"The Mousetrap" at Arvada Theater - September 17, 2025

 Dear Agatha,

Robert took me to see "The Mousetrap" in a small theater in Arvada.  It was so well done.  I was impressed with every actor, every character drawn, every piece of set work, all of it.  

But can I tell you how dumb I am?  You'll just shake your head I'm sure, but man I'm such an idiot.  

After the first act I kept thinking that man, this is so familiar!  I had to have read it before!  At halftime - er, intermission - I looked on my blog to find this:  https://deardameagatha.blogspot.com/2020/03/52-three-blind-mice-and-other-stories.html

Idiot squared.  That's me.

But it was really an enjoyable date night with my husband.  Maybe someday I'll get to see it in London.  In some September.  That's a bucket list item, and I don't have very many.

Love,

b.

71. At Bertram's Hotel (1965)

 I want to go to there, dear Agatha,

But I'm sure I'd find, as Miss Marple did, that nothing is as it seems, is it?  

Another well-constructed web with much going on - lots of things to distract and misdirect, and as always fun to follow it to the end.  

Canon Pennyfather's character perhaps hit home a little too closely - seeing in him several shared traits with my own father.  

All for today,

b.

70. A Caribbean Mystery (1964)

 Dear Agatha,

Not much to say, again, for lack of my own little gray cells, but another enjoyable story.

Note:  The millionaire Jason Rafiel appears again, posthumously, in the novel Nemesis where he sends Miss Marple on a case specifically because of her success in solving the events related in A Caribbean Mystery. (Wikipedia)

And another note:  Miss Marple calls herself Nemesis in this story.  I may have to revisit this one when I get to Nemesis - which actually is only 7 publication years away...

Thanks as always, Dame Christie,

b.

69. The Clocks (1963)

 Oh dear Agatha,

This one had me from the very first pages - from the prologue.  What a puzzle you created from the very start and that needed 200 pages more to resolve.  There is so much going on here and yet it doesn't feel overdone or too cluttered.  Fun book that I definitely want to read again.

Catching up,

b.

68. The Mirror Crack'd (1962)

Dear Agatha,

So there are spaces of months or even years between posts - so what, right?  I'm going to get it done though.  I'm going to read all of them.

I've read through these past 4 novels sometime over the past couple of months.  I don't remember precise dates, and really it doesn't matter.  We're in the right year, so there's that.

So The Mirror Crack'd - A Christie classic.  Always fun, always twists and turns.

I followed the book by watching the 1980 film with a lot of big stars (!) that I honestly had never really seen before: Joan Crawford, Kim Novak, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, and of course my favorite Dame Angela Lansbury in the role of Miss Marple.  

Books are always better, though, aren't they?

Pardon my brief comments.  As I age, my mind does not remain as sharp as Miss Jane's.  And I didn't mark anything specific to comment on here.

Thanks for the fun, as always.

b.