Category Archives: Challenges

Agatha Christie Reading Challenge – Update

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The Agatha Christie Reading Challenge is run by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise. It’s an open-ended challenge to read all of Agatha Christie’s books. I’m not attempting to read them in order (as Kerrie is doing) but reading them as I find them.

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):

Short Stories:

Biography:

They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie: a Book Review

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I made copious notes as I read Agatha Christie’s They Came to Baghdad because it’s such a complex plot and there seemed to be so many significant events and people that I wanted to clarify what was happening. This is not one of Agatha Christie’s detective novels – no Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot,-  just Victoria Jones, a short-hand typist, a courageous girl with a ‘natural leaning towards adventure’ and a tendency to tell lies. Set in 1950 this is a story about international espionage and conspiracy. The heads of the ‘great powers‘ are secretly meeting in Baghdad, where if it all goes wrong ‘the balloon will go up with a vengeance.’ And an underground criminal organisation is out to make sure it does go wrong, aiming at ‘total war – total destruction. And then – the new Heaven and the new Earth.’

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

R.I.P. VI Challenge Completed

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Carl’s R.I.P. VI  challenge ended on 31 October and I’m pleased that I completed Peril the First, which was :

Read four books, any length, that you feel fit (my very broad definitions) of R.I.P. literature. It could be Stephen King or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming or Edgar Allan Poe…or anyone in between.

I read the following books (linked to my reviews):

These are all books that were on my to-be-read list. I think Blood Harvest has to be my favourite of the four and I thoroughly enjoyed it – a dark, scary book, disturbing, and completely gripping.  I was particularly pleased that I finally read The Turn of the Screw as I first started to read it some years ago. It’s an ideal book for the RIP Challenge. Thanks go to Carl for hosting.

Crime Fiction on a Euro Pass: Turkey

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The last stop on Kerrie’s Crime Fiction on a Euro Pass is Turkey. The challenge has been to write posts linked to the country of the week. This time I’ve focused on the British author:

Barbara Nadel

Born in the East End of London, Barbara Nadel trained as an actress before becoming a writer. Now writing full-time, she has previously worked as a public relations officer for the National Schizophrenia Fellowship’s Good Companion Service and as a mental health advocate for the mentally disordered in a psychiatric hospital. She has also worked with sexually abused teenagers and taught psychology in schools and colleges, and is currently the patron of a charity that cares for those in emotional and mental distress.

She has been a regular visitor to Turkey for more than twenty years.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Nadel

Her Turkish crime novels feature Inspector Cetin Ikmen. The list below is from Fantastic Fiction

1. Belshazzar’s Daughter (1999)
2. A Chemical Prison (2000)
aka The Ottoman Cage
3. Arabesk (2001)
4. Deep Waters (2002)
5. Harem (2003)
6. Petrified (2004)
7. Deadly Web (2005)
8. Dance With Death (2006)
9. A Passion for Killing (2007)
10. Pretty Dead Things (2008)
11. River of the Dead (2009)
12. Death by Design (2010)
13. A Noble Killing (2011)
14. Dead of Night (2012)

Barbara Nadel  writes for the International Crime Authors Reality Check, where you can also read an interview with her. 

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: a Book Review

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I first started to read The Turn of the Screw by Henry James a few years ago soon after I bought it. I stopped reading, mainly, I think, because it seemed so slow to get going with long, convoluted sentences that seem to drag the story down. So, it was with low expectations that I began once more to read it. I was surprised. This time the story didn’t drag, the sentence structure didn’t bother me and I became engrossed in the tale. It’s an ideal book for the RIP Challenge.

But is it a ghost story or a psychological study? Either way there are creepy, disturbing things going on. It’s a story within a story, told as a ghost story to a group of people as they sit gathered round a fire in an old house. It tells of two children and their governess. She has been employed by their uncle who wants nothing to do with them. Their previous governess had died under mysterious circumstances (was it in childbirth?).  The older child, Miles, was away at school and soon after the new governess arrives Miles returns home, expelled from school for some terrible unexplained offence.

The children seem to the governess to be beautiful, little angels, but are they as innocent as they seem? And can they see the ghosts or not? Is the governess imagining them, peering in menacingly through the windows, standing silently and staring from the top of a tower, or gazing intently across a lake. Are they the ghosts of Miss Jessel, the previous governess and Peter Quint, also a previous employer? What relationship did they have with the children? Do they still have a hold over the children? These questions ever never fully answered and the governess, aided (or not?) by the housekeeper, Mrs Grose, becomes increasingly unhinged by all the events. I think it’s all the better for the ambiguity.

The story is dark and melodramatic, about good and evil and with hints of sexual relations, reflecting the Victorian society of the time. The Turn of the Screw is based on a ghost story told to James by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson. It was first published in 12 instalments in Collier’s Weekly, a popular,  illustrated New York magazine in 1898.  By that time his wrist was too painful to actually write the story and he dictated  it to his secretary, William MacAlpine, who typed as James spoke.

My copy of the book  is in the Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism series, edited by Peter G Beidler. It contains not just the text, but critical essays from four contemporary critical perspectives, plus explanations of the biographical, historical and cultural contexts. I haven’t yet read much of the additional material as I wanted to see what I made of it myself. Just scanning the essays I think they show the widely different interpretations and controversies this book has aroused and should prove very interesting reading.

Ireland Reading Challenge 2011 Update

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The Ireland Reading Challenge is being run by Carrie at Books and Movies. It involves reading any book written by an Irish author, set in Ireland, or involving Irish history or Irish characters. It can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, audiobooks, children’s books – all of these apply.

I have now completed the first level, Shamrock,  by reading these two books, both by Irish authors:

Two very different books!

The Luck o’ the Irish is next level of the Challenge, and it involves reading another two books. With a bit of luck I should manage this by the end of the year! :)  Oops just realised the Challenge ends at the end of November!

My choice of books, from my stock of to-be-read books is this:

  • Anybody Out There by Marian Keyes
  • The Gathering by Anne Enright
  • Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
  • Sovereignty of Good by Iris Murdoch
  • Ulysses by James Joyce – if I read that next year I’ll be really pleased (and surprised)!
  • The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
  • Watchman by Ian Rankin
  • Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy

I might try Iris Murdoch’s Sovereignty of Good next – a bit of philosophy, that should make a change!

Dracula by Bram Stoker: Book Notes

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These are my thoughts and reactions on reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

I knew the story of Dracula from film and TV versions – with most notably Christopher Lee and later Louis Jourdan as Dracula, but have steered clear of reading Bram Stoker’s book until now. I didn’t really know what to expect from the book but I was interested to know how Stoker described Dracula, was it anything like the film versions? This is what he looked like when Jonathan Harker first entered Castle Dracula:

… a tall old man, clean-shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere.

… he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength that made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice – more like the hand of a dead man than a living man.

… His face was a strong – a very strong – aquiline, with high bridge of nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily around the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over his nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor. (pages 22 – 25)

Not like the film versions I’ve seen.

Dracula is composed of letters, journal entries, newspaper articles and transcripts of phonograph diary entries, from several characters, so the story is told from several different viewpoints. Stoker used a variety of sources in telling his tale – folklore, myths and legends and historical facts, all blended together with his own inventions. It’s a very scenic novel, and I could easily imagine the locations  - most memorable are those describing Jonathan Harker’s journey and first meeting with Dracula. Dracula doesn’t eat and has no reflection in a mirror, can change his shape dramatically and grows younger, but apart from the opening chapters he remains an elusive figure.

It’s also a very sensual and melodramatic novel, full of religious references. So there is the question of life after death, the existence of the soul, the triumph of good over evil, the nature of sexuality,  fear and superstition. Vampires are at the same time appealing and repulsive. Much use is made of hypnotism and putting people into trances. I was struck by the comparison with Christianity – Dracula drinks the blood of his victims and has everlasting life as one of the Un-Dead and Christ gave his life to redeem the world. It reminded me of the Communion Service – this is my body, this is my blood.

It is too an adventure story with a final chase scene and a love story. It reflects the time in which it was written, with women seen as frail creatures unable to withstand the danger that the men confront. Mina Harker, that most resourceful woman, is left behind whilst the men seek out Dracula and plan to kill him. I was puzzled – why was she left alone with no cross and garlic flowers to protect her when the men were fully armed? The outcome was predictable.

I found the character of Renfield most interesting. He is one of Dr Seward’s most dangerous patients in the lunatic asylum, who wavers between lucid and intelligent episodes and sheer madness. His hobby is catching flies and eating them. He progresses to eating spiders and birds.

I thought it was a fascinating book, found it thought-provoking, both whilst I was reading and after. A book which certainly qualifies for the RIP Challenge.

Taken at the Flood by Agatha Christie: a Book Review

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I enjoyed Agatha Christie’s Taken at the Flood, on several levels. There is the murder and mystery level, but also a great sense of the times, set in post-war Britain, reflecting the mood of the population, and, on top of all, that the characters stand out for the most part as well-rounded, convincing people. There are plenty of references to the changing social scene, to the attitude towards women and foreigners and to the difficulties  of war heroes adapting to civilian life.

It was published in 1948, when the aftermath of the war is felt by some people as a restless dissatisfaction with life,  feeling ‘rudderless’ just drifting along and by others, who had ‘come into their own’ during the war, benefiting from the need to plan and think and improvise for themselves.

Lynn Marchmont is one of the people feeling ill at ease and nervous; she was aware of ill will, ill feeling:

It’s everywhere. On railways and buses and in shops and amongst workers and clerks and even agricultural labourers. And I suppose worse in mines and factories. Ill will. But here it’s more than that. Here it’s particular. It’s meant! (page 65)

There is certainly ill will in her family after her uncle, Gordon Cloade had died, killed in an air raid, and left the rest of the family ‘out in the cold’. They had all relied on him to help them out financially and expected they would inherit his wealth on his death. But Gordon had married Rosaleen, a young woman, whose brother, David Hunter has no intention of letting any of them have any money. Rosaleen has a chequered past and when a tall, bronzed stranger arrives in the village calling himself Enoch Arden, the question of his identity becomes of great importance. I didn’t know the reference to Enoch Arden, but knew it must be of significance when it stirs some poetical memory in David’s mind, from a poem by Tennyson. Then Enoch Arden is found in his room at the local inn, The Stag:

‘Dead as a doornail,’ said Gladys, and added with a certain relish: ‘ ‘Is ‘ead’s bashed in!’ (page 161)

Poirot is called in to help solve the crime. Was Enoch Arden was Rosaleen’s first husband, Robert Underhay or had Robert died in Africa, as she said? Would the family fortune remain with the Cloades? Is Rosaleen’s life in danger, are the Cloades wishing her dead?

It’s a baffling case and Poirot tells Superintendent Spence that it’s an interesting case, because it’s all wrong – it’s not the ’right shape.’ Eventually, of course, he works it out and it is complicated as Spence complains, protesting when Poirot quotes Shakespeare. Poirot, however, explains that it is very Shakespearian:

… there are here all the emotions – the human emotions – in which Shakespeare would have revelled – the jealousies, the hates – the swift passionate actions. And here, too, is successful opportunism. “There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at its flood leads on to fortune …” Someone acted on that, Superintendent. To seize opportunity and turn it to one’s own ends – and that has been triumphantly accomplished – under your nose, so to speak!’ (page 319)

Book Beginnings: Life Support

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Life Support by Tess Gerritsen is the fourth book I’ll be reading in the RIP IV Challenge. According to the back cover this is ‘a quick, delightfully scary read‘, which fits in well with the RIP challenge criteria.

It begins:

A scalpel is a beautiful thing.

Dr Stanley Mackie had never noticed this before, but as he stood with head bowed beneath the OR lamps, he suddenly found himself marveling at how the light reflected with diamondlike brilliance off the blade. It was a work of art, that razor sharp lunula of stainless steel. So beautiful in fact, that he scarcely dared to pick it up for fear he would somehow tarnish its magic. In its surface he saw a rainbow of colors, light fractured to its purest elements. (Page 13)

This will be the first book by Tess Gerritsen that I’ve read. It’s been on my bookshelves for quite a while now and I have been wary of reading it in case it’s too gory for me. I didn’t buy it, it was a free book with the magazine Woman and Home, which I buy now and then. When I read the Introduction I was even less sure this book was for me as Tess Gerritsen wrote that she got the idea for the book whilst at medical school (she is a doctor), when she heard the professor say the words ‘human cannibalism’ in his lecture on Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, a viral infection of the brain.

So I put this book way down on my to-be-read books, but since then I’ve read several favourable reviews of other books by Gerritsen so I thought I’d try this one. I like the style of writing in this first paragraph and it does make me want to read on, so when I’ve finished one of my current reads I’m going to start Life Support. Let me know what you think if you’ve read it?

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages.

Blood Harvest by S J Bolton: a Book Review

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I thoroughly enjoyed Blood Harvest, even though (or maybe because) it’s a dark, scary book and one that I found disturbing, but thoroughly absorbing . Each time I had to stop reading it I was eager to get back to it. I’ve previously read S J Bolton’s earlier books - Sacrifice and Awakening – and think that Blood Harvest surpasses both of those.

It’s set in the fictional town of Heptonclough in Lancashire and there is a very helpful map at the start of the book showing the layout of the town. There are two churches, the ancient ruined Abbey Church and standing next to it the ‘new’ church of St Barnabas. The Fletchers have just moved into a new house built on the land right next to the boundary wall of the churchyard:

The Fletcher family built their big, shiny new house on the crest of the moor, in a town that time seemed to have left to mind it’s own business. They built on a modest-sized plot that the diocese, desperate for cash, needed to get rid of. They built so close to the two churches – one old, the other very old - that they could almost lean out from the bedroom windows and touch the shell of the ancient tower. And on three sides of their garden they had the quietest neighbours they could hope for, which was ten-year-old Tom Fletcher’s favourite joke in those days; because the Fletchers built their new house in the midst of a graveyard. They should have known better, really. (page 17)

Tom has a younger brother, Joe and they’re playing in the graveyard when they catch glimpses of a girl watching them, and hear voices. Their little sister, two-year old Millie sees her too.  Tom is terrified, convinced something terrible will happen and then Millie disappears. Harry is the new vicar, getting to know the locals and their strange rituals and traditions. He too hears voices, in the church but can’t find anyone there. Evi, a psychiatrist has a new patient, Gillian, unemployed, divorced and alcoholic, who can’t accept that her daughter died in the fire that burnt down her home. The Renshaws own most of the land, old Tobias, his son Sinclair and his two daughters, Jenny and Christiana.

Heptonclough is not a good place for little girls, three have died over the past ten years and Christiana asks Harry to tell the Fletchers to leave:

‘So many little girls’, she said. ‘Tell them to go, Vicar. It’s not safe here. Not for little girls.’ (page 353)

It’s not safe at all for the Fletcher family. I was completely convinced not only by the setting but also by the characterisation that this place and these people were real. It’s full of tension, terror and suspense and I was in several minds before the end as to what it was all about. I had an inkling but I hadn’t realised the full and shocking truth.

An excellent book to read for Carl’s RIP IV Challenge.