The historical one - DEATH COMES AS THE END - is the one you could leave out of that group, but otherwise it is a good (if obvious) list. I'd replace that with DEATH ON THE NILE or one of the other travel ones.
I've read 4 of those, but I have never even heard of Endless Night. Maybe I should check it out. Is it blasphemous to say that Christie is not in my top 5 "golden age" novelists?
Don--ENDLESS NIGHT is my absolute favorite Christie (and I think I've read everything she wrote), but it's really atypical of her work, so don't go into it expecting a "village cozy." It's really the closest thing to noir she ever wrote.
For great sleight-of-hand (that famous Christie "talent to deceive"), I'd choose DEATH IN THE CLOUDS where a clue is provided so obviously and casually that it goes right over the reader's head.
DEATH ON THE NILE is my favorite of the "travelogues" (EVIL UNDER THE SUN, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS,etc.). Like ENDLESS NIGHT, there's an air of fatalistic gloom penetrating the whole thing.
I read a ton of Christie when I was a teen but haven't read much since. I haven't read ENDLESS NIGHT, so I might need to pick that one up. I have DEATH IN THE CLOUDS here but haven't read it.
MURDER AT THE VICARAGE is also notable because of the delightful first-person narration, by the vicar himself. He appears in a couple of other Marples but as far as I know never narrated another.
The second Marple, THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY, is a wonderful example of the everyone-has-an-alibi school, and it's really good. The Poirots I've read were so long ago I have trouble remembering them, but I recall I was impressed by LORD EDGEWARE DIES.
Also, I think it's interesting that Christie managed to write books in which everyone did it, no one (apparently) did it, and, of course, ACKROYD. She really worked every variation of the person least suspected.
Yes! It was during that time Hayley was trying to shake her child-star image. She never went the full Miley Cyrus, but she appeared topless in several movies in the early 1970s. The adaptation of ENDLESS NIGHT is fairly faithful to the book (and efficiently cuts one small subplot/red herring that was rather cumbersome in the book) and features what I believe is George Sanders's last screen appearance.
Psychomania (1973) is a British horror-cult film starring Nicky Henson, Beryl Reid, George Sanders (in his final film) and Robert Hardy. Beryl Reid played Henson's "Mummy."
Believe it or not, I've seen PSYCHOMANIA. All I remember is that it was very, very bad. Of course Nicky Henson's claim to fame is his role as Mr. Johnson in the "Psychiatrist" episode of FAWLTY TOWERS, though we've seen him on stage in THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, among others.
One last one, I promise. When Hayley was 25 she married producer-director Roy Boutling, who was 33 years her senior. Amazingly, it didn't last. Her current "partner," Indian-American actor Firdous Bamji, is 20 years her junior. And of course her sister Juliet, who was 38 at the time, married 20 year old actor Maxwell Caulfield in 1980.
I was so caught up with THE ABC MURDERS that I read the complete book one day as a sophomore in high school to the detriment of every class that day. The teachers never caught on.
I am a big Christie fan. Some of the best, but little discussed, work appears after the war when she got darker -- such Poirots as THE HOLLOW and FIVE LITTLE PIGS. ABC MURDERS, of the early ones, is a groundbreaking serial killer novel.
She's not very cozy, really. The murders are frequently nasty, even gruesome, and both Poirot and Marple have an avenging streak.
In my top three, and you know em of course, nobody done it, everybody done it, and the narrator done it. A 5th favorite work would be a toss-up, but my 4th, not a novel, is The Mousetrap. Four giant classics in my book.
16 comments:
The historical one - DEATH COMES AS THE END - is the one you could leave out of that group, but otherwise it is a good (if obvious) list. I'd replace that with DEATH ON THE NILE or one of the other travel ones.
Jeff
I've read 4 of those, but I have never even heard of Endless Night. Maybe I should check it out. Is it blasphemous to say that Christie is not in my top 5 "golden age" novelists?
Don--ENDLESS NIGHT is my absolute favorite Christie (and I think I've read everything she wrote), but it's really atypical of her work, so don't go into it expecting a "village cozy." It's really the closest thing to noir she ever wrote.
For great sleight-of-hand (that famous Christie "talent to deceive"), I'd choose DEATH IN THE CLOUDS where a clue is provided so obviously and casually that it goes right over the reader's head.
DEATH ON THE NILE is my favorite of the "travelogues" (EVIL UNDER THE SUN, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS,etc.). Like ENDLESS NIGHT, there's an air of fatalistic gloom penetrating the whole thing.
I read a ton of Christie when I was a teen but haven't read much since. I haven't read ENDLESS NIGHT, so I might need to pick that one up. I have DEATH IN THE CLOUDS here but haven't read it.
MURDER AT THE VICARAGE is also notable because of the delightful first-person narration, by the vicar himself. He appears in a couple of other Marples but as far as I know never narrated another.
The second Marple, THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY, is a wonderful example of the everyone-has-an-alibi school, and it's really good. The Poirots I've read were so long ago I have trouble remembering them, but I recall I was impressed by LORD EDGEWARE DIES.
Also, I think it's interesting that Christie managed to write books in which everyone did it, no one (apparently) did it, and, of course, ACKROYD. She really worked every variation of the person least suspected.
Wasn't Endless Night filmed with Hayley Mills?
Jeff
Yes! It was during that time Hayley was trying to shake her child-star image. She never went the full Miley Cyrus, but she appeared topless in several movies in the early 1970s. The adaptation of ENDLESS NIGHT is fairly faithful to the book (and efficiently cuts one small subplot/red herring that was rather cumbersome in the book) and features what I believe is George Sanders's last screen appearance.
I seem to have missed seeing Haley in the '70s. Too bad.
Or next to last:
Psychomania (1973) is a British horror-cult film starring Nicky Henson, Beryl Reid, George Sanders (in his final film) and Robert Hardy. Beryl Reid played Henson's "Mummy."
Believe it or not, I've seen PSYCHOMANIA. All I remember is that it was very, very bad. Of course Nicky Henson's claim to fame is his role as Mr. Johnson in the "Psychiatrist" episode of FAWLTY TOWERS, though we've seen him on stage in THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, among others.
Jeff
And we saw Beryl Reid 40+ years ago in THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE on Broadway.
Jeff
We've been watching Hayley Mills (who I had a huge crush on in the early 1960s) in the British series WILD AT HEART.
Jeff
One last one, I promise. When Hayley was 25 she married producer-director Roy Boutling, who was 33 years her senior. Amazingly, it didn't last. Her current "partner," Indian-American actor Firdous Bamji, is 20 years her junior. And of course her sister Juliet, who was 38 at the time, married 20 year old actor Maxwell Caulfield in 1980.
35 years later they are still married.
Jeff
I was so caught up with THE ABC MURDERS that I read the complete book one day as a sophomore in high school to the detriment of every class that day. The teachers never caught on.
I am a big Christie fan. Some of the best, but little discussed, work appears after the war when she got darker -- such Poirots as THE HOLLOW and FIVE LITTLE PIGS. ABC MURDERS, of the early ones, is a groundbreaking serial killer novel.
She's not very cozy, really. The murders are frequently nasty, even gruesome, and both Poirot and Marple have an avenging streak.
In my top three, and you know em of course, nobody done it, everybody done it, and the narrator done it. A 5th favorite work would be a toss-up, but my 4th, not a novel, is The Mousetrap. Four giant classics in my book.
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