I didn’t read much crime fiction in January, just two books, if you don’t count The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. They are The Burry Man’s Day by Catriona McPherson and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie.

And I’ve chosen One, Two, Buckle My Shoe as my crime fiction pick of the month. This was first published in 1940 (in the USA it was published as The Patriotic Murders).  Hercule Poirot and Inspector Japp investigate the apparent suicide of Mr Morley, Poirot’s Harley Street dentist, who was found dead in his surgery, shot through the head and with a pistol in his hand. Each chapter is entitled after a line of the nursery rhyme and the first line contains an important clue.Earlier in the morning Poirot had visited his dentist and as he was leaving the surgery another patient was arriving by taxi. He watched as a foot  appeared.

Poirot observed the foot with gallant interest.

A neat ankle, quite a good quality stocking. Not a bad foot. But he didn’t like the shoe. A brand new patent leather shoe with a large gleaming buckle. He shook his head.

Not chic – very provincial! (page 26)

The importance of the shoe and its buckle don’t become clear until much later in the book!

Mr Morley had seemed in good spirits when Poirot saw him and had shown no signs of wanting to take his own life. Was it coincidence that his assistant, Gladys, had been called away from his surgery on that day, leaving him on his own in his surgery? As Poirot and Japp interview the other patients it becomes obvious to Poirot that it was murder not suicide. Then one of the patients, a rich Greek, Mr Amberiotis is found dead, and another patient, Miss Sainsbury Seale, the owner of the buckled shoe, goes missing. Poirot begins to wonder if Morley had been killed by mistake whilst another of the patients Alistair Blunt, a banker was the intended victim.

This really is a most complicated plot, and even though the facts are clearly presented and I was on the lookout for clues, Agatha Christie, once again fooled me. Not all the characters are who they purport to be and the involvement of international politics and intrigue doesn’t help in unravelling the puzzle. Poirot, himself, is perplexed until during a church service he is alerted to the trap that has been set for him:

Hercule Poirot essayed in a hesitant baritone.

‘The proud have laid a snare for me,’ he sang, ‘and spread a net with cords: yea and set traps in my way …’

He saw it – saw clearly the trap into which he had so nearly fallen! (page 215)

It all fell into place and he saw the case ‘the right way up’.

Written in 1939, this book reflects the economic and political conditions of the time, with  a definite pre-war atmosphere of a world on the brink of war. But Poirot is concerned with the truth, with the importance of the lives of each individual, no matter how ordinary or insignificant they may seem.

• My Rating: 4.5/5
• Paperback: 294 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; Masterpiece edition (Reissue) edition (18 Aug 2008)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 0007120893
• ISBN-13: 978-0007120895

You can see other people’s crime fiction picks of the month at Mysteries in Paradise.

Sheila Webb, a typist, had found a dead man in the sitting room at the home of Miss Pebmarsh at 19 Wilbraham Crescent. He had been drugged and then stabbed. Miss Pebmarsh who is blind didn’t know the dead man and denied ringing the secretarial agency and asking for Sheila. The strange thing was that there were five clocks in the sitting room and all, except for the cuckoo clock which announced the time as 3 o’clock, had stopped at 4.13. Sheila ran out of the house in a panic into the arms of Colin Lamb. Colin has his own reasons for being in Wilbraham Crescent, which only become clear later in the story. He reports the death to Detective Inspector Hardcastle and together they investigate. The first problem is to identify the dead man as no one knows who he is. In fact no one seems to know anything.

This is where Poirot gets involved because Colin knows him. Colin has changed his surname; his father had been a Police Superintendent  – presumably Superintendent Battle. Colin asks for Poirot’s opinion, and challenges him to solve the mystery. At this point Poirot then runs through what amounts to a potted history of crime fiction and the art of detection. He refers to real crimes and then to examples of criminal fiction, including The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green (which reminds me I have a copy on Kindle still to read). He lambasts fictional writers such as Gary Gregson (one of the characters in The Clocks) and Ariadne Oliver, another of Agatha Christie’s creations, thinking her books are highly improbable.

Colin gives him the facts and wants the answer. He says:

I want you to give me the solution. I’ve always understood from you that it was perfectly possible to lie back in one’s chair, just think about it all, and come up with the answer. That it was quite unnecessary to go and question people  and run about looking for clues. (page 193)

I enjoyed these aspect of the book immensely, where I imagine Agatha Christie was amusing herself at her characters’ expense. Poirot sends Colin away instructing him to talk to people and to let them talk to him. Later on his curiosity gets the better of him and he does leaves his chair and visit the scene of the crime.

I  also liked the descriptions of the neighbours in the Crescent and the confusing way the houses are numbered. I did work out the significance of the numbering quite early on in the book, which rather pleased me. There are many red herrings and I didn’t think the separate plot involving Colin’s work as a British Intelligence agent was terribly interesting,or necessary, although the two plots do connect by the end.

For a more detailed account of the book see Wikipedia.

My rating: 4/5

In mid-air, Madame Giselle, is found dead in her seat. It appears at first that she has died as a result of a wasp sting (a wasp was flying around in the cabin) but when Poirot discovers a thorn with a discoloured tip it seems that she was killed by a poisoned dart, aimed by a blowpipe.

At the inquest the jury’s verdict is that the murderer is Poirot! However the coroner refuses to accept this and finds that the cause of death was poison with insufficient evidence to show who had administered the poison. All the other passengers and flight attendants are suspects and Poirot together with Inspector Japp, studies the passenger list with details of their belongings. There is a helpful plan of the cabin at the front of the book showing who sat where, including a crime fiction writer, a flute-playing Harley Street doctor, two French archaeologists, a dentist, a hairdresser, a Countess (formerly an actress), a woman who is a compulsive gambler, a crime writer and a businessman . Despite all this I was quite unable to work out who did it.

The question is who could have acquired the rare poison and how could it have been shot at Madame Giselle without anyone noticing that happening. Why would anyone want to kill her, and how were any of the suspects connected with her? Even when Poirot details the clues, including the Clue of the Passenger’s Baggage (and I read through the list a few times), I still didn’t work it out.

Apart from the ingenious mystery, which the coroner describes as the most astonishing and incredible case he had ever dealt with, there were other things I enjoyed in reading this book. First of all the ‘psychological moments’  in which people don’t notice what is happening in front of them because their attention is diverted. Then there is the way Christie makes fun of crime fiction writers and readers, making Japp comment that:

I don’t think it healthy for a man always to be brooding over crime and detective stories, reading up all sorts of cases. It puts ideas into his head. (page 63)

Poirot’s dénouement at the end of the book clears up all the confusion, detailing his impressions, precise ideas and methods in dealing with the case. Looking back through the book, all the clues were there, of course, but so cleverly concealed that in most cases I had overlooked them or not realised their significance. A most enjoyable book!

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; Masterpiece edition (Reissue) edition (3 Mar 2008)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 000711933X
• ISBN-13: 978-0007119332
• Source: I bought the book
• My rating 4/5

The Author:

Who is the author? What do they look like? When were they born? Where did they live? What does their handwriting look like? What are some of the other novels they’ve written? What is an interesting and random fact about their life?

Wilkie Collins (1824 – 1889)

He wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces. His best-known works are The Woman in White, The Moonstone, Armadale and No Name.

Collins’s handwriting:

Collins also considered a career in painting and exhibited a picture at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1849.

Birgit at The Book Garden blog was inspired by C.S. Lewis’ famous words, “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”

She writes that ‘in this challenge you will only get to read … wait for it … books with more than 700 pages. I’m deadly serious. We all have a few of those tomes on our shelves and somehow the amount of pages often prevents us from finally picking them up. You may choose novels only, no short story collections or anthologies, and in case you’re trying a short cut by picking large print editions of a book, well I’m sorry, those do not qualify for this challenge! Let’s battle those tomes that have been collecting dust on our shelves, so no re-reads, please! 

Both physical and eBooks are allowed, though personally I feel that especially the Tea & Books Reading Challenge is more fun with real books.Reviews of the books read are not mandatory’.

I do like tea, but I like books more and at one time I thought the longer the book the better. These days I like to vary my reading but I still have quite an armful (or two) of big books to read.

There are 4 levels, reading either 2, 4, 6 or 8 or more books. Six books qualifies for the Earl Grey Aficionado level and at the moment I think these are the books I’ll be reading:

 From top to bottom they are

• This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson (750 pages)
• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (794 pages)
• A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel (872 pages)
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (894 pages)
• Helen of Troy by Margaret George (755 pages)
• Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser (758 pages)

I do have more books that would qualify, so the following books are also possibilities which I could substitute or even add (some are on Kindle) and so I may ‘upgrade’ levels to the Sencha Connoisseur level (but I doubt this) :

• Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (848 pages)
• Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (800 pages)
• Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (800 pages)
• Dreams of Innocence by Lisa Appignanesi (712 pages)
• Ulysses by James Joyce (944 pages)
• No Name by Wilkie Collins (784 pages)
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (720 pages)

So, I am going to take part, because I’ve gone through my books and found that I have more than enough books to finish the challenge and after all it only involves reading 6 books over the year. It’s hosted by Beth at Beth Fish Reads:

The categories and my choices are as follows:

A book with a topographical feature in the title.  I have lots of choice for this category - 

• On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
• The Way Through the Woods by Colin Dexter
• The Secret River by Kate Grenville
• Hanging Valley by Peter Robinson
• The Ghost Road by Pat Barker
• The River Midnight by Lilian Nattel
• Shadows in the Street by Susan Hill
• The Island by Victoria Hislop
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A book with something you’d see in the sky in the title

•  Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
• The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber
• Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie

A book with a creepy crawly in the title – just one book!

• The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

A book with a type of house in the title:

• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Steig Larsson
• The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
• Wycliffe and the House of Fear by W J Burley
• I’m the King of the Castle by Susan Hill

A book with something you’d carry in your pocket, purse, or backpack in the title:

• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale
• Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally
• Village Diary by Miss Read
• They Do It With Mirrors by Agatha Christie
• Book of Love by Sarah Bower

A book with something you’d find on a calendar in the title:

• The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
• The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
• The Day Gone By by Richard Adams (autobiography of the author of Watership Down)

But then I realised that the pressure is purely of my own making, and as I really enjoy making lists and seeing which books I already own would fit into a challenge, I’ve decided to go ahead, make my lists and if I do complete the challenge, so much the better. This of course, means that I’m not treating it as a ‘challenge’, but then I don’t consider reading is or should be a ‘challenge’.  I  think I’ll call it ‘themed reading‘.

My books fit so well into this theme, so I’m signing up for The War Through the Generations:World War 1 Challenge.

Here are the details:

The challenge will run from January 1, 2012, through December 31, 2012.

The books, whether fiction or non-fiction must have WWI as the primary or secondary theme and occur before, during, or after the war, so long as the conflicts that led to the war or the war itself are important to the story. Books from other challenges count so long as they meet the above criteria.

• Dip: Read 1-3 books in any genre with WWI as a primary or secondary theme.
• Wade: Read 4-10 books in any genre with WWI as a primary or secondary theme.
• Swim: Read 11 or more books in any genre with WWI as a primary or secondary theme.

And these are my books:

• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque – a book I mean to read each year. I started it a couple of years ago and never finished it. I’ll have to start again.
• The Ghost Road by Pat Barker – set in 1918 as the War came to an end. This is the third in the trilogy. I haven’t got the first two, so hope this stands well on its own.
• Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain. This is Vera Brittain’s autobiography. She was 21 in 1914.
• Chronicle of Youth by Vera Brittain. This is her war diary 1913 – 1917 on which she based Testament of Youth.

It’s A Classics Challenge, devised by Katherine Cox of November’s Autumn. It involves reading seven works of Classic Literature in 2012, but only three of the seven may be re-reads.

But, instead of writing a review as you finish each book (of course, you can do that too), visit November’s Autumn on the 4th of each month from January 2012 – December 2012, where you will find a prompt, it will be general enough that no matter which Classic you’re reading or how far into it, you will be able to answer. There will be a form for everyone to link to their post.

I like the idea.

My Reading List

I have quite a lot of unread classics on my bookshelves and even more loaded onto my Kindle, so I have plenty to choose from. At present I think I’ll start with these seven books (but the titles could most likely be substituted for others when I actually get down to reading!)

• Emma by Jane Austen – a re-read. I first read this many years ago. Recently I read Sebastian Faulks’s view of Emma as a snob in his book Faulks on Fiction and decided it was time to re-read the book.
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. I read The Moonstone earlier this year and liked it very much, which spurred me on to get The Woman in White.
• Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome – a book that I’ve known about for ages, but have never read. It’s a humorous story of a boating expedition on the River Thames. I’m looking forward to some comedy.
• Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell. The only Gaskell book I’ve read is Cranford – time to remedy that with this tale of the mid-19th century England pre the Industrial Revolution.
• Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. I’m re-living my youth with this book, which I first read at school, when I was about 13 or 14. I can’t remember much about it, except that I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time. It’s historical fiction set in 18th century Scotland, based on real people.
• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. This is a mammoth book (nearly 900 pages) with many characters. I hope I don’t get bogged down in it – it looks as though I’ll need to concentrate.
• The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf. I began to read this (Woolf’s first novel) a few years ago. I love Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, but the opening of this didn’t grab my attention as much and I got distracted by other books. I’ll have to start it again.

Writing this has made me keen to read them all – but which one to pick first?

Actually I don’t think of this as a ‘challenge’. To me a challenge should be just that – something that tests my ability to achieve a goal under difficult circumstances, something that needs effort and determination to achieve. Reading Agatha Christie’s books is pleasure, the only effort needed is finding the books and even that isn’t difficult these days. I’ve bought some and borrowed others from the library, although I still haven’t read some of the earlier books, I’m managing to fill in the gaps.

So far I have read her Autobiography, 30 of her full length books and 2 of the collections of her short stories:

Progress in publication date order (the links are to my posts on the books):

1. 1920 The Mysterious Affair At Styles
2. 1922 The Secret Adversary
3. 1924 The Man in the Brown Suit
4. 1926 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
5. 1928 The Mystery of the Blue Train
6. 1929 The Seven Dials Mystery
7. 1932 Peril At End House
8. 1934 Murder on the Orient Express
9. 1934 Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (Aka The Boomerang Clue)
10. 1936 The A.B.C. Murders
11. 1937  Dumb Witness
12. 1937 Death on the Nile
13. 1938 Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
14. 1939 Murder is Easy
15. 1941 Evil Under the Sun
16. 1942 The Body in the Library
17. 1946 The Hollow
18. 1848 Taken at the Flood
19. 1949 Crooked House
20. 1951 They Came to Baghdad
21. 1953 A Pocket Full of Rye
22. 1956 Dead Man’s Folly
23. 1957 4.50 from Paddington
24. 1961 The Pale Horse
25. 1962 The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
26. 1964 A Caribbean Mystery
27. 1968 By the Pricking of My Thumbs
28. 1970 Passenger to Frankfurt
29. 1972 Elephants Can Remember
30. 1975 Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case (written in the 1940s)

Short Stories:

1. 1932 The Thirteen Problems
2. 1933 The Hound of Death

Autobiography/Biography

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

I’ll be reading these books in the coming months (linked to Amazon UK):

• Death in the Clouds – 1935
• They Do It With Mirrors – 1952
• The Moving Finger – 1942
• A Murder is Announced – 1950
• The Clocks – 1963
• Third Girl – 1966
• At Bertram’s Hotel – 1965
• Endless Night – 1967
• Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple’s Last Case – 1976 (probably written between the end of the 1940s and early 1950s), published after Agatha Christie’s death.

Short Stories:

• Complete Parker Pyne, Private Eye – an omnibus edition of Mr Parker Pyne stories
• The Golden Ball and other stories – 1971
• Miss Marple and Mystery: 20 short stories, published over 30 years

Biography:

• Agatha Christie at Home by Hilary Macaskill

Victoria gets involved after one meeting with a young man, Edward, who is going out to Baghdad the following day to join an archaeological dig. She thinks he’s an incredibly good-looking man and considering herself an excellent judge of character is immediately attracted to him. As she has just been fired from her job, impulsively she decides to follow him to Baghdad, claiming to be the niece of Dr Pauncefoot Jones, Richard’s boss .

At the same time a British secret agent, Carmichael, is trying to get to Baghdad with important information, and is his life is in great danger. Will he get there? Anna Scheele, a mysterious character is also on her way to Baghdad and there are hints that she is at the centre of things. Just who is she and what side is she on?

Alongside the mystery, Agatha Christie’s descriptions of the locations, local people and of the archaeological dig are superb, no doubt taken from her experience of her own visits to Baghdad and Iraq. I enjoyed it for its entertaining plot, the authenticity of the background and its great characters, in particular I grew very fond of the amazing Victoria Jones.

• First published in 1951 by William Collins & Co Ltd
• My copy a secondhand paperback Fontana Books, 1980
• My Rating: 4/5