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stonepicnicking_okapi) wrote2024-09-03 12:51 pm
stonepicnicking_okapi) wrote2024-09-03 12:51 pm
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All of Agatha: 4:50 from Paddington
This series of entries is commentary on my lifelong quest to read all of Agatha Christie's works in UK publication order.
I've read that Dorothy L. Sayers wasn't so much in love with Lord Peter as with Bunter, and I think the same must apply here to Agatha Christie and Lucy Eylesbarrow, the domestic extraordinaire who Miss Marple engages to find the body at Rutherford Hall.
4:50 from Paddington is one of my favorite books of all time, and easily in the top five of my favorite Agatha Christie's.
So Miss Marple's no-nonsense Scottish friend sees a murder in another train, but the body never turns up. So Miss Marple engages Lucy to take a position at the Hall and dig around until she finds the body in the Long Barn.
I even pulled out some quotes:
"...Cedric--that's the one who lives abroad. Paints!" The inspector invested the word with its full quota of sinister significance.
"I remember so very well in my young days, the black mixture and the brown mixture...and the white mixture, and Doctor So-and-so's pink mixutre. People didn't mix those up nearly as much. [of course that made me think of this one:
]
Finally we get quite a few Untold Stories in this one: Mrs. Brierly who went to the looney bin but didn't want to tell the kids so had people post them postcards from different places and Mrs. Stanwich who poisoned all her kids because she was jealous of their youth.
I watched the two TV adaptations, and I listened to a audiobook on CD with Joan Hickson narrating so I got my fill. It's a really great story.
Next Up: Ordeal by Innocence, which I feel will tip back and forth between racist and cringy.
I've read that Dorothy L. Sayers wasn't so much in love with Lord Peter as with Bunter, and I think the same must apply here to Agatha Christie and Lucy Eylesbarrow, the domestic extraordinaire who Miss Marple engages to find the body at Rutherford Hall.
4:50 from Paddington is one of my favorite books of all time, and easily in the top five of my favorite Agatha Christie's.
So Miss Marple's no-nonsense Scottish friend sees a murder in another train, but the body never turns up. So Miss Marple engages Lucy to take a position at the Hall and dig around until she finds the body in the Long Barn.
I even pulled out some quotes:
"...Cedric--that's the one who lives abroad. Paints!" The inspector invested the word with its full quota of sinister significance.
"I remember so very well in my young days, the black mixture and the brown mixture...and the white mixture, and Doctor So-and-so's pink mixutre. People didn't mix those up nearly as much. [of course that made me think of this one:
]Finally we get quite a few Untold Stories in this one: Mrs. Brierly who went to the looney bin but didn't want to tell the kids so had people post them postcards from different places and Mrs. Stanwich who poisoned all her kids because she was jealous of their youth.
I watched the two TV adaptations, and I listened to a audiobook on CD with Joan Hickson narrating so I got my fill. It's a really great story.
Next Up: Ordeal by Innocence, which I feel will tip back and forth between racist and cringy.