Quick Book Reviews Blog

Sadly, even fictional characters must one day meet an end, but it is always more inspiring when it happens at the hands of their makers, something Agatha Christie understood rather well, having penned the final acts for both Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot many years before retiring them. She gave it all to bid them a worthy farewell, and it was most certainly enough, at least in Miss Marple's case as she was called upon to solve the perfect assassination in Sleeping Murder .

There are only so many ways to diversify the concept of a murder investigation, but Agatha Christie never relented and virtually always managed to bring something new and interesting to the table. In her Miss Marple series she experimented from time to time, diverging from the classical whodunit formula we've come to expect from, and more often than not the results were rather pleasing, if not interesting at the very least.

Literature may not be subjected to our laws of reality (as a matter of fact, it couldn't be more removed from them), we still strive to maintain a semblance of realism, even if it is to the disappointment of the fans. More often than not, in a book series characters do grow older and older, though at the author's convenience. Still, sometimes it is impossible to keep our most beloved protagonists young and spry, especially when they were already older to start with, as was Miss Marple.

Jane Marple may very well have one of the sharpest minds in the universe, but the fact remains that she is still subjected to the toll taken by old age and cannot escape its wrath. Just like everyone else, miss Marple is in need of a vacation, and in A Caribbean Mystery that is just what the doctor prescribed... literally. Jane finds herself sent to a paradise vacation island by her nephew Raymond, and everything is so still and perfect that she finds herself bored to death.

Very few are those who would expect to see their grand criminal mastermind plans fall apart at the intrusion of an old lady, and yet it is a feat that Miss Marple has been able to accomplish time and time again, visibly toughened into iron by all the horrors she must have witnessed ever since her retirement began. In The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side by Agatha Christie she is at it again, as the author now takes us back to St. Mary's Mead, Miss Marple's own quaint little village, albeit one that has changed considerably since her last visit.

Agatha Christie has for long been known as the indisputable master of murder mystery novels, always being capable of delivering a solid plot that drags the reader along exactly where it wants to, keeping them oblivious to the clues under their noses and leading to the unexpected unveiling of the criminal nobody even suspected. Though she did tend to follow certain archetypes or had similar settings from one story to the next, there always managed to be that high-class uniqueness to it all, as can be perfectly seen with 4:50 From Paddington , a Miss Marple mystery.

When we think about the many trials and tribulations faced by some of our favorite recurring characters in literature, one of the most obvious ones we don't think about is just how much terror and death they have witnessed without letting it touch them. Perhaps Miss Marple is the epitome of iron old ladies, being capable of making it from one end of the English countryside to the next without going mad from witnessing swarms of stabbings, poisonings, hangings, and “accidents”.

Agatha Christie has had such a prolific and illustrious career that a large number of novels have made it into the “classics of literature” category, which in turn, unfortunately, overshadowed many other stories which, perhaps not being as good, still remain fantastic and for the most part, largely better than what has been printed since. They Do it with Mirrors is one such Agatha Christie novel, and it follows Miss Marple as she is beckoned by an old friend, Ruth Van Rydock, to go visit her sister, Carrie Louise Martin, at her family home (well, more like family mansion) and shed light on some strange happenings that have been bothering that latter one.

Agatha Christie has gifted the world of literature with countless mysteries which eventually paved the way for a number of prolific writers, and the character of Jane Marple is one that has often been imitated, but never successfully replicated by any others. Having her own series of British countryside crimes to solve, she often finds herself thrust deep into the middle of deceptively complicated and morbid affairs, as is the case in one of her most well-known books, A Murder is Announced .

Dark secrets are seldom hidden away forever in literature; rather, they are locked in a Pandora's Box to be opened at the most convenient time. As one might expect, the British countryside is practically made of and built upon dark secrets, or at least that's the case in Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger , which it should be noted, was actually one of her personal favorite works of her own, and in her eyes it is one of the few that truly stood the test of time.

If Agatha Christie is to be believed, then the most dangerous place on Earth to live in is the British countryside. Populated by lovely retired folks and wealthy families, it seems to be a secret war zone where polite murder is part of the daily curriculum. Fortunately, this kind of set-up has given writers such as the afore-mentioned godmother of whodunit mysteries the perfect fodder to craft one timeless novel after the next, as was the case with The Body in the Library .

Though Agatha Christie has certainly gained untold levels of notoriety for her stories featuring the unforgettable Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot , it is sometimes easy to forget that somewhere down the line, she created a sort of counterpart: Miss Marple. A lovely aged lady, Miss Marple is rather gifted when it comes to powers of deduction, and often unwittingly finds herself in the middle of quite morbid affairs which call upon her specific talents.

Throughout her illustrious career Agatha Christie has delivered to us many unforgettable and moving classics in the crime mystery genre, but that happens to be a two-sided coin; though nearly everyone may be familiar with her popular works, her lesser-known efforts are overshadowed, and not for a lack of quality. It seems to me that Mrs. McGinty’s Dead is one of those novels, following Hercule Poirot as he leads an investigation inside a small village into the murder of an elderly cleaning lady who wouldn’t dare hurt a fly.

It seems that practically every famous detective and sleuth in literature must, at one point or another, solve a case from a long-forgotten past. I guess there is some kind of mysterious attraction to such topics; as time passes by, events get increasingly blurred and there are less and less ways of finding out the truth. However, such things never stood in the way of famous Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot, especially not when he was solving the murder Amyas Crayle in Five Little Pigs , written by none other than Agatha Christie.

Many of us only know the name Agatha Christie in association with known works of literature, such as Death on the Nile or And Then There Were None , imagining her as being this entity that churns out one murder mystery after the other without ever seemingly getting tired. Unfortunately, it seems that most schools put very little emphasis on her works or her life, and as a result countless people grow up deprived of knowing anything about one of the twentieth century’s literary titans.

It seems that Agatha Christie has made a theme out of Hercule Poirot not being able to take a vacation if his life depended on it, with that being the case once again in what is perhaps one of her lesser known novels, Peril at End House . In it, the world’s most notorious Belgian detective tries to take a holiday on the Cornish Riviera, but his plans soon come to an end as he meets Nicky Buckley, a woman who had far too many seemingly accidental brushes with death recently.

While our beloved crime fighters seek to go on vacation once in a while, we, the readers, know all too well that crime doesn’t take vacations, as can be plainly seen in Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile . In this murder mystery of hers, our favorite Belgian investigator, Hercule Poirot, attempts to escape from his seemingly murder-filled life in England in favor of an excursion into Egypt.

Those of you who know of Agatha Christie are probably acquainted with some of her more famous novels, such as And Then There Were None , formerly known as Ten Little Indians (with the original title using language considered racist by today’s standards), Death on the Nile or Murder on the Orient Express . However, Agatha Christie had already started making giant waves in the world of literature with her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles .

I've already written a couple of reviews of Agatha Christie’s books, so I won’t go spend as much time as I did earlier telling how much of an impact she had on the murder mystery genre, single-handedly revolutionizing certain aspects of it and setting the bar higher than ever before. While it may be true that some of her novels were groundbreaking, it also has to be noted that on many occasions she preferred to stick to the rules she knew best, and in my opinion it kind of shows in Murder on the Orient Express .

Agatha Christie is celebrated around the world as being one of the best and most influential contemporary writers, having left quite a noticeable mark on the world of murder mysteries, introducing many new concepts and raising the bar for writers of the future. While many of her novels are indeed widely celebrated, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd may very well be the one which really put her in the spotlight.