All of Agatha: The Big Four, The Blue Train, and Seven Dials

This month, I managed 3 Agatha Christie books.

The Big Four is a Poirot and Hastings and about a secret international conspiracy of murder and mayhem. The problem reading this in 2021 is that you know it isn't a question of being secret. Treason got committed in broad daylight on Twitter by the last US president. And collusion, too. It's a question of not enough people with power being willing to put a stop to evil. And there just aren't.

The Mystery of the Blue Train [audiobook, John Moffat, who does American accents without sounding too marble-mouthed.] I have a special place in my heart for this one because I wrote a Jeeves and Wooster fusion with it, Jeeves & the Blue Train. I like it still. An arrogant American heiress takes a cursed ruby on a train trip with her lover, her husband, her husband's lover, and Hercule Poirot. What could go wrong? I am sad, of course, that Katherine Grey ended up with Derek Kettering in the end. I think if I inherited the fortune that Katherine Grey did, I'd never speak to another man again.

The Seven Dials Mystery. [audiobook, Emilia Fox, who is a solid female narrator] Very silly. It is blending a country house murder with another secret international conspiracy plot (this time with masks) where no one is what they seem. With the cast from The Secret of Chimneys, which, in my opinion, is not advertisement.

Next up is Partners in Crime a Tommy and Tuppence short story collection. I think I will take my time with it as Christie is doing parodies of different detectives with each chapter and I'll try to read some of the unfamiliar originals.

Reading & Listening

Almost all of these are Golden Age of Crime Mysteries.

Castle Skull by John Dickson Carr. I am reading all the Henri Bencolin series. This involves a scary German castle, a genius magician, and a brilliant actor. Melodramatic. The French Bencolin and his American sidekick Jeff.

The Lost Gallows by John Dickson Carr. Another Henri Bencolin mystery. He and Jeff are back in London at a residential club. This involves vengeance for an old crime. A touch of Egyptian macabre. And a dead man driving a car through London in the fog. Sharon, from It Walks by Night is back, too.

Death Has Deep Roots by Michael Gilbert. One of the most satisfying court room mysteries I've ever read. Half trial, half current murder investigation set just after WWII with investigators in different parts of Europe feeding information back to the barristers. Inspector Hazelrigg mysteries.

Bats in the Belfry by ECR Lorac. A man vanishes completely until his suitcase and passport are found in a sinister artist's studio, the Belfry, in a crumbling house in Notting Hill. Of course, the victim had Secrets. An Inspector MacDonald mystery. I have checked out, but not started, another Inspector MacDonald mystery, Murder in the Mill-Race.

The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith [audiobook, narrated by Steve Marvel, who did a great job]. Sometimes Miss Marple teases her nephew Raymond West that he writes are about unpleasant people. This is kind of book Raymond West would write. Everyone is sort of unlikable. An American writer goes to Tunisia to write a script. He's supposed to meet a producer, who never shows up. The producer ends up committing suicide in the first guy's apartment in New York after having a fling with the man's girlfriend (who shows up in Tunisia later). There's a typical Rah, Rah, Our Way of Life American and a gay Dane and the American ends up killing a Tunisian who breaks into his bungalow by throwing his typewriter on him, but he's never held accountable for the crime. He breaks up with his girlfriend and goes back to his first wife and leaves Tunisia. I listened to it for a sense of Tunisia (because Marwan Kenzari, the actor who plays Joe in The Old Guard is part Tunisian), but I lived abroad long enough and enough places to know what shit Americans can be overseas and that's all it was.

The State of the Ficcery: May 2021

Word Count: 26,272

Writing: [note: some of these are one work filling several prompts/challenges]

9 works for Merry Month of Masturbation [I was hoping for one more to beat last years record of 9 but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. I took a long nap today, though, so perhaps later.]

5 works for Dick-or-Treat
1 work for Bottom Joe weeks
1 work for my Gen Prompt Bingo
5 prose works and 10 poems for Yahtzee

I wrote for 7 days in the GYWO 7 days, 7 stories challenge. I finished 2 poems from April.

Coming Up: I am not going to let myself do anything but my Unconventional Courtship fic until its due date which is 17 June.

Personal: Made the decision to put Minor down at a lower level for soccer next year based on how committed he seems to playing and how much it costs ($$$) to keep him at this level so I won't have to deal with this particular set of stressors (coach, Fascist Soccer Dads, one of which wore a Mt. Rushmore shirt today at the tournament which made me slightly ill). I turned 46. Had to deal with Minor's computer breaking as well as him getting caught watching porn at school on his school computer (which they track, showing just how bright he is sometimes) and him running away from me at the lake, which was all not fun. Minisculus has breakdowns about cicadas flying through the air. I have managed to wake up before 6 am on 26 out of 31 days and gotten my 10,000 steps on 26 out of 31 days. I set a system of paying the boys $1 (50 cents each) for me not eating at least 2 vegetables and I had to pay out $7, which is not great, but a baseline from which to improve. I did Jillian Michael's Workout #1 of Beginner Shred many days (I didn't count) with the sound off because she definitely has a White Woman American Voice that is not motivating. The boys' father is leaving on 19 June so there will be a big clean and getting ready. He's been home for over a year so it will be strange to have him gone again. But I am determined to figure out how everything in the household works. Like, I don't pay the electric bill ever. The pool opens this weekend at the apartment complex so I expect we'll go there a lot. Minisculus doesn't swim, though, so it makes it Super Boring for me. Minisculus learned to ride a bike, for which I'm very proud. I've signed them up for a half day for 5 days of gymnastics to see if they like it.