trentā€™s Last Case begins when millionaire American financier Sigsbee Manderson is murdered while on holiday in England. A London newspaper sends Trent to investigate, and he is soon matching wits with Scotland Yard's Inspector Murth as they probe ever deeper in search of a solution to a mystery filled with odd, mysterious twists and turns.

Called by Agatha Christie "one of the best detective stories ever written," Trent's Last Case delights with its flesh-and-blood characters, its naturalness and easy humor, and its style, which, as Dorothy Sayers has noted, "ranges from a vividly coloured rhetoric to a delicate and ironical literary fancy."

I was very curious to read E.C. Bentley’s Trent’s Last Case, knowing that Dorothy L. Sayers greatly admired it. It’s definitely more in Sayers’ line than, say, Christie’s or Marsh’s, with a detective character who shares some DNA with Sayers’ Wimsey. He’s not quite as clearly characterised as Peter begins to be, and his piffle isn’t quite as outrageous, but he’s a definite precursor.

That said, the pacing feels really slow, and I found Trent a mite less charming. It’s always uncomfortable when a private detective character withholds information from the police, and that thread of the story (Trent’s interactions with Murch) swiftly disappeared in a way that felt outright odd, even if Trent decided not to share his info. The police are just letting you run around all over the place, are they? And you’re the only one who thought about fingerprints? And you’re going to keep quiet when you’re fairly certain about a murderer? Hmmm.

The other way in which this is like Sayers’ work is that the detective has a love story, and as in Strong Poison, it’s pretty intimately tied up with the mystery plot. It’s resolved within the book, though, rather than being something that develops well over time.

Overall, I did enjoy reading this; there are some bits of scene-setting and characterisation that feel really vivid, and the mystery is fun once we get somewhere with it. I’d read more of Bentley’s work.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Tour de Force

Posted July 29, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Tour de Force

Tour de Force

by Christianna Brand

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 272
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Inspector Cockrillā€™s dull vacation is jolted by a Mediterranean murder. From the moment he steps on the plane, Inspector Cockrill loathes his fellow travelers. They are typical tour group bores: the dullards of England whom he had hoped to escape by going to Italy. He gives up on the trip immediately, burying his nose in a mystery novel to ensure that no one tries to become his friend. But not long after the group makes landfall at the craggy isle of San Juan el Pirata, a murder demands his attention. The body of a woman is found laid out carefully on her bed, blood pooled around her and fingers wrapped around the dagger that took her life. The corrupt local police force, impatient to find a killer, names Cockrill chief suspect. To escape the Italian hangman, the detective must find out who would go on vacation to kill a stranger.

Christianna Brand’sĀ Tour de Force was her final novel featuring Inspector Cockrill, and it features Cockie on an actual holiday! Naturally, it’s going to turn into a busman’s holiday, and you know that from the start: you’re just left to guess at exactly how the tensions are going to rupture and who exactly will die. It’s a fairly typical collection of characters: someone’s in love with someone’s husband, someone’s a fortune hunter, someone’s an old spinster, someone’s a detective…

I think my problem with Christianna Brand is that there’s something so deeply cynical about her writing. I always compare her with E.C.R. Lorac, where I think sometimes Lorac tends the other way too much (but that’s much more pleasant to read). It feels like everyone in Brand’s work has ulterior motives, and she doesn’t seem to have liked other women very much. Leo Rodd’s a cheat and deeply bitter due to his disability, but it’s Vanda Lane, Helen Rodd, Miss Trapp and Louvaine Barker that have their weaknesses and foibles truly exposed. Not that Brand had a great deal of sympathy for the men either, but the nature of their flaws feel different, and the spotlight less cruel.

In the end, as well, Cockrill’s simply not that great a detective here, and his blindness is just frustrating — and because of a pretty face? Meh.

I always want to like Brand’s work a lot more than I do, but here we are.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Summers End

Posted July 21, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Summers End

Summers End

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Mystery
Pages: 265
Series: Shady Hollow #5
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A unique take on dark academia, featuring everyoneā€™s favorite vulpine sleuth, Vera Vixen.

Itā€™s late August in Shady Hollow, and the heat has intrepid reporter Vera Vixen eager to get away. She agrees to chaperone the annual field trip to Summers End, an ancient tomb built by an early woodland culture, along with her good friend Lenore Lee to come with her.

But when the two enter the tomb, they find bones that are distinctly moreā€¦modern. Digging a little deeper, Vera and Lenore discover that the deceased was involved in a recent excavation at the site, and very unpopular with their colleagues. Now the fox and raven have to delve into the dark world of academia and archaeology to determine which creature thought they were clever enough to get away with the perfect murder.

Summers End is the latest in Juneau Black’s Shady Hollow series, and it takes the story out of the immediate environs of Shady Hollow, to a nearby archaeological site which has obvious analogues with sites like Stonehenge and Newgrange: it’s both a tomb and a calendar, surrounded by ritual and stories. Vera and Lenore are there to chaperone some kids to see the site and learn about it, and have a little bit of a holiday.

And of course there’s a murder, and of course Vera Vixen has to be in on it — not least because, predictably, someone important to her is involved (if only by proxy). We learn a little more about Lenore, and about her sister, who ends up accused of the murder. It’s a neat way of taking us out of Shady Hollow and ensuring that it doesn’t feel too much like the supposedly friendly little town is rife with crime (same with the previous book, which turned out to be a very different sort of crime).

I enjoyed the setting, though the dramatic denouement started pushing into being a little too much. I was surprised that we didn’t see more of Orville, but on reflection it’s actually quite nice to still see Vera operating separately — she’s an independent fox, and while she enjoys partnering up with Orville (inasfar as that’s appropriate given she’s aĀ reporter, not part of the police), it’s nice to see her going solo. Or, as in this case, with her own sidekick.

If the other books in the series leave you cold, I doubt this’ll change things, but I found it a fun installment.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Curiosity Killed The Cat

Posted July 10, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Curiosity Killed The Cat

Curiosity Killed The Cat

by Joan Cockin

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 276
Series: Inspector Cam #1
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Little Biggling: a village that had been taken over by The Ministry of Scientific Research during the Second World War ... and after the War the Ministry had stayed on, much to the annoyance of several of the residents. However, being annoyed was one thing, being murdered quite another. It seemed that one of the members of the Civil Service who billeted in the village had been a little too curious about everybody and everything in Little Biggling, and there was a terrible price to pay. Inspector Cam found that he wasn't getting much help in finding the person who had most to hide...

Joan Cockin’sĀ Curiosity Killed the Cat was pretty good: set in the aftermath of WWII, but still echoing with it, as many of the characters are part of a scientific unit doing research related to the war/recovery from the war, and living with a lot of secrets and inconvenience. That made for an interesting setting.

The characters were enjoyable enough too: Inspector Cam isn’t too fond of working hard, and would rather stay an Inspector and avoid working on such big cases as murder — but he does his duty and works hard at figuring out the mystery, which makes him perhaps a little more real than detectives who just enter the stage as police officers without much real life around them. I wouldn’t say that the characters are all really fleshed out, but there’s enough there to be enjoyable, and to care about Charity and Robarts and Ratcliffe.

It’s hard sometimes to say what counts as a three-star or a four-star book, and to compare between books to figure out what to rate them. In the end, though, I kept wanting to read more, “just a little bit more”, and figure out the mystery, and I do want to read Cockin’s other books — so four stars it is.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Foreign Bodies

Posted July 1, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Foreign Bodies

Foreign Bodies

by Martin Edwards (editor)

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 288
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Today, translated crime fiction is in vogue - but this was not always the case. A century before Scandi noir, writers across Europe and beyond were publishing detective stories of high quality. Often these did not appear in English and they have been known only by a small number of experts. This is the first ever collection of classic crime in translation from the golden age of the genre in the 20th century. Many of these stories are exceptionally rare, and several have been translated for the first time to appear in this volume. Martin Edwards has selected gems of classic crime from Denmark to Japan and many points in between. Fascinating stories give an insight into the cosmopolitan cultures (and crime-writing traditions) of diverse places including Mexico, France, Russia, Germany and the Netherlands.

Foreign Bodies, edited as usual by Martin Edwards, is an interesting addition to the British Library Crime Classics series. The series normally focuses on British work or at least work published in English, but this series of short stories is from the same era but in translation, by a range of writers that are much less familiar.

It was an interesting choice, and it was fascinating to see some familiar tropes and themes from a slightly different angle. I was horrified at the punctuation of two of the stories, and I don’t understand why it wasn’t edited — when you’re writing dialogue, the punctuation goesĀ inside the quotation marks. It was really jarring to read. I don’t mean to be prescriptivist, but it jumps out because it’s so far out of the ordinary.

A fascinating collection, though to those who are purists about what should be included in the British Library Crime Classics series, undoubtedly an annoying aberration.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Death Came Softly

Posted June 24, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Death Came Softly

Death Came Softly

by E.C.R. Lorac

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 251
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

This crime puzzle features Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, who is a ā€œLondon Scotā€ and an avowed bachelor with a love for walking in the English countryside. But what will he make of the body found dead in a cave?

Death Comes Softly has a lot to recommend it; if it weren’t an E.C.R. Lorac book, it’d unquestionably be four stars, whereas as it is I’m weighing in the balance with her other books and wondering if four stars is quite fair. Sometimes when I’m reading classic crime, I’m just looking for a mystery with all the traditional bells and whistles, and that’ll be satisfying in and of itself. It feels like with E.C.R. Lorac’s work, I look for a little more.

Still, with her usual skill she summons up a landscape that feels beautiful, peaceful and real — and a group of characters who also feel like humans. Macdonald is, as ever, a fundamentally decent person, and Lorac’s usual ability to make her characters feel memorable and worth knowing is present too.

I tumbled to the why of the mystery quicker than the how, and feel like maybe it could’ve used a little more hinting. Mind you, maybe when it was written this kind of thing would’ve been more obvious. I’ve never handled a charcoal brazier at all, after all.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Lost Gallows

Posted June 17, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Lost Gallows

The Lost Gallows

by John Dickson Carr

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 288
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

John Dickson Carr lays on the macabre atmosphere again in this follow up to It Walks by Night in which Inspector Bencolin attempts to piece together a puzzle involving a disappearing street, a set of gallows which mysteriously reveals itself to a number of figures traipsing through the London fog, and the bizarre suggestion that a kind of fictional bogeyman, Jack Ketch, may be afoot and in the business of wanton execution. An early gem from one of the great writers of the genre. Also includes the rare Bencolin short story "The Ends of Justice."

The Lost Gallows is, I think, one of John Dickson Carr’s earlier novels, so I went in with fairly low expectations — the melodrama and bombast of his other Bencolin books isn’t entirely for me, but he’s still a plotter of ingenious mysteries. I don’t know if it was because I went in fully prepared for that, or maybe I’ve learned more sympathy through enjoying his later books, but this one wasn’t so bad.

It is of course very colourful and highly dramatic, with some surprisingly prosaic explanations; it’s full of atmosphere, using the London fog as a device in a similar way (though a very different tone) to Christianna Brand’sĀ London Particular. It’s funny thinking about how ubiquitous that fog was, and yet I can barely imagine fog being so thick, so awful.

If you like a bit of adventure in your mystery novels, this one has that as well — the narrator puts himself in the thick of things, and there are a couple of very breathless scenes.

It all ends up feeling almost too prosaic for the fantastic atmosphere, but it works out interestingly enough.

Rating: 3/5

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