3 Weeks 4 Dreamwidth: Day 7

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the comm of the day is...sweetandshort.

This is a multi-fandom fic & graphics comm. Fills of up to 500 words. There are 4 kinds of challenges. A four-word bingo. A set of 20 one-word prompts and the goal is to use 10 out of 20. Alternate months a picture prompt or a comment prompt. A starting or ended sentence. Prompts are good for the month and there is an amnesty on all prompts every fourth month.

All of Agatha: Hickory Dickory Dock and Dead Man's Folly

This series of entries is commentary on my lifelong quest to read all of Agatha Christie's works in UK publication order.

I am solidly in the 1950's. Two Poirots.

Hickory Dickory Dock [1955].

I enjoyed this more than I anticipated. First of all, we get Miss Lemon, Poirot's secretary, whom I like very much as a side character and her sister. Her sister is matron at a boarding house for students, where the crimes are taking place. The students are a mix of different nationalities and races, so I was anticipating a lot of racism, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been [faint praise, I know, but still]. I enjoyed the mystery, and it made sense to me.

This novel is set at a student hostel. Poirot is initially asked to investigate petty thefts and vandalism in the hostel.
 
Dead Man's Folly [1956].

I don't know that I felt completely satisfied at the resolution. Ariadne Oliver is in this one. She is running a murder game at a fete, which is a classic premise. There is a murder of a child, which is disturbing. And the clues are a mixed bag of heavy-handed and very obtuse. I got the sense that she has used most of these clues in other books to better use, i. e. having a lady wearing a flamboyant hat & outfit for Reasons. The word is: unconvincing, which coming after the one before made it more strikingly unconvincing.

Poirot is invited to Nasse House in Devon by crime-mystery writer Ariadne Oliver, who is staging a Murder Hunt as part of a summer fête the next day. At Nasse House, Mrs Oliver explains that small aspects of her plans for the Murder Hunt have been changed by requests from people in the house rather deviously, until a real murder would not surprise her.

Next Up: A Mary Westmacott I've never read called The Burden. It sounds very dreary so I may put it off until June. Let's not spoil the birthday month with yuckity-yuck.

Happy May Day!

Here's the Month page of my bullet journal.

Prompts: Do-May-stic 2024

Do-may-stic 2024

More information: https://domaystic.tumblr.com/