Before my decision to sign up for the 2021 Read Christie Challenge at agathachristie.com I hadn’t read a book by the world’s most famous crime writer for some 16 years. I’d first discovered one of her works when I was around 12 and browsing in the little bookshop which had opened in our school at lunchtimes and provided a valid excuse for being out of the cold playgrounds. The first book I bought was “And Then There Were None”, admittedly, it did have a different title then in the UK and a lurid cover which made me approach the book as if I was going to be reading horror and would need the lights on at night. The out and out chills did not happen but I loved the structure of this book, the one by one killings,a new experience for someone fresh from children’s literature. I think this was probably the first book I’d read which was intended for adults.

I read quite a few more from the Christie canon moving into my early teenage years but then only the odd book until 2002 when I thought I’d start again with “The Mysterious Affair At Styles”, I read another two of her books over the next couple of years but then nothing until tempted by the Challenge. TV wise, I’ve never watched an episode of “Poirot”, nor Joan Hickson’s celebrated “Miss Marple” although I’ve watched the Margaret Rutherford films a number of times and the more recent ITV adaptations with Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie. I have never watched any of the big Hollywood adaptations of her movies but have watched the odd one-off BBC productions. I wouldn’t class myself as a Christie fan, as I’m all over the place with what I have read and seen and what I haven’t. I thought the 12 books which would be recommended to me by the organisers of the Challenge might change that. It has certainly pushed the author up to number two in my most read authors list.

Although 2021 is not quite finished I think I can say that none of the Christie titles are going to end up in my Top 10 books of the year but as she has formed a significant part of my reading experience this year I thought I’d give these titles their own moment of glory as I look back at what I have read and which impressed me the most.

My Top 5 Christie Titles from the Read Christie Challenge

5. A Pocket Full Of Rye (1953) (May’s Choice)

I said of this Miss Marple novel; “I thought I’d picked up on the clues and sorted out the ending but I hadn’t, so there is the pleasure of Miss Christie outfoxing me again.” 

4. The Sittaford Mystery (1931) (December’s Choice)

This snowy stand-alone was a perfect way to finish the Challenge. I said; “There’s a lightness and a great energy to it which made it a quick, perfect over-Christmas read”. 

3. Murder Is Easy (1939) (April’s Choice)

Another 30’s novel which is actually classed as a Superintendant Battle novel, although he does not contribute a great deal. I said; “I like the feel of this book, the location and characterisation gives it stronger atmosphere and the folklore slant offers us suggestions of darker forces at play and even of satanic orgies in the woods.”

2. The Murder At The Vicarage (1936) (July’s Choice)

I seem to be showing a clear preference for 1930’s Christie and I said; “It is set in St. Mary Mead and was the first novel to feature Miss Marple, not in a central role but she certainly knows what’s going on and I’m not surprised that Christie saw her potential as a recurring character.”

1. Death In The Clouds (1935) (October’s Choice)

There were 6 1930’s recommended titles in this year’s Challenge and I’ve placed four of them in my Top 4 positions. Even more surprisingly, for me, this was a Poirot novel. I’d come to the Challenge thinking I wouldn’t like the Poirot books much. However, of this I said; “The set-up is simple and yet the work seems more substantial and involving.”

And the Christie which really didn’t do it for me…. Well, I didn’t actively dislike any of the books but perhaps the one which most missed the mark was a collection of short stories which shows that Christie did not always have the magic touch in the 1930’s. Of Parker Pyne Investigates (1936) I said; “I felt the stories tended to blend one into another probably because Christie struggled to establish much in the way of characters within the short fiction format.”  

So, that’s the year-long Reading Challenge wound up. I mentioned in my last blog post that I am probably going to give it a miss for 2022 but the team at agathachristie.com have already got some good categories lined up so it is certainly worth signing up for. You never know, by mid- January I may be missing my monthly fix of Christie and might find myself signing up for another year.

The challenge this month was to read a title set after World War 2 with the recommendation from agathachristie.com being this standalone which in the Foreword the author claims as being one of her favourites which she planned for years.

I’m quite surprised by this because it feels to me fairly standard Christie, maybe a stronger literary feeling than some of her works yet lacking a little in tension.  Her narrator Charles is effective in that he is able to observe situations both from those involved in the crime committed and those involved in the solving of it as his father is Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard.

When his girlfriend’s wealthy grandfather Aristide Leonides is believed to be murdered Charles decamps down to Swinley Dean and the Crooked House of the title to see what he can find out.  Sophia’s family have not met him before but they conveniently embrace him and soon trust him with confidences rather than seeing him as the outsider with police associations which he actually is.  This gives him a good position in the middle of the situation.  It’s obvious that Christie is using nursery rhymes as a device, here the “There Was A Crooked Man”, as she does in a number of her books but I do not really see how it fits in despite it being quoted in full in the third chapter.  I would have thought that if she was going to use this she would have made more of it than she has (as she did in “A Pocket Full Of Rye” (1953)).

The family are all suspects giving this crime a very domestic feel.  Sophia’s mother, Magda, steals scenes with her dramatics and her brother and sister Eustace and Josephine are distinctly odd (the younger generation damaged by the uncertainties of the war years?).  Grandfather married a woman a fraction of his age not long before his death so it is no stretch of the imagination to see who the family thinks bumped him off.

It is enjoyable throughout but I wouldn’t consider it amongst Christie’s best works and of the 11 read for the challenge I would put it around mid-way.  Next month the theme to finish off this year long reading challenge is a book set in bad weather.

Crooked House was published in 1949.  I read the Harper Collins e-book edition.

This month’s challenge was to read a book set before World War II and this 1939 publication just fits into the timescale.  This  was the title recommended by the good folk at agathachristie.com and I did think it was a stand-alone, but no, after I read it I discovered it is the 4^th in the series featuring Superintendent Battle,  a sequence which had begun with 1925’s “The Secret Of Chimneys”.  Here Battle makes a blink and you miss him appearance and adds nothing to the plot so my thinking it a stand-alone is very excusable.

Main character Luke Fitzwilliam is a retired police officer returning to England from his post in the Mayang Straits when he meets an elderly woman on the train on her way to Scotland Yard to report a murderer at large in her village of Wychwood-Under-Ashe.  Fitzwilliam, at a loose end goes to investigate on the pretence of writing a book about folklore and local customs.

This has been my favourite of the Challenge books so far and there’s quite a notch up in the entertainment factor from my second favourite, The Hollow.  Most of the murders have already taken place leaving Fitzwilliam to work out whodunnit.  I like the feel of this book, the location and characterisation gives it stronger atmosphere and the folklore slant offers us suggestions of darker forces at play and even of satanic orgies in the woods.  Fitzwilliam stays at the home of poor-village-boy-made good now newspaper magnate Lord Whitfield and becomes fascinated by his fiancée.  There’s a mixture of doctors, librarians, publicans, servant girls in the cast list and even a cat called Wonky Pooh!

The novel feels freer and less formulaic than some of her Poirot titles.  I was thoroughly entertained and didn’t guess whodunnit.  I would have been unlikely to have encountered this book without the Christie Challenge and would have missed out on this enthralling cosy crime caper with good edges of darkness.  Next month it’s a story featuring tea, luckily there’s a suggested title.

Murder Is Easy was first published in 1939.  I read a Harper Collins paperback edition. Further details about the Agatha Christie Challenge and Facebook/Instagram book groups on this title can be found at http://www.agathachristie.com.