And Then There Were None (The Novel) by Agatha Christie

And Then There Were None (The Novel)

Review of the novel And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.

Published by Harper Collins on 6^th November 1939.

Cost: 3’6 1965, £12.99 2015

ISBN 978-0-00-752530-0 (Facsimile Edition - 252 pages)

I recently reviewed the play of the same name, when it was performed by The Agatha Christie Theatre Company, in January 2015

The story was serialised in the UK in twenty-three parts in the Daily Express on 6^th June to 1^st July 1939, but first published as a novel in the UK on 6^th November 1929. Please be aware that this review will contain spoilers for individuals new to the story.

The novel is having a revival in 2015 as it is the 76^th anniversary year for the story. It started with the play being performed in Windsor, Berkshire, UK, in January and going on tour around the UK, finishing in Torquay, Devon, UK, on 20^th September 2015 and will culminate with the BBC showing their own three-part production starting on Boxing day in December 2015. As the novel was being discussed in various circles at The International Agatha Christie Festival in September I felt it was time to revisit the novel and look at how Christie handles the difficult concept of delight of individuals to distraught individuals, as they come to terms with their unusual predicament.

This is an iconic story of a serial killer, picking off individuals one by one while stranded on an isolated island off the coast of Devon in the UK. The story is widely regarded as an Agatha Christie masterpiece. Inspired by an old-fashioned nursery rhyme, it was published two months after the start of WWII. Following the success of the book, it was soon turned into a play by Christie and has had no less than six film and TV adaptations.

At the start of the novel we discover that ten very different individuals have been invited to a luxury hotel, located on an island off the coast of Devon, each receiving a tailor-made invitation that was too good to refuse.

Vera Claythorn recalls:

“I’m frightfully thrilled at the prospect of seeing Soldier Island. There’s been such a lot about it in the papers. Is it really very fascinating?”

Later in her bedroom at the hotel she assesses her surroundings:

Over the mantelpiece of the fireplace was a big square parchment – a poem, in a gleaming chromium frame. She read it. It was the old nursery rhyme that she remembered from her childhood days.

Ten little soldier boys went to dine …

Dr Armstrong is the last of the ten individuals to arrive at the island and on his journey across from the mainland he found time to reflect:

“There was something magical about an island – the mere word suggested fantasy. You lost touch with the world – an island was a world of its own. A world perhaps, from which you might never return.”

In chapter two Christie introduces the guests as individuals, giving some background to the characters as they prepare for dinner and we learn that two of them seem to know of each other, but it is after the meal that the story takes a strange turn. The guests become aware of a small round table situated to one side of the room and on it are placed ten little china figures; they comment that each of their rooms have the nursery rhyme framed, hanging on the wall in the bedrooms...

At twenty minutes past nine a gramophone record plays, not music, but spoken words.‘... there was a silence, a replete silence. Into that silence came The Voice. Without warning, inhuman, penetrating …’

             “Ladies and gentlemen! Silence please!”

Christie’s characters are suddenly startled and the reader can feel a change of tone in the story and notes a disturbing atmosphere within the hotel lounge.

            “You are charged with the following indictments:

“Edward George Armstrong, that you did upon the 14^th day of March 1925, cause the death of Lousia Mary Clees.

“Emily Caroline Brent, that upon the 5^th of November, 1931, you were responsible for the death of Beatrice Taylor.”

Each of the ten individuals is charged with the death of one or more people. Unsettled, the ten individuals protest their innocence, however, after challenging questions from those in the room, they admit their part in the indictments.

Christie now changes the mood of the story and her characters; they have lost the delight at arriving at the luxury hotel and want to leave immediately. The urge to leave is heightened when one of the party is declared dead and they find one of the china figures broken. The remaining individuals become weary of each other and are unsure whether safety lies on being in their own or being part of a group. Over the next one hundred pages Christie kills off her characters, linking the method of murder to a verse of the Ten Little Soldier Boy’s nursery rhyme. All the characters are killed off-stage, she does not describe the gory scenes, leaving that to her reader’s imagination, but it is very clear how each individual has lost their life, ten very different methods.

Agatha Christie has set her reader, and her characters in the story, a puzzle to solve; she is at her best as she takes us along an intriguing tale. Just as her characters search for the murderer, the pace of the tale encourages the reader to race towards the conclusion in an attempt to find out who the murder is, having had to change their own thoughts as they progress through the story. An unsuspecting end to a black story.

Adaptations of this novel to film and plays have taken poetic license to change the ending for their audience. The location has also varied, but it remains a locked room scenario, there is only one possible solution.

This novel is Agatha Christie at her best, an estimate of 100 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide. It is an outstanding novel, and I have enjoyed reading again. A true Agatha Christie 'whodunit'. Rating: 5 stars

Dr James Sheppard

17 December 2015

Covered Casket

The Covered Casket

A Walk in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, UK

A walk in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

If you can find the time, a walk in Wallingford to visit Agatha Christie's previous home you will be well rewarded. Just south of the town, a five-minute walk, it's a beautiful property called Winterbrook House. It has a large garden to the rear, which is hidden from the road.








A visit to St Mary's church at Cholsey is also a treasure. The Town of Cholsey is about two miles south of Wallingford; a leisurely walk or a short drive. The church has parking for cars. Tucked away on the right behind the church, towards a distant corner is where you will find the grave of Agatha and Max Mallowan. 

It's not easy to see the words written on the gravestone, but they can be found in Dead Man's Folly, page 43 in the paperback edition. 

"Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, ease after war, death after life, doth greatly please ..." 

Taken from Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 1, Canto IX. 

It is a delightful visit. On the nearby wall a plaque details of the planting of twenty-five trees in the church to celebrate her centenary year.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express

Review of the novel Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.

Published by HarperCollins on 1^st January 1934.

Cost: [3’6 1965, £7.99 2015]

ISBN 978-0-00-711931-8 (Paperback Edition - 192 pages)

I recently purchased ‘The Agatha Christie Crossword Puzzle book’ (compiled by Randall Toye and Judith Hawkins Gaffney – 1981) and the first puzzle was based on The Murder on The Orient Express. So, to solve the clues I had to re-read the novel.

At the start of the story, we find Hercule Poirot about to board the Taurus Express train at Aleppo in Syria, on his way to Stamboul. On board the train there are only two other passengers; a colonel and a young governess - while they ignore Poirot, he studies them, their mannerisms and conversation.

Arriving at his hotel in Stamboul, Poirot receives a telegram requesting his urgent return to England, so he finds himself seeking a compartment on the Simplon Orient Express: Istanbul Trieste Calais. However, in the winter months there are normally few travellers, but on this one particular night the sleeping compartments are fully booked. But when a passenger fails to turn up, Poirot is able to share a second-class sleeping compartment. The train pulls out of the station at 9 p.m. and so begins the most famous journey of Hercule Poirot’s career.

Travelling with M. Bouc, the director of the Compagnie International des Wagon-Lits, they meet for lunch on the second of the three-day journey, where M. Bouc describes their fellow passengers:

“All round us are people, of all classes, of all nationalities, of all ages. For three days these people, these strangers to one another, are brought together. They sleep and eat under one roof, they cannot get away from each other. At the end of the three days they part, they go their separate ways, never, perhaps, to see each other again.”

Christie allows Poirot to reply:

“And yet,” said Poirot, “suppose an accident –“… “Just for one moment suppose it. Then, perhaps, all these here are linked together – by death.”

Christie has set the scene and given the reader the plot. Like Poirot we are allowed to study the individuals, also eating in the restaurant car; Poirot locks his thoughts away in his memory.

Later that evening, when the train arrives in Belgrade at 9.15 p.m., additional carriages are added to the Calais Express and Poirot is able to move into a first-class sleeping compartment.

M. Bouc reflects:

“There has not been so much snow for years. Let’s hope we shall not get held up. I am not too happy about it.”

That night the corridor of the sleeping compartment coach experiences some activities that disturb Poirot. His only activity is to ask the conductor why the train has stopped – a heavy snowdrift. The following morning Poirot is asked to investigate the unexpected death of Mr Ratchett, in the compartment next his own.

Christie has woven an incredible crime, a man has been stabbed twelve times, the wounds suggesting more than one perpetrator. The door to Ratchett's compartment was locked and chained; one of the windows is open. Some of the stab wounds are very deep, at least three are lethal, and some are glancing blows. Furthermore, some of the wounds appear to have been inflicted by a right-handed person and some by a left-handed person. The untrodden snow around the train proved that the murderer was still on board. It is a closed room scenario. The murderer must be one of the passengers assigned to the sleeping compartments.

All twelve individuals have an alibi for the time of the murder and no apparent link to the dead man. Christie uses M. Bouc to miss-directs the reader. The solution provided by M. Bouc and the Doctor travelling with Bouc are very plausible. However, Poirot recalls his observations of the passengers and realises the only way to get to the truth is to challenge the statements of the suspects by using the statement from each passenger to test the facts provided by another passenger. He is aided by two clues found in Ratchett’s room; an initialled handkerchief and a pipe cleaner. Against his logic Poirot puts together an impossible resolution, it's just not possible. Christie has challenged her reader with the facts and only the astute will have picked up on the truth: an American that only speaks English, replies to the conductor in French; a pocket watch stopped at a time to fool everyone.

In this, Poirot’s 9^th outing, he calls all the suspects together in the restaurant-car, as we might expect. He taunts and challenges everyone, suggesting their guilt and link with the crime. Revealing the guilty party, he offers an alternative solution to the crime of murdering Mr Ratchett. The decision is left with M. Bouc.

I love the way in which Christie develops her characters; we are accustomed to Poirot’s mannerisms and language, but in this story we are given the idiosyncrasies of an American, a Swede, a German, Italian and an English woman. The characterisation is enjoyable to read and adds to the pleasure of the story. As we might expect there are clues placed throughout the story, they only need to be identified by the reader. Although there is no Hastings, M. Bouc replaces him well, misunderstanding the clues and statements from the passengers. It is the boldness and the motivation of the suspects, driven by the miss-carriage of justice that add strength to Christie’s plot. A must read. Rating: 5 stars

Dr James Sheppard

31 August 2015

A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

A Murder is Announced

 

Review of the novel A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie.

Published by William Collins on 5^th June 1950.

Cost: 95p 1980 [£3.25 1989, £7.99 2015]

ISBN 0-00-616528-1 (Paperback Edition - 221 pages)

Dedication: To Ralph and Ann Newman at whose house I first tasted "Delicious Death!".

A Murder is Announced is one of Agatha Christies best novels. The setting is the quite typical English village of Chipping Gleghorn. It was Christie’s 50^th story and introduces Miss Marple for the seventh time, although she does not appear until page 73. Set in the 1950s in rural England, the story is littered with clues for the keen reader, but will be skipped over as they race to the end of the story trying to guess the murderer. This novel is a real favourite of mine and was the June book of the month on the Agatha Christie Website for 2015.

At the centre of the story is an advert that appears in the local newspaper, traditionally called The Gazette:

A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29^th at Little Paddocks at 6.30 p.m. Friends please accept this, the only intimation

Chipping Cleghorn is a rural English village described as:

A large sprawling picturesque village. Butcher, baker, grocer, quite a good antique shop – two tea-shops. Self-consciously a beauty spot; caters for the motoring tourist. Also highly residential. Cottages formerly lived in by agricultural labourers now converted and lived in by elderly spinsters and retired couples. A certain amount of building done round about in Victorian times.

The reader is quickly introduced to all the relevant local characters. Chapter 1 is split into five parts, detailing the main characters in more detail as they sit at their own breakfast table on Friday morning. We learn that gossip and a keen interest of the local inhabitants is high on the list of priorities for the inquisitive few. Most importantly, we know that they have a daily newspaper delivered and a copy of the ‘North Benham News and Chipping Cleghorn Gazette’.

The story centres on the occupants of Little Paddocks, Miss Blacklock and Miss Bunner her companion. In Chapter 2, Christie starts presenting the reader with clues as the confused Miss Bunner is unable to remember names of individuals, has problems with the laundry and has apparently lost bills and letters. But it’s the setting of the intended murder that is crucial to the story.

It's still Friday 29^th and Chapter 3 opens with the residents of Little Paddocks in the lounge, just before 6.30 p.m. and anticipating a few of the villagers to appear, particularly friends of Miss Blacklock. However, although most people in the village have possibly read the invitation, only seven people respond to the invitation.

With everyone gathered in the lounge, at the appointed time, 6.30 p.m., without warning the lights go out, there is screaming and a torch is shone around the room and a gunshot is heard. When the lights eventually come back on, a gruesome scene is revealed. An impossible crime, in a ‘locked room’? While the suspense is maintained very skilfully until the final disclosure, some of the best, and most infuriating clues, are verbal having been spoken by the characters: in this case, you could even say typographical.

Following the shooting and murder at Little Paddocks, the police get involved, but they pick up on the wrong motives and the investigation stalls until Miss Marple appears on the scene. She encourages Inspector Craddock to look deeper into the background of everyone who attended the gathering on that Friday. As she considers each character in turn, Miss Marple reflects on her village experiences and finds some hidden facts that suggest a motive for one individual. As the story nears its end, individuals that attended the gathering at Little Paddocks also begin to unravel the events of the Friday night themselves, but that results in further killings. Finally, Inspector Craddock gets everyone back in the room at Little Paddocks to present his findings and resolve the case, in typical Agatha Christie fashion.

On a second reading the reader should pick-up on the clues they have no doubt missed first time round and can’t believe they missed them, particularly as there are so many of them. This is a wonderful story of local village life, it captures the difficulties of living in an English village in the early 1950s;, rationing, and shortage of items in general, and the way the local community had to barter for items they needed to make their lives easier. Aside from the plot the story covers several other issues that Christie was contemplating with at the time and were contemporary with in the period covered by the book, particularly people’s relationships. Although this is the seventh book to have Miss Marple as the detective, it really is a must read for keen Christie fans. Rating: 5 stars

Dr James Sheppard

20th July 2015

Note: The 1962 Fontana paperback edition of A Murder is Announced was the first to feature a cover commissioned from Tom Adams - more than 90 other designs were to follow.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

The Maze Runner

 

Review of the novel The Maze Runner by James Dashner.

Published by Delacorte Press on 6^th October 2009.

Cost: £7.99

ISBN 978-1-908435-13-2 (Paperback Edition - 371 pages)

Having seen the recent film of this book my son suggested I read the series of the books. As you can imagine, the film is slightly different from the book.

The lead character is a teenage boy called Thomas, we join him waking up in a lift with no memory of his past. When the lift doors open, he is pulled into a glade by a group of boys who also have no memories other than their names.

Thomas gradually discovers that the Glade is run by two boys, Alby and Newt, who maintain order by enforcing strict rules. Outside the Glade is the Maze; a labyrinth of high walls covered in ivy that house strange, lethal creatures they call the Grievers. For two years the boys have been trying to stay alive as well as "solving" the Maze, by running through it as fast as they can while tracking movements of the walls and trying to find an exit. Thomas suggests that the walls of the Maze are not random, but that their movements are actually a code, leading to the discovery that the Maze is spelling out words.

After Thomas's arrival, a girl is delivered through the lift into the Glade and subsequently lapses into a coma. To make matters worse, her arrival triggers everything in the Glade to change: the sun disappears, the deliveries of supplies stop coming, and the doors of the Maze stay open at night which allows the Grievers to enter the Glade to hunt the children.

In an act of desperation to get his memory back, Thomas gets himself stung by a Griever and discovers the Griever home is indeed an exit. Furthermore, the code that the Maze has been spelling out is the clue to their escape.

A large group of the teenagers led by Thomas, decide to make a run for it through the maze, feeling what could be worse than being stuck in the Glade. They succeed, only to find out that they've been involved in an experiment being conducted by the Creators, a group called WICKED, who may or may not be evil.

After exiting the maze the boys and Teresa then get "rescued" by rebels and taken to a safe haven while being told about "the Flare" - an apocalyptic occurrence that killed off half of the world's population. The epilogue reveals that the "rebel group" may just be another variable in the experiment, and they weren't the only group being evaluated.

  

This book is for the younger reader, it lets them escape into a world of mystery, with hints of danger, but mostly excitement. There is tension between the boys and the world they find themselves in. Living in the Glade the boys have developed their own language, which is not always easy to follow and I’m not sure the boys use it in the same way. The story finishes with a cliff-hanger at the end, and made me want to read the other two in the series. In this book particularly there are a lot of questions left unanswered, and only a little more is revealed in book two and three, however, a prequel book four does explain a lot of the mystery. Certainly a good read. Rating: 4 stars

Dr James Sheppard

30th June 2015

My recent reading: 2015

My Recent Reading: 44 books in 2015

Date	Book Title	Author	Notes / Rating
28th December 2015	The Santa Klaus Murder	Mavis Dorial Hay	4 stars
26th December 2015	Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Illustrated Edition	J K Rowling	5 stars
15th December 2015	The Broken Window	Jeffery Deaver	5 stars
8th December 2015	A Christmas Cracker	Trisha Ashley	5 stars
December 2015	Live & Let Bee The Visitor’s Book Model for Murder Hats off to Murder One for the Rook	Dawn Nelson	5 stars
20th November 2015	The Martian	Andy Weir	5 stars
18th October 2015	The Hogs Back Mystery	Freeman Wills Crofts	3 stars
12th October 2015	Rubicon	Steven Saylor	4 stars
5th October 2015	And Then There Were None	Agatha Christie	5 stars
1st October 2015	The Taxidermists Daughter	Kate Moss	5 stars
14th Sept 2015	Moon Over Soho	Ben Aaronovitch	4 stars
11th Sept	A is for Arsenic	Kathryn Harkup	5 stars
7th Sept 2015	River of London	Ben Aaronovitch	5 starts
1st Sept 2015	The ABC Murders	Agatha Christie	5 stars
31st Aug 2015	Murder on the Orient Express	Agatha Christie	5 stars
	The Last Praetorian (The Redemption Trilogy Book 1)	Mike Smith	5 stars
	Road Shandra	Ken Lozito	4 stars
	Murder in Steeple Martin	Lesley Cookman	5 stars
14th July 2015	The Return of Sherlock Holmes	Arthur Conan Doyle	5 stars
6th July 2015	Sanctus	Simon Toyne	5 stars
22nd June 2015	A Murder is Announced	Agatha Christie	5 stars
9th June 2015	Desert Gold	Wilber Smith	4 stars
5th June 2015 3rd June 2015 1st June 2015	The Death Cure (Book 3 in The Maze Runner series) The Scorch Trails (Book 2 in the Maze Runner series) Maze Runner	James Dasher	3 stars 3 stars 5 stars
22nd May 2015	The Golden Age of Murder	Martin Edwards	5 stars
22nd May 2015	A Seaside Affair	Fern Britton	2 stars
18th May 2015	The Agatha Christie Companion (Reference book)	Denis Sanders	3 stars
	The Murder of Roger Ackroyd	Agatha Christie	5 stars
16th May 2015	The Bootlegger	Clive Cussler	4 stars
9th May 2015	The Rome Express	Arthur Griffith	3 stars
2nd May 2015	How to be Good	Nick Hornby	3 stars
23rd April 2015	The Mysterious World of Agatha Christie (Reference book)	Jeffrey Feinman	3 stars
16th April 2015	Endless Night	Agatha Christie	5 stars
11th April 2015	The Meaning of Night	Michael Cox	4 stars
	The Detection Collection (short stories)	The Detection Club	3 stars
1st April 2015	The Mystery of Edwin Drood	Charles Dickens	5 stars
17th March	Five Little Pigs	Agatha Christie	5 stars
2nd March 2015	The Skin Collector	Jeffery Deaver	5 stars
25th February 2015	Deep Crossing	E. R. Mason	5 stars
11th February 2015	The Hanging in the Hotel	Simon Brett	4 stars
3rd February 2015	Soldier of Fortune	Edward Marston	4 stars
26th January 2015	The Lake District Murder	John Bude	3 stars
8th January 2015	Spiders Web	Agatha Christie	5 stars