SCRATCHING A NICHE: On Whodunits and Hitchcockian Hooey

Considering Sunday is a day of rest, this lazy cuss managed to get a lot done! I had a nice walk along the shore under a bright Indian Summer sky. I replaced all my decrepit plastic storage containers with spiffy new Pyrex bowls. I met the new lady Doctor. I like her, but her debut …

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TWO REVIEWS, TWO QUESTIONS: Part One

Here is the first question:  Why is Sophie Hannah writing the new Poirot novels? For many of you, the real question is why anyone should endeavor to continue Hercule Poirot’s career forty-five years after his true creator’s death? It’s a good question, but it’s not my question. Notice the italics on the name "Sophie Hannah." It …

FELICITATIONS, DAME AGATHA!

You may not be reading this until tomorrow (Monday) because I’m sure that, like everyone else, you’re outside celebrating Agatha Christie’s one-hundred-twenty-eighth-and-one-day birthday! Some fools posted yesterday during the pre-celebratory festivities, but the real fans are out there right now, spreading the cheer about the world’s most famous mystery writer. Okay, look, I had a really busy …

THE BRIDGE TWIXT GAD AND MODERNITY: Christie’s The Body in the Library

The difference between Agatha Christie in the 1920’s and the 1930’s was, in every way, startling. Although she was thirty when she published her first novel, there was something of the gawky girl in Christie’s writing and the tragic romantic in her personal life. Of the nine novels she published between 1920 and 1929, five …

GOING OCD ON MY GAD

Recently, I had the pleasure of listening to three blogger pals discuss John Dickson Carr on the podcast that two of them host on a bimonthly basis. Dan, of The Reader Is Warned, is an artist, and JJ, of The Invisible Event, is a mathematician, so between them they brought a lively blend of stats …

A GREAT CONVERGENCE: Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero

“I like a good detective story . . . But, you know, they begin in the wrong place! They begin with the murder. But the murder is the end. The story begins long before that – years before sometimes – with all the causes and events that bring certain people to a certain place at …

A MOTIVE FOR LOVING CHRISTIE

Every so often, a confluence of events brings about enlightenment. It’s how we got penicillin and harnessed electricity and learned how to fly. In the art world, it happens when paints mix together fortuitously or musical notes embrace in harmony or Warner Brothers produces The Maltese Falcon three times before they get it right. As an …