30. Murder in the Mews (1937)

{also published as Dead Man's Mirror}

(I wonder how it is chosen which short story or novella after which the collection will be named.)

So, dear Agatha, guess what?!

A local theater here is doing And Then There Were None at the end of April.  I am honestly just as excited about seeing it as I am about seeing P!nk in May!  Robert and I are going with Joshua, his girlfriend Nyx, and Christianne.  We just got the tickets last week.

And then I looked at my reading plan and saw that ATTWN is only about 5 books out!  If I book it (haha, pun intended), then I can have it read before we see the play.  Apparently I've not read it!  Even Josh has read it, for some reason.  I have played the PC game, though!

The only dilemma is that I'd just begun Lord of the Rings (to read "with" Josh, although he's way ahead of me), and I have 3 "optional" books to read before the conference I'm attending in mid-April, less than a month away.  Oh yeah, and it's tax season.  And the house is falling apart.  And I could really use one of those nurse/nanny types that you always had to help with your ONE child (remember I have FOUR)... but I digress.

Enjoyed every one of these 4 shorts and I couldn't even pick a favorite.  Learned a few new words along the way - mews (wasn't what a I thought it was), gasper, saloon car, baronet, and more.  I enjoyed seeing familiar friends - Sattherthwaite and Japp.  And I loved that the twisted endings - probably "Triangle at Rhodes" caught me most.

Thank you again, Dame Agatha.

Love,
me

29. Death on the Nile (1937)

This could also be titled The Love Boat, or maybe even What Happens on the Karnak Stays on the Karnak.  Yes, I'm chuckling to myself.

*spoiler alert*

At the end of this book, a number of family secrets and "lesser" crimes are hushed up ("Race sighed. 'That's all right,' he said. 'This is the Hush Hush House.'"), four people are engaged to be married, and five people are dead.  You've got to admit, it has all the makings of a Hollywood movie.  Oh, and looky there - they *are* making a new one to debut in November 2019, following the success of last year's Murder on the Orient Express.

(Actually, as I searched Google for the details on the new movie, I was surprised to find that the 1978 movie version has Angela Lansbury in it!  How I love Angela - another Dame, if I'm not mistaken!  I will have to find this version soon and give it a watch!)

One disappointment in this read - and it had nothing to do with the novel itself.  I was searching my friend Google again to understand a phrase, and my eyes inadvertently traveled to a paragraph revealing the culprit of the story.  I was bummed to know this up front as I was only about 1/3 of the way through the book.  Still... it was fun to see how it turned out, as the solution seemed impossible.

I was talking to Joshua just yesterday I believe about how at times some of your personal experiences and ideas come through in your story.  I talked about how you seemed to admire, if not share, Max's love for archeology and how that was sometimes a backdrop in your stories.  In this one, archeology has nothing to do with the story, and yet it does drop in, with this beautiful description by Poirot of the methodology of solving a mystery:

"Once I went professionally to an archaeological expedition - and I learnt something there.  In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, everything is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scrape it here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it.  That is what I have been seeking to do - clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth - the naked shining truth."

One final comment - this may have been obvious, but I only just realized in this novel what a foil Colonel Race is to Captain Hastings.

Thanks again for the ride, Dame Agatha.  Always a pleasure.