Cracking Nuts: "The Murder of Santa Claus" (1952) by Tage la Cour

Tage la Cour's "Mordet pa julemanden" ("The Murder of Santa Claus," 1952), a parody-pastiche, originally appeared in a Danish crime anthology, Mord til jul (Murder for Christmas, 1952), before a translation was privately printed a year later and La Cour gifted a copy to Frederic Dannay – who's one half of the "Ellery Queen" partnership. Dannay was charmed enough by La Cour's "The Murder of Santa Claus" to have it published in the January, 1957, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

La Cour wrote "The Murder of Santa Claus" as a "sincere homage to the inimitable Agatha Christie" and EQMM presented to the story to their readers as "the cleverest parody of Hercule Poirot we have ever read." Let's find out.

"The Murder of Santa Claus" finds M. Hercules Poire and his biographer lazying around on Christmas Day with the radio softly playing Holy Night, Silent Night in the background. It appeared there would be no seasonal murders that Christmas "accompanied by the tunes of church and sleigh bells," until an urgent telegram arrives from Lady Gwendolyn: "AN ATROCIOUS MURDER COMMITTED TONIGHT AT DRUNKARD CASTLE. COME AT ONCE."

Lord Drunkard had been dressing himself up as Santa Claus in the library when he stabbed in the back with the obligatory, oriental-looking dagger and lived long enough to leave an unfinished, not very helpful dying message – reading "I'm being murdered today by—." Upon arrival at Drunkard Castle, Poire finds everyone with "exception of the corpse" gathered in the hall. I mean everyone. Every stock character is present from the son who had a bone to pick with his father and daughter in need of money to marry an Italian count to family from Australia and the police arrested a passing tramp. So finding the murderer should be easy enough for the Great Detective, but "no cases are quite that simple" when M. Poire as demonstrated by his solution.

Tage la Cour's "The Murder of Santa Claus" is best summed up as a short, but wonderful, piece of Grade-A nonsense in the spirit of Robert L. Fish's Schlock Homes series and Arthur Porges' Celery Green stories. A fun little story for the holiday. However, the best parody-pastiche of Hercule Poirot is still Amer Picon from Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936).

Notes for the curious: Somehow, I forgot to mention "The Murder of Santa Claus" appeared in that Danish anthology under the penname "Donald McGuire." From what I've been able to find online, Murder for Christmas is collection six short stories of which five are Danish translations of British authors. So my guess educated guess is that the editor, Tage la Cour, sneaked in his own, homegrown story under a foreign flag. I also forgot to mention that this story was translated into English by Poul Ib Liebe and the privately published edition came with illustrations from Lars Bo.

Lord Edgware Dies (1933) by Agatha Christie

Last year, I revisited one of Agatha Christie's lesser-known, sometimes unjustly overlooked detective novels, Peril at End House (1932), because the plot turns on a craftily camouflaged motive rather than a well-hidden murderer or a cleverly contrived alibi – making it a whydunit. Nick Fuller pointed out in the comments "by that light, Lord Edgware Dies—another where the murderer stands out—might then be a howdunit." That just handed me an excuse to toss Lord Edgware Dies (1933) on the reread pile.

Before tackling the book, I need to point out Lord Edgware Dies is preceded by Peril at End House and followed by Murder on the Orient Express (1934). Three novels each plotted around one of the big three questions of the detective story, who (MotOE), why (PaEH) and how (LED). Has anyone noticed this patterned link between these three Hercule Poirot mysteries before? Murder on the Orient Express usually gets lumped together with Death in the Clouds (1935) and Death on the Nile (1937) as Christie's murder-on-land-sea-and-air themed mysteries, but liked the who-why-how pattern between these three successive novels a lot more. A bit meta-ish. But then again, that perception might be a side effect of an increased dose of shin honkaku mysteries over the past few years. Anyway...

Lord Edgware Dies, alternatively published as Thirteen at Dinner, begins with Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings at a London theater where they spot a very famous face in the audience, Lady Edgware – better known to the world as Miss Jane Wilkinson. A young American actress currently enjoying success in London who had married the wealthy, slightly eccentric Lord Edgware three years previously. A choice she has come to regret. Jane Wilkinson intends to marry the Duke of Merton, but her husband refuses a divorce and "stands in the way of these romantic dreams." So she approaches Poirot asking him to try and pursued her husband to give her a divorce or she'll have to bump him off herself. She repeats several times before a number of witnesses she's considering to kill her husband. One of them remarks she's quite capable of committing murder, but "she hasn't any brains" as "her idea of a murder would be to drive up in a taxi, sail in under her own name and shoot."

Poirot wouldn't normally touch a divorce case, but now he has become intrigued and welcomes the opportunity to study Lord Edgware at close quarters. However, Lord Edgware informs Poirot he had agreed to a divorce months ago. He wrote and told her so, but the letter mailed to her Hollywood address never arrived ("extremely curious"). Poirot has the feeling there's still something to the affair which now appears to have taken care of itself.

Inspector Japp, of Scotland Yard, arrives at Poirot's doorstep the following morning with the news Lord Edgware was killed at his house in Regent Gate. Stabbed with surgical precision in the neck and murderer appears to be his wife. Jane Wilkinson went to the house in a taxi, announced herself at the door as Lady Edgware and sailed pass the butler to see her husband. Ten minutes later, the butler heard the front door close shut and the maid discovered the body the following morning. But her motive no longer holds up. More importantly, she can present an alibi as incontestable as the constitution of her homeland. So they have look elsewhere for suspects, but those pesky alibis, bodies and complications are found around every corner. Sort of...

Lord Edgware Dies is a howdunit, not a whodunit, in which the murderer's identity becomes apparent long before the final chapter rolls around. Apparent to everyone except the characters. This time, it's not just Hastings who's as dense as a lead-lined brick wall and it really is the story's only real problem. So let's get that out of the way first, before moving on the positives.

The plot that's setup is better suited for an inverted mystery, however, the inverted mystery doesn't really fit Hercule Poirot and the only way to make it work is to dumb him down a bit to the point where Poirot is as baffled by the whole thing as Hastings – until he overhears a chance remark in a crowd. It has been remarked that the credibility problem here lies with the alibi-trick, but thought it more unbelievable Poirot (SPOILER/ROT13) qvqa'g guvax vg fhfcvpvbhf gung gur bar crefba va Ybaqba jub pna qb n cvgpu-cresrpg vzvgngvba bs gur zheqrere qvrq gur fnzr qnl nf Ybeq Rqtjner sebz na nccnerag bireqbfr, abe gung gur vzcrefbangvba pbhyq unir orra qbar ba gur nyvov raq bs gur zheqre. Something that could to the story's advantage had it been inverted, cat-and-mouse style mystery/battle-of-wits between detective and murderer. How the story's structured and presented, you have to go along with it and ignore the obvious.

So where the plot and some of its finer details are concerned, Lord Edgware Dies is the very definition of a second-string detective novel, but not one devoid of qualities of its own.

Having now reread Peril at End House and Lord Edgware Dies, they clearly represent a period in Christie's career when the training wheels were coming off. Christie not only knew then what she could do with the detective story, as she showed in her graduation project known as Murder on the Orient Express, but had now the confidence to wield them. One of her most admirable and endearing qualities is on full display here. A talented or even merely a good, competent mystery writer can lie through their teeth without uttering a single untrue word. Very few of her contemporaries could match her when it comes to simultaneously rubbing the truth in your face and pulling the wool over your eyes. To quote Poirot "facts that are concealed acquire a suspicious importance," while "facts that are frankly revealed tend to be regarded as less important than they really are." Lord Edgware Dies is not the best nor most successfully executed example of this talent, she did it with all the bravado and brazenness that would distinguish her best-known, most celebrated 1930s mysteries – a decade she punctuated with the publication of And Then There Were None (1939). After Lord Edgware Dies, Christie became the Agatha Christie we remember today. There's something else worth pointing out.

Last year, I compiled "The Hit List: Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance" and seriously considered including Christie as a surprise entry or honorable mention. Not because she was in dire of reprints or had a reputation that needed a public overhaul, but because Christie wasn't an isolated phenomena. She took inspiration as much from her contemporaries as the other way round. Just compare The A.B.C. Murders (1936) to Anthony Berkeley's The Silk Stocking Murders (1928) or Sad Cypress (1940) to Dorothy L. Sayers' Strong Poison (1930). So having more of her contemporaries back in print gives more depth to her own work. For example, I kept thinking of Christopher Bush as Lord Edgware Dies is exactly the kind of detective novels he always tried to write with varying degrees of success. It has everything you often find in his work. A cast of characters filled with theatrical people. A handful of alibis with one of them potentially being fabricated, channel crossing alibi between France and alibi. A closely-linked pair of murders in the story's opening stages. So imagine Bush quite enjoyed and perhaps took inspiration from it.

I'm pretty sure Leo Bruce took inspiration from Lord Edgware Dies for M. Amer Picon ("Papa Picon") from Case for Three Detectives (1936). One of my favorite lines from that book comes when Sgt. Beef is complaining about the three titular amateur sleuths "with their stepsons, and their bells, and their where-did-the-screams-come-from" ("why they try to make it complicated"). Bruce was echoing Hasting's explaining to Japp how Poirot "always been fond of having things difficult" and "a straightforward case is never good enough for him," which is why Hastings believes Poirot always tries to make a case more difficult – especially when the solution comes out too easily. Sounds like Papa Picon.

So, in summation, Lord Edgware Dies is certainly not one of Christie's triumphs when it comes to plotting and you shouldn't think too deeply about the alibi-trick, but it's bravado and confidence in the shaky, less than perfect plot makes up for a lot. A mixed bag, to be sure, but an enjoyable and not wholly unimportant one. With the next novel, Christie really took off to become the embodiment of the Golden Age detective novel.

Peril at End House (1932) by Agatha Christie

Peril at End House (1932) is one of Agatha Christie's often overlooked novels forever standing in the shadows of her famous, widely celebrated genre classics like Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Death on the Nile (1937) and And Then There Were None (1939) – which holds true for nearly all of her so-called "second tier" mysteries. If another name had graced the covers of such titles as Lord Edgware Dies (1933), Murder is Easy (1939), Towards Zero (1944) and After the Funeral (1953), they would have been hailed as classic whodunits "Worthy of Christie."

I always viewed Peril at End House as the poster child of otherwise excellent mystery novels eclipsed by their author's more famous works. John Dickson Carr's The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939), Carter Dickson's The Reader is Warned (1939), Clayton Rawson's The Footprints on the Ceiling (1939) and Christianna Brand's Suddenly at His Residence (1946) all belong to this category. Peril at End House is admittedly not Christie's best detective novel, but I always liked it and wanted to see if can stand up to a fresh read. This time in English as I previously only read the Dutch translation, Moord onder vuurwerk (Murder During Fireworks).

Hercule Poirot is on the Cornish coast with his chronicler and long-time friend, Captain Arthur Hastings, enjoying both a holiday and a well-deserved retirement, simply content with sitting in the sun – proclaiming "I am not a stage favourite who gives the world a dozen farewells." Hastings warns him "such an emphatic pronouncement will surely tempt the gods." Just moments later, Poirot twists his ankle in the hotel garden and is helped by a woman, Nick Buckley, who owns the nearby End House. A "tumble-down old place" going "to rack and ruin" lacking a family ghost or curse, but she tells them she had "three escapes from sudden death in as many days." After saying goodbye, Poirot becomes very worried as she didn't swat away a wasp when they were talking. Poirot shows Hastings a spent bullet he picked up from the ground and the accompanying bullet hole in the hat she left behind. Someone is obviously trying to kill her!

So they go to End House to return the hat and warn Nick Buckley of the impending danger. There they find the usual, tightly-knit group of potential suspects. Mrs. Frederica "Freddie" Rice is Nick's greatest friend and confident who had a rotten life married to a beast of a man who abandoned her. Nick wishes she divorced him in order to marry their friend and Bond Street art dealer, Jim Lazarus. Commander George Challenger is another friend who wishes to marry Nick Buckley, but she sees no future in such a marriage ("...neither of us got a bean"). The gatehouse lodge is rented to an Australian couple, the Crofts, who Hastings labeled as friendly, pleasant and typical Australians. Poirot suggests they were, perhaps, playing "a part just a little too thoroughly." Charles Vyse is Nick's cousin and solicitor, but disapproves of her mode of life and hopes to reform her one day.

However, Poirot has a hard time convincing Nick her life is actually in danger. Nick finds the whole idea very amusing, "I'm not the beautiful young heiress whose death releases millions," but Poirot eventually convinces her to take it somewhat seriously and call down a friend to stay with her – she asks one of her Yorkshire cousins, Maggie. Unfortunately, the murderer mistakes Maggie for Nick, wearing her red shawl, shoots her during a firework show. So whodunit? And, more importantly, why? The motive really is the crux of the story.

The reason why Peril at End House has a poor reputation is that the murderer is not very well hidden, which is something you come to expect from the Queen of the Whodunit. This is true. I clearly remember from my first reading stumbling to the murder rather effortlessly, because even as a complete neophyte some things were so obvious they're impossible to miss and arouse suspicions. I think this was done on purpose as the real puzzle is not the identity of the murderer, but piecing together the cleverly hidden, fairly clued motive. Poirot himself remarks, "we must find the motive if we are to understand this crime." Peril at End House is a whydunit and not a bad one either. I love plot-oriented tropes like impossible crimes, unbreakable alibis and dying messages, but always dislike it when a detective story tacks on the motive as an after thought. If you want a good, solid plot, you also need pretty good motivation, not only to commit murder, but a reason to rig up a locked room scenario or an apparently air-tight alibi. So appreciated to see Christie applying her plotting skills to the why, for once, rather than the who and how.

That being said, Peril at End House could have worked as a whydunit with a stronger whodunit angle had Poirot (SPOILER/ROT13) sbbyrq rirelbar vapyhqvat Unfgvatf naq gur ernqre vagb oryvrivat gur svany nggrzcg ba Avpx jnf fhpprffshy, orsber gebggvat ure bhg ng gur fénapr sbe gur ovt erirny. N perfgsnyyra Cbvebg, orfgrq bapr ntnva ol n obk bs cbvfbarq pubpbyngrf, jbhyq unir arngyl qrsyngrq gur fhfcvpvba ntnvafg ure.

Peril at End House seems to be one of Christie's shortest novels, certainly read like her shortest novel, which might not have allowed for enough room to do justice to both. So all the attention went into the better idea. Namely the motive. I liked it. I can also see why Peril at End House comes up short for many compared to other Poirot novels as the plots feels slighter and rather obvious, in some ways, than most entries in the series – not to mention it lacks that hook to grab your attention. In that regard, Peril at End House is no Death in the Clouds (1935), The A.B.C. Murders (1936) or Cards on the Table (1936), but still a very well done, soundly plotted mystery novel in its own right. A mystery novel with a great idea at its core and brazenly clued. It's just that the name Agatha Christie demands something more than Peril at End House can deliver. A little unfair as it's still an excellent detective story and had it been written by someone like Christopher Bush (The Case of the Fatal Fireworks), it would have ranked as one of the five best Ludovic Travers novels. But that's the curse of being a so-called "second stringer" in the oeuvre of one of the best, most successful and famous authors the genre has produced in its 183 year history.

Note for the curious: the universally praised A Murder is Announced (1950) is next on the AC reread pile, because everyone keeps defending it and don't remember it being that good. But then again, I'm not a fan of Miss Marple. Even less so back then. So who knows what a fresh read might reveal. However, I might first return to the much neglected (on this blog, anyway) Dorothy L. Sayers.

Archery and Alibis: "Greenshaw's Folly" (1956) by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's short story collection The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960) reposed on last month's festive to-be-read pile, but didn't get around to it and moved to the 2024 pile – together with the British Library Crime Classics Christmas-themed anthologies. There is, however, one short story from The Adventures of the Christmas Pudding I wanted to get to before the end of this year. A short story I've not read before!

"Greenshaw's Folly" originally appeared in the November 3, 1956, publication of Star Weekly, reprinted in the March, 1957, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and collected in The Adventures of the Christmas Pudding. This short story has a bit of complicated backstory. In 1954, Christie wrote a Hercule Poirot novella, "Greenshore Folly," to help raise funds for her local church, but she decided to rework the novella into Dead Man's Folly (1956). "Greenshaw's Folly," featuring Miss Marple, was written as a replacement for the Hercule Poirot novella. That originally novella was eventually published in a 2014 hardcover edition (Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly, 1954). But the Miss Marple short story has an entirely different plot.

The story begins with the author Raymond West ("his books dealt bleakly with the sordid side of life") taking the well-known literary critic, Horace Bindler, to see a place known as Greenshaw's Folly. Bindler's hobby is collecting photographs of architectural monstrosities and Greenshaw's Folly certainly fits the bill. A sprawling, rambling miss-mash of styles erected in the 1800s costing the original Greenshaw a small fortune and "either went bankrupt or the next thing to it" ("hence the name, Greenshaw's Folly"), but a Greenshaw still lives there. The old, very eccentric Miss Katherine Greenshaw. While looking around and snapping pictures, Miss Greenshaw asks West and Bindler to witness her new will. A new will favoring her housekeeper, Mrs. Cresswell. She also tells them in passing she wishes to see her grandfather's old diaries published and West recommends someone to work on the diaries, Louisa Oxley.

So every day, Louisa reports to Raymond West and his aunt, Miss Jane Marple, what's happening at Greenshaw's Folly ("tomorrow another instalment of this thrilling serial"). Miss Marple is very puzzled about one of Miss Greenshaw's remarks, "if you want to know the time, ask a policeman," drawing a comparison to a certain Mr. Naysmith – who kept bees and liked to fool people ("...sometimes it led to trouble"). But everyone at the table "decided that dear Aunt Jane was perhaps getting a little bit disconnected in her old age," until the murder happened.

Louisa Oxley is working in the library, on the first floor, she hears a scream from the garden and sees Miss Greenshaw staggering towards the house with the shaft of an arrow sticking out of her breast. She can't go down to help, because someone had locked her in. Mrs. Cresswell is locked inside an adjacent room. So they have to wait for the police to arrive to begin their hunt for the murderer, but the three suspects, nephew, gardener and housekeeper, who have a motive also possess perfectly acceptable alibis. So it's up to Miss Marple to play ("...murder, dear Raymond, isn't a game") armchair detective and explain who killed Miss Greenshaw. But is it any good?

"Greenshaw's Folly" has been called "a genuine tale of pure mystery" and I agree for the most part, but it was written after Christie had produced her last great detective novel (After the Funeral, 1954) and right before the steady decline in quality. In this short story, you can see some of Christie's strengths has already began to wane as she recycled and patched together a ton of old ideas and tricks. However, the Agatha Christie of the 1930s and '40s was waning, en route to the Swinging Sixties, but not entirely gone as she certainly didn't phone it in. Christie's treatment of those old ideas and tricks felt fresh and even somewhat original in how they were presented and put to excellent use. It perhaps needed to be slightly longer to be fully effective, but, in every other regard, a good, solidly-plotted detective story from Christie's last strong period.

A note for the curious: "Greenshaw's Folly" is listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991), but it's not an impossible crime story. It's a classic alibi-breaker closer to Christopher Bush than John Dickson Carr.

Curtain (c. 1940/75) by Agatha Christie

So the last two ramblings on this blog were rereads of Agatha Christie's novel-length introductions of her famous literary creations, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, who made their first formal appearances a decade apart – respectively in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1916/20) and The Murder at the Vicarage (1930). If you have read those rambling reviews, you know my reasons (i.e. "hot takes") for preferring Hercule Poirot over Miss Marple. I'm not going to regurgitate those reasons here, except that I decided to reread The Mysterious Affair at Styles after The Murder at the Vicarage to put those reasons to the test.

The Murder at the Vicarage is backed by a decade of experience, which should have given the book a decisive edge over The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but even with a handicap, Poirot came out on top. However, they're both still minor titles in their respective series written when Christie's natural talent for murder was like a raw diamond in the process of being cut, shaped and polished. So having revisited the first Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple novels, back-to-back, I decided to go for the hat-trick and take a second look at a mystery from her vintage period. I think most of you agree there's only one logical title to follow a reread of The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

During the London blitz of World War II, Christie wrote two novels, Curtain (c. 1940) and Sleeping Murder (c. 1940), as an insurance policy, of sorts, for her family in case she was killed in the bombings – which were to be the last recorded cases of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Fortunately, Christie emerged from the London blitz unscathed and the unpublished novels were stored away in a safety deposit box with the intention to publish them posthumously. A change of plans allowed Curtain to be published, in 1975, mere months before Christie passed away in January, 1976.

Curtain, often subtitled "Poirot's Last Case," gives a fitting end to the Golden Age most recognizable detective character. I don't think it would be spoiling anything at this point in time to note that The New York Times published Hercule Poirot's obituary when Curtain was published. So this is truly Poirot's last hunt and gave Christie her last hurrah from the past, which in turn also presented a continuity problem. Curtain was written in the early 1940s and some references imply it takes place during the war ("...the war that was wiped out now by a second and a more desperate war"). Something that would make sense as the story returns to the location of the first novel, Styles Court, which is set during the First World War, but Poirot survived long after World War II! The Third Girl (1966) places an aged Poirot in the Swinging Sixties and Hallowe'en Party (1969) has him realizing that his fame has somewhat faded in the modern world. There are numerous references to the death penalty ("do you think I want to see you hanged by the neck..."), but Poirot's penultimate case (Elephants Can Remember, 1972) was published three years after the death penalty was abolished in Britain. I'm not even going to speculate about Poirot's age.

So, chronologically speaking, the book can be deemed as a bit of a mess and therefore something of an oddity within the series. Which could explain why the book tends to be so strangely and unjustly overlooked. Curtain is certainly not the best detective story Christie wrote during the 1940s, but it's without question one of her most creative and daring pieces of detective fiction. This is how you end a series on a banger!

Curtain begins very similarly as The Mysterious Affair at Styles as Arthur Hastings travels down to Styles Court and reminiscing, "how long ago was it that I had taken this selfsame journey." Hastings is now widower and his children scattered across the globe, which made it both surprising and alluring when Poirot invited him to come down to Styles Court. Poirot is now a very old man, crippled with arthritis and bound to a wheelchair, but his brain still "functions magnificently" ("I could at least perceive clearly that no deterioration of the brain in the direction of modesty had taken place"). Poirot summoned Hastings to Styles Court to hunt down a murderer one last time. Hastings is presented with brief accounts of five different murder cases, "all occurred in different places and amongst different classes of people," which have "no superficial resemblance between them" and "in none of those cases did any real doubt exist" – except there was "one alien note common to them all." A certain person Poirot simply refers to as X who appears to have had no conceivable motive and even has an alibi for one of the murders, but X can be linked to all the victims. Hastings agrees getting involved in five murders is a bit too thick to be a mere coincidence and X has to be a murderer, but then Poirot tells him X is currently at Styles Court. Poirot believes "a murder will shortly be committed here," but can only prevent it if he knows who the next victim is going to be.

A sticky problem that not only requires a first-rate brain, but eyes, ears and a pair of legs, which is why Poirot needs Hastings. But refuses to tell Hastings the identity of X ("I do not wish, you see, that you should sit staring at X with your mouth hanging open..."). This naturally rankles Hastings to the point where he begins to questions his friends mental faculties ("what more likely than that he should invent for himself a new manhunt?"), but the reason why Poirot illogically guarded the identity of X so closely turned out to be entirely logical once you learn why the X-murders "the perfect crimes." Until that moment arrives, Hastings has wonder as he pokes around the guests staying at Styles Court which has since been sold and turned into a guest house that tries to pass itself off as a hotel.

There are the current owners of Styles Court, Colonel Toby Lutrell and his wife, Daisy Lutrell, who bullies her husband with "a tongue like vinegar." Dr. John Franklin is a research scientist specialized in tropical diseases and rents a small studio at the bottom of the garden that had been fitted up, "hutches of guinea pigs he's got there, the poor creatures, and mice and rabbits," to do his research work. Dr. Frankling brought along his wife, Barbara, who's an invalid and the reason he had turn down a research post in Africa. Nurse Craven came along to attend to Barbara and Dr. Franklin has a research assistant, Judith Hastings, who's Hastings modern, independently-minded daughter. Sir William Boyd Carrington is a former governor of a province in India, first-class shot, big game hunter and the sort of man, according to Hastings, "we no longer seemed to breed in these degenerate days." On the other hand, the easy talking, womanizing Major Allerton is the type of man Hastings instinctively dislikes and distrusts ("most of what he said holding a double implication"). Stephen Norton is a nice, but rather shy man who loves bird watching and Elizabeth Cole appears to be somewhat a woman of mystery ("a woman who had suffered and who was, in consequence, deeply distrustful of life"). But who could possibly be the mysterious, homicidal X?

Fascinatingly, Christie depicts Styles Court as psychologically tainted, possibly infected, by the tragic events from The Mysterious Affair at Styles ("A virus of murder, you mean? Well, it is an interesting suggestion"). A place where "evil imaginings" came easily to mind and even Hastings falls prey to the corrupting influence of its atmosphere. So the small, seemingly meaningless domestic incidents and quarrels turn into something more serious and eventually into something very deadly.

This is also the point in the story where I can't discuss much more about the plot and know the description, thus far, hardly sounds like an Agatha Christie vintage, but the stingy twist is in its tail. Here, more than ever! A smash ending precariously balanced on the last two deaths towards the end of the book. Firstly, one of the characters is found shot in a locked bedroom holding a small pistol and the key of the door in the pocket of the victim's dressing gown. This very late death earned Curtain a mention in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991), but the trick is extremely routine and what matters about this death is the who-and why. Here, more than ever! Well, you know who dies last ("I don't want to write about it at all"). So the solution had to be pretty good to turn it's low-key premise into something really special to justify it being Poirot's last great challenge. And it did!

Curtain ends with a posthumous letter from Poirot to Hastings, "I hazard a conjecture that by the time you read this you will have evolved the most preposterous theories," explaining everything that happened. Normally, ending a detective story with a posthumous letter lands like a damp squib, but this one delivered on practically all accounts. First of all, X truly proved to be a worthy final opponent and arguably one of the most intriguing killers the Golden Age detective story has ever produced. A subtle sadist who perfected the art of murder with "a technique superb, magnificent, that arouses admiration in spite of oneself." Secondly, which is not often mentioned, but can anyone name a single detective novel that handled (SPOILER/ROT13) zhygvcyr, vaqrcraqragyl-npgvat zheqreref as good and convincingly as Christie did here? Not a bad accomplishment considering it's the kind of thing we complain about as lazy and uninspired plotting, but it worked here like a charm. And to top it all, Christie delivered a mortal blow. A coup de grace preying on a glaring, psychological blind spot to deliver a grand play on her beloved least-likely-suspect! What a way to bow out of the grandest game in the world!

So, as you probably deduced by now, I really enjoyed rereading Curtain and appreciated it so much more second time around. My only complaints are purely stylistically. I think the text should have been slightly revised to correct some of the continuity errors, which could have been done easily enough by altering the period references. It would have blurred the timeline enough to make it conceivable it takes place shortly after Elephants Can Remember. The title should have been something like The Last Hunt or Another Affair at Styles. Curtain feels a little thin to cover such a grand-style detective story. Regardless of those few stylistic continuity issues and errors, Curtain is a detective story of a rare and very special excellence. I called The Mysterious Affair at Styles a diamond-in-the-rough, but Curtain really is a rare, precious metal that's perhaps not originally from the series main timeline and could be as some have suggested take place in a parallel universe in which Poirot's health deteriorated during the war years (rationing is what really killed that delicate man). Whatever your personal take is, Christie undeniably threw Poirot a phenomenal and unforgettable farewell party worthy of one of the greatest and most beloved Golden Age detectives.

I think its fitting to end with a quote from Sherlock Holmes: "If my record were closed tonight, I could still survey it with equanimity. The air of London is the sweeter for my presence." Yes, London and far beyond!

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1916/20) by Agatha Christie

Last time, I returned to Agatha Christie's The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) that marked the first appearance in a full-length novel of her secondary, but still very well-known and even beloved, series-detective, Miss Jane Marple – whom I first subjected to some criticism. The series never produced never produced a novel of the same caliber as the best from the Hercule Poirot series or standalone mysteries. Not even the best Miss Marples can hold a candle to the mid-tier Poirots. I never was a big fan of the Aunt Jane incarnation of the character who knits in a corner and quietly observes all that goes on around her.

The Murder at the Vicarage stands out in that regard as Miss Marple is introduced as a village gossip who spies on her neighbors with binoculars under the guise of "bird watching." While the plot lacked finesse, it offered a fascinating snapshot of a developing author trying out certain ideas that would go on to give shape to some of Christie's most celebrated detective stories of the 1930s. So not a bad beginning to the genre's golden decade and a pretty decent, quintessentially British village mystery that made me want to revisit Poirot's debut, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1916/20), to see how it compared to the first Miss Marple novel.

I figured The Murder at the Vicarage could put my assertion that even the best Miss Marples come up short against a middling Poirot title to test. After all, there are eight novels, three short story collections and a decade of experience separating The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The Murder at the Vicarage, which should have given the latter a decisive edge over the former, but that didn't turn out to be the case – quite the opposite. A back-to-back comparison of the two reinforced my initial opinion that even the best Miss Marple novels struggle to keep up with the minor titles from the Poirot series, because The Mysterious Affair at Styles is the superior detective story. And not by a small margin either. It was only Christie's first stab at the detective story! So let's gently probe this venerable 107-year-old mystery novel with a dissection lancet and see what's inside.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles was originally written in 1916, right in the middle of the First World War, when Christie served as a Voluntary Aid Detachments nurse in a hospital pharmacy. Which is where she picked up a couple of tricks that can be done with poisons and nursing Belgian soldiers obviously had a hand in shaping the character of Hercule Poirot. That makes it one of those frustratingly rare WWI-era mysteries and appropriately takes place while "not so very far away, a great war was running its appointed course." So even though the book was published years later, in 1920, it had that early, turn-of-the-century atmosphere still clinging to it and makes the story, stylistically, different from succeeding novels. But it really fitted the period in which it takes place.

Captain Arthur Hastings been invalided home from the Front, "pending some months in a rather depressing Convalescent Home," when he ran across an old friend, John Cavendish. Hastings had often stayed as a boy at the country place of John's stepmother, Emily Cavendish, who inherited Styles Court and an income to match upon her husband's death. Something considered distinctly unfair to his sons, John and Lawrence, but their stepmother always treated them generous and they always thought of her as their own mother – living all together at Styles Court. John abandoned his career as a barrister and settled down with his wife, Mary, to play country squire. Lawrence relinquished the profession of medicine to pursue his literary ambitions and spends all his money to publish "rotten verses in fancy bindings." The other characters at Styles Court of note are Evelyn Howard, "the mater's factotum, companion, Jack of all trades," and the daughter of an old school friend of Emily, Cynthia Murdoch. When Cynthia was left orphaned and penniless, Emily came to the rescue and she has been with them for two years now. Most importantly, there's Alfred Inglethorp.

One day, out of nowhere, Alfred Inglethorp arrived at Styles Court "on the pretext of being a second cousin or something" of Evelyn, but "she didn't seem particularly keen to acknowledge the relationship." Emily liked him at once, took him on as a secretary and were married a few months later. The now Mrs. Inglethorp is warned that Alfred "would as soon murder you in your bed as look at you." Hastings arrives at Styles Court to feel enough of the undercurrents to get "a premonition of approaching evil."

During the night, Hastings is awakened by Lawrence to tell him that something was seriously wrong. Mrs. Inglethorp appears to be very ill and is suffering from some kind of fit, but she locked, or bolted, herself inside her bedroom. So they break down the door to find a dying Mrs. Inglethorp, "the convulsions were of a violence terrible to behold," who died after a second convulsive attack. The circumstances suggests she had died from strychnine poisoning and an inquest has to take place. Hastings suggests calling in an old friend, "he has been a most famous detective," who happened to be staying in the village as a refugee.

In his time, Hercule Poirot had been "one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police" who "had achieved triumphs by unravelling some of the most baffling cases of the day" with his personal credo that "all good detective work was a mere matter of method" – coupled with a strongly held believe that "everything matters." Right down to the smallest, seemingly insignificant detail. Hastings is reunited with Poirot when he arrives in the village and finds the once celebrated detective among the wounded Belgian refugees, who received a place to recover from Mrs. Inglethorp, but the old detective immediately springs to back to life when Poirot learns one of Belgium's benefactors has been foully poisoned. Now, I have to warn readers who easily get annoyed by Hastings that on his first appearance he's plays even more of a bumbling Watson than in later novels, which is not helped by his cocksure attitude and persistently being wrong. Everything from saying he based his own system of detective work on Poirot's method ("...though of course I have progressed rather further") to his silly theories ("a wild idea flashed across me. Was it possible that Mrs Inglethorp's mind was deranged?") or believing he grasps more than Poirot ("...but I restrained my tongue. After all, though he was old, Poirot had been a great man in his day"). So that is bound to annoy some readers, but nothing that should be to the detriment of a really strong, even innovative, debut showing Christie was a natural who was already ahead of the game in 1916.

First of all, I find it interesting Poirot mainly reasons here from physical clues rather than psychological ones as he stated in The Murder on the Orient Express (1934) that he seeks the psychology of a case and "not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash." But here he has to consider such physical clues as a shattered coffee cup, a coffee stain, keys to the victim's dispatch case, burned fragments of paper and a splash of candle grease on the bedroom floor. There's a psychological clue, of sorts, playing on Poirot's habit to straighten and tidy things, but nothing to extend as can be found in novels like Cards on the Table (1936) and Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938). So the story has a different feel to it than most of the later Poirot mysteries and helped solidify that old-world, Doylean atmosphere that had slowly began to dissipate at the outset of the war. But where the story differentiate itself from most detective fiction of the 1910s and even the '20s are simply its fresh and clever ideas and approach to plotting a detective story. Even with the Watson-Holmes setup.

The poisoning-trick is extremely clever, simple and practical, which could have been used to turn The Mysterious Affair at Styles into a full-blown locked room mystery had Christie made more of an issue about how and when the poison, exactly, was administrated – as "strychnine is a fairly rapid poison." So circumstances would certainly have allowed it to be presented as an impossible poisoning a la Paul Doherty. Only drawback to the poisoning-trick is that it requires specialized knowledge to have a shot at solving it. However, this bears repeating, it's leagues ahead of most detective stories and novels dating from the same period. What I really enjoyed was to properly appreciate most of that I admire about Christie in its infancy.

I've always admired and praised Christie nearly unrivaled ability to rub the truth in your face with one hand and pulled the wool over your eyes with the other. This ability is on full display in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but far less subtle, more on the nose and full of bravado. And, yet, it worked. Sort of. Admittedly, it only worked, sort of, because the central idea propping up the plot not only allowed it, but kind of demanded it. But what a great idea! And somewhat of an original plot-twist for 1916 or even the early twenties. Christie would go on to prodigiously improve over the decade when it came to structuring and clueing her detective stories and became the undisputed queen of the least-likely-suspect gambit. So the many masterpieces or merely the excellent, first-rate mysteries she would go on to create have since completely overshadowed The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but it remains an auspicious debut, bursting with promise and new ideas, introducing a writer and character who would as inextricably-linked to their period of genre as Doyle and Holmes were to the turn-of-the-century detective story. A absolute diamond-in-the-rough!

The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) by Agatha Christie

Over the past two years, I have had the pleasure of returning to Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Death in the Clouds (1935), Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938) and Evil Under the Sun (1941), which not only stood up to a second reading, but often better than memory had me believe – rekindling my admiration for her nearly matchless talent as a plot creator. I've always thought Christie's best detective fiction can be found in the Hercule Poirot series and some exceptional standalone novels. But never held the Miss Marple series quite in the same regard. That has several reasons.

First of all, I don't believe the series produced even a single masterpiece or something remotely close to the best, most well-known Hercule Poirot novels or standalone mysteries. Some point to A Murder is Announced (1950) as the Marple par excellence, "one of the best surprises in all Christiedom," but it can hardly be claimed it reached the same heights as Death on the Nile (1937) or And Then There Were None (1939). The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1962) could have had a claim on the status of series classic had Christie not allowed the murderer to become mentally unhinged, muddle the plot with additional murders and ended up dulling the effect of the brilliantly conceived and motivated crime that opened the story. So what's left? The Body in the Library (1942), The Moving Finger (1943), They Do It with Mirrors (1952), A Pocket Full of Rye (1953) and 4.50 from Paddington (1957) are no better or worse than the average, mid-list Hercule Poirot title like Peril at End House (1932), Dumb Witness (1937) or Mrs. McGinty's Dead. The last four novels beginning with A Caribbean Mystery (1964) generally suffer from the decline in quality of late-period Christie. Secondly, I'm just not a big fan of the character or most spinster sleuth.

I prefer the American take on such characters, like Stuart Palmer's Miss Hildegarde Withers, Anita Blackmon's Miss Adelaide Adams and Torrey Chanslor's Beagle Sisters, who always have a little more of a bite to their personality. Their counterparts in Britain can often be a bit too precious and twee, while reeking of rose gardens and Werther's Originals. So never warmed to characters like Miss Marple or Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver. I wanted to give Miss Marple a fair retrial as personal preferences, or prejudices, can not always escape the process of maturing and fine-tuning – memory is not always the most reliable record to draw from. Least of all mine. I really should have gone with the often recommended A Murder is Announced, but, despite all my gripes, there's actually one Miss Marple mystery I remember enjoying a lot. That has to do with the character of Miss Marple being very different and more interesting than the benevolent maiden aunt she would become in later stories.

Miss Jane Marple, of St. Mary Mead, Downshire, debuted in a series of short stories beginning with "The Tuesday Night Club" (1927) and were gathered under the title The Thirteen Problems (1932). The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) marked Miss Marple's first and only novel-length appearance until Christie revived the character twelve years later in The Body in the Library. Whose personality had altered considerably since The Murder at the Vicarage.

Miss Marple is "the worst cat in the village" who "always knows every single thing that happens" and "draws the worst inferences from it." A horrendously nosy, village gossip who boldly stands in her little garden with binoculars to do a spot of "bird watching." The birds in question being her neighbors and she made their study a hobby to pass the time. Miss Marple calls it observing human nature and in a small village there's ample opportunity to become proficient in one's study, "one begins to class people, quite definitely, just as though they were birds or flowers," which combined with a lifetime of experience allowed her to tackle small, quite unimportant and everyday mysteries – like "that matter of the changed cough drops" or "the butcher's wife's umbrella." I think Miss Marple cast as a gossip mongering busybody with an insatiable curiosity is a much more interesting and effective detective than the Aunt Jane who knits in a corner and quietly observes. The events leading up The Murder at the Vicarage and subsequent fallout gives Miss Marple enough to mull over in her first novel-length outing.

The narrator of The Murder at the Vicarage is the vicar of St. Mary Mead, Leonard Clement, who opens the story with the remark "that any one who murdered Colonel Protheroe would be doing the world at large a service."

Colonel Lucius Protheroe, churchwarden and local magistrate, is "the kind of man who enjoys making a fuss on every conceivable occasion" and gets an opportunity when a pound note disappeared from the offertory bag. So now he wants he wants to go over the church accounts, "in case of defalcations," but there's also trouble brewing closer to home. Lawrence Redding is a young painter who drifted into the village and is using a shed in the garden of the vicarage as a studio to paint a portrait of the vicar's wife, Griselda. When he's not working on the portrait, Redding is painting the colonel's daughter, Lettice, in her bathing dress. Colonel Protheroe found out and old worldly forbade the young artist the house. So the village gossip among each other if there's anything between Lawrence Redding and Lettice Protheroe, but Miss Marple believes the artist is likely involved with quite another person ("that kind of old cat is always right"). Miss Marple is proven correct when the vicar catches Redding in flagrante delicto with the colonel's wife, Anne Protheroe.

This "nasty tangle" finishes setting the stage for murder as, not long thereafter, the body of Colonel Protheroe is found in the vicar's study at the vicarage. Inspector Slack, "a man more determinedly strive to contradict his name," appears to have an open-and-shut case on his hands when Redding confesses to having shot Colonel Protheroe, but a second confession, medical evidence and two perfectly acceptable alibis topples his apple cart. So he has began all over again trying to piece together how a stopped desk clock running fifteen minutes fast ("to induce punctuality"), the scrawled letter the victim was writing with the time neatly printed at the top and the sound of a gunshot that was heard coming from the woods figure in the colonel's murder – which also brings some otherwise peripheral characters into view. Like a man named Archer, "an inveterate poacher," who had been sentenced several times by Colonel Protheroe in his role as magistrate. Dr. Stone, a well-known archaeologist, had recently arrived in the village to lead the excavation of a barrow on Colonel Protheroe's property, but there already been several disputes between the two. Mrs. Lestrange, "the Mystery Lady of St. Mary Mead," went to see Protheroe the night before he was killed. And nobody seems to have any idea what about. So "a lot of queer things about this case."

Miss Marple pops in and out of the story, often at the most opportune moments, until the time arrived to begin tidying up, but it was done in an incredibly anticlimactic way showing Christie was still a few years away from realizing her full potential. Miss Marple simply tells whodunit, why and how, which is then followed by an off-page scene in which the murderer falls into a police trap. It should have been done the other way round. The ending should have come with Miss Marple urging Slack to bait a trap without naming the murderer and concluding with the trap closing to reveal the (hopefully) surprising identity of the culprit, because it would immediately beg for an explanation. Miss Marple can then sit back and answer all the questions in the last chapter. It would have improved the ending considerably.

Regardless of the slightly anticlimactic ending and clues/red herrings not being as abundant as in coming novels, The Murder at the Vicarage is still a very good, solid and early example of the thoroughly British countryside mystery. More importantly, The Murder at the Vicarage gives the reader a glimpse of Christie testing and developing certain ideas that in the years ahead would shape some of her most celebrated and timeless detective novels. Not as polished or fine-tuned, of course, but a clear sign that both Christie and the detective story as a whole were about to go into full bloom. Just a shame this incarnation of the Miss Marple character was abandoned upon her return in The Body in the Library. We could have had a Miss Marple who steamed open letters in The Moving Finger to find out what being written in those scandalous poison pen letters.

Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938) by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938), alternatively published as Murder for Christmas and A Holiday for Murder, is the quintessential country house mystery novel, conventional to the point of seeming stereotypical, but the story of "a particularly crude and brutal murder" on Christmas Eve is actually a subtle parody – gently poking at detective story tropes and cliches. It ticks every box of what outsiders believe the Golden Age detective story was all about. Christie brought a great deal of ingenuity, even originality, to the stock situation of the tyrannical patriarch murdered shortly after announcing his intention to make a new will.

I wanted to reread Hercule Poirot's Christmas for ages, but, over the last decade, a lot of once obscure, long out-of-print Christmas mysteries returned to print. Such as Brian Flynn's The Murders Near Mapleton (1929), Moray Dalton's The Night of Fear (1931), C.H.B. Kitchin's Crime at Christmas (1934), Georgette Heyer's Envious Casca (1941) and Francis Duncan's Murder for Christmas (1949), which in addition to several short stories and anthologies delayed revisiting Christie's holiday classic. I've very fond memories of Hercule Poirot's Christmas as it was the first Golden Age mystery I remember solving. And when I say "solving," I mean instinctively guessed the right solution without noticing, or appreciating, the skilled plotting and clueing.

Simeon Lee is a shrunken, frail old invalid, but, during his younger days, Old Simeon was a vigorous young man without scrupulous who lied, cheated, stole and cultivated "a bad reputation with women." While he was not exactly a crook, Old Simeon's "morals were nothing to boast about" with "a queer revengeful streak” who “waited years to get even with someone who'd done him a nasty turn.” So "the kind of man you might say had sold his soul to the devil and enjoyed the bargain." A bargain that left him "a millionaire twice over" when he retired from the South African diamond trade. Now he has summoned his scattered, slightly dysfunctional family to come celebrate Christmas at Gorston Hall. Alfred Lee is "the good dutiful stay-at-home stick-in-the-mud son" who's devoted to his father, but his wife, Lydia, calls it slavery – bemoaning that they have no independence or lives of their own. David Lee was as devoted to his late mother as his brother is to their father and blamed his father for her death, which is why he left the home after she passed. But his wife, Hilda, convinced him to accept the Christmas invitation. George Lee is a Member of Parliament and the essence of respectability, but he has a much younger wife, Magdalene, who has a very expensive taste. So his household is entirely financed by his father. Harry Lee is the prodigal son who, nearly twenty years ago, went off with "several hundred pounds that didn't belong to him" and left a note saying he was going to see the world. Miss Pilar Estravados is the daughter of Old Simeon's only daughter, Jennifer, who had married a Spaniard against his wishes. But now he's very eager to welcome his long-lost granddaughter back into the family. Finally, there's a last-minute addition to the Christmas party, Stephen Farr, who's the son of Simeon's old business partner in South Africa.

Hercule Poirot is spending the Christmas holiday nearby as a guest of Colonel Johnson, Chief Constable of Middleshire, who sit next to a warm fire and discuss whether Christmas is an unlikely season for crime. Poirot believes that there's "a great deal of hypocrisy" around Christmastime as families and friends, who have been separated throughout the year, assemble under one roof. So people can feel strained to be amiable and believes it "highly probable that dislikes that were before merely mild and disagreements that were trivial might suddenly assume a more serious character." Concluding that when "you dam the stream of natural behaviour, mon ami, sooner or later the dam bursts and a cataclysm occurs."

That's more, or less, what has been happening at Gorston Hall. Simeon Lee has been amusing himself by probing old wounds, promising to reduce allowances and telephoned his lawyer in front of his family to tell him he wanted to make a new will. So basically a detective story character who went out of his way to get murdered.

On Christmas Eve, a crashing of china and the overthrowing of furniture is heard coming from Simeon's room, which is followed by "a horrible high wailing scream that died away in a choke or gurgle." When the door is busted open, the family finds Simeon Lee's body, weltering in a pool of his own blood, on the hearthrug in front of a blazing fire. His throat had been savagely cut! The room is a disorderly mess of splintered vases, overturned furniture and "so much blood." Two things about Simeon Lee's murder needs to be highlighted, before going on with the review. Firstly, it's an uncommonly bloody murder for Christie. The bloodiest since Murder on the Orient Express (1934) that would not be matched until After the Funeral (1952), which Christie explained in the book's dedication. Christie's brother-in-law, James, had complained that her murders were getting too refined and "yearned for a good violent murder with lots of blood." Go read some lurid horror stories, James! The detective story is not intended to quench your thirst for blood. Secondly, I never rated Hercule Poirot's Christmas very highly as a locked room mystery as the problem of the locked door is immediately solved, "an ordinary pair of pliers would do it," but had forgotten the locked door served another purpose and how it became a full-blown impossible murder again during the closing stages – only to be immediately solved again. I agree with Robert Adey in Locked Room Murders (1991) that "this book couldn't show more clearly the difference in approach between Christie and Carr to the locked room problem." I also liked how Superintendent Sugden solved the practical side of the locked room problem (spotting the scratches on the end of key-barrel), while Poirot explained the psychological and time aspect of trick. Very well done!

However, the locked room-trick is only one cog in the machine of the plot that only comes into play when the murder is discovered and eventually solved. Where the story triumphs, as to be expected from Christie, is the who-and why.

Christie was a natural when it came to clueing and misdirection. No debate there. What has astonished me ever since I began rereading some of her classics, like Murder on the Orient Express, Death in the Clouds (1935) and Evil Under the Sun (1941), is an unrivaled talent to openly, and audaciously, allude to the truth – dropped in a casual conversation or simple remark. A talent that perfectly lends itself to conversational-style detective novels like Murder on the Orient Express and Hercule Poirot's Christmas. There are two rounds of interviews. Firstly, the official police interviews lead by Superintended Sugden and, secondly, Poirot engaging everyone in conversation. Poirot tells Colonel Johnson "in conversation, points arise" and "if a human being converses much, it is impossible for him to avoid the truth." But never do any of them "drag the marsh" or grind the story down to halt. Christie was very good at writing conversations impregnated with subtle hints and foreshadowing. More importantly, those conversations strengthened the already impressive physical and psychological clues. There are such bizarre, physical clues like "a little triangular piece of pink rubber and a small wooden peg," the wrecked room and an old portrait of a young Simeon Lee. Not to mention a small fortune in stolen, uncut diamonds. I told you this one ticked all of the boxes! But the best clues are definitely the psychological ones. Particularly, the old butler who suffers from déjà vu and "the character of Simeon Lee." So the surprise-twist, when it comes, feels both logical and inevitable.

The murderer's identity, motive and method are as richly clued as they were cleverly hidden, which makes me wish I remembered how I spotted the murderer. When I first read Hercule Poirot's Christmas, I was a neophyte who had no idea a locked room mystery and a closed-circle situation were two completely different things. So no idea how I saw through it at the time.

I wrote in my review of Francis Duncan's previously mentioned Murder for Christmas that the Christmas country house mystery never produced a genuine classic, but had forgotten how good Hercule Poirot's Christmas really is and not yet read Mary Monica Pulver's Original Sin (1991). I can see now why Hercule Poirot's Christmas is the most famous one. Not because it was written by Christie. But because Christie wrote the best, most definitive Christmas country house mystery. One that has often been imitated, but never duplicated (Pulver had her own take on it).

So, all in all, Hercule Poirot's Christmas is a brilliantly played, richly-plotted and seasonal mystery that should be regarded as the detective story's A Christmas Carol. Highly recommended!

Death in the Clouds (1935) by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is, to this day, considered to be the uncontested Queen of Crime as she understood better than most mystery writers, past or present, what makes a plot tick like a Swiss timepiece and turned the surprise twist into an art form – paradoxically transforming the least-likely-suspect into the least-likely-suspect. Christie is commonly associated with the closed-circle of suspects, iron-clad alibis and the surprise ending, but not the locked room mystery and impossible crime. Surprisingly, she wrote more of them than most realize. 

Mike Grost calls Christie "a major contributor to the form," in "quality and quantity," which discusses and breaks down most of those contributions on his website's Agatha Christie page under "Impossible Crimes." When you go over them, you begin to understand why Christie's name is not inextricably-linked to the locked room and impossible crime fiction. She was very covert about it. Brad, of Ah, Sweet Mystery, observed in 2018 blog-post, "Pondering the Impossible, Christie-style," that "most of the examples we find in Christie are not labeled impossible crimes," because "she does not wish to call attention to these situations." Usually done to obscure the murderer's identity without drawing undue attention to her carefully planted clues and red herrings with a glaring impossible situation. That's how some of her mysteries have largely gone unacknowledged, or unrecognized, as impossible crimes. Sometimes, the locked room is only a minor element (Hercule Poirot's Christmas, 1938) or simply a mere afterthought to the plot (Curtain, 1975). Every now and then, Christie declared her colors. You can find most of clearly defined impossible crimes in her short stories, like "The Blue Geranium" (1929) and "The Dream" (1937), but there's one novel in which she drew full attention to the locked room and impossible crime elements of the plot. 

Death in the Clouds (1935), alternatively published Death in the Air, marked the twelfth novel-length appearance of Hercule Poirot and the first time I read it in English. I originally read a Dutch translation with a cover that spoiled the solution by putting two clues together. So my second reading was much more rewarding than my first as I realized Death in the Clouds is very John Dickson Carr-like, but not in the way you might think. More on that in a minute.

So the book opens on a hot, sun-drenched September afternoon at Le Bourget aerodrome as Hercule Poirot climbs aboard the Prometheus, to fly from Paris to Croydon, in the company of ten other passengers – who occupy the plane's rear compartment. Miss Jane Gray, a hairdresser's assistant, who won a hundred pounds in the Irish Sweep and took a holiday abroad where she met a handsome-looking man, Norman Gale. A dentist who also aboard to fly back to England. Armand and Jean Dupont are a French father-and-son archaeological team and board the plane discussing the dating of prehistoric pottery. There's the beautiful, but haughty, Countess of Horbury and her friend, the Hon. Venetia Kerr. Daniel Clancy is a writer Edgar Wallace-style thrillers and boards the plane "absorbed in the perfectioning of his cross-Europe alibi" for his next novel. James Ryder is the managing director of a cement company returning home and a specialist on diseases of the ear and throat, Dr. Roger Bryant. The last passenger is "one of the best-known moneylenders in Paris," Madame Giselle. Everyone was handling something or moving around, which all seems innocently enough on a normal flight. But, as they near Croydon, a steward discovers Madame Giselle is no longer alive!

Madame Giselle apparently died of an heart attack or had an adverse reaction to a wasp sting, which buzzed around the cabin before it got squashed. Hercule Poirot makes a startling discovery. On the floor there's "a little knot of teased fluffy silk, orange and black, attached to a long, peculiar-looking thorn with a discoloured tip." A poisonous torn, shot from a blowpipe, which had recently been dipped in the venom of the boomslang (tree snake). So how could someone have shot "a poisoned dart out of a blowpipe in a car full of people" without being spotted by either the other passengers or one of the stewards. Inspector Japp, of Scotland Yard, enters the case muttering "blowpipes and poisoned darts in an aeroplane" insults one's intelligence ("it's an insult—that's what this murder is—an insult"). And he's not the only one professing their disbelieve that a dime thriller has come to life in front of their eyes. That reminded me even more of Carr than the impossible crime element.

Carr often exaggerated to clarify by whittling something utterly fantastic or otherworldly back down to human proportions. You can get a picture of what I mean by comparing The Unicorn Murders (1935; as by "Carter Dickson") with John Rhode's Invisible Weapons (1938). The impossibilities are somewhat related, but Carr's a thrill-filled extravaganza, while Rhode took a more low key approach. Normally, Christie leans more towards how Rhode's handled his locked room mysteries, but here she pulled a John Dickson Carr. Only notable difference is that, instead of invoking the supernatural, Christie presented her impossible crime as the pulpiest of pulp murders. Something so extraordinary that it even left the thriller writer lost for words.

So the little grey cells get to work to try and make sense out of something of "unparalleled audacity" flying in the face of everything logical and sensible. Christie is at the top of her game here when it comes to planting clues and dropping red herrings. A particular highlight is Poirot going over a list cataloging the content of the baggage of all the suspects ("down to the minutest detail") and boldly declare that "it seems to point very plainly to one person as having committed the crime," but can't "see why, or even how." Remembering parts of the solution, I once again couldn't help but admire how Christie could simultaneously spell out the truth to reader and pool the wool over their eyes. She hammers this down in the final quarter of the story as Poirot points out and names the three central clues, which are all excellent and brilliant when dovetailed together – revealing a solution as practical as its presentation was maddening. A solution showing once more just how big of an influence G.K. Chesterton had on the plotting technique of the Golden Age generation. Only imperfection that keeps Death in the Clouds from a place among Christie's best detective novels is the contrived, gracelessly planted motive. It really felt like Christie placed a crowbar between the murderer and victim to create as much distance between them as possible, which made it harder to justify committing the murder under such fantastical and risky conditions.

Nonetheless, a second-tier Christie is still top-tier detective novel and would be considered a top-tier novel had another name been on the cover. If Stuart Palmer had written Death in the Clouds instead of The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (1933), it would have been a permanent resident on most specialized locked room lists. So, even while the motive lacked strength, I have very little to complain about as the story was better than I remembered. It was simply fun to see Christie enjoying herself with the characters and plot. One of my favorite scenes is Poirot visiting the messy home of Clancy and is told he's going to write "the whole thing exactly as it happened" with "perfect pen portraits of all the passengers," which carries the title The Air Mail Mystery. And to dodge any libel charges, Clancy dreamed up "an entirely unexpected solution" normally found in only the murkiest of pulp magazines. What a shame Clancy never got to meet Ariadne Oliver. He could have easily replaced Superintendent Battle or Colonel Race in Cards on the Table (1936). 

Death in the Clouds is a strangely overlooked impossible crime novel written by nobody less than the Queen of Crime herself and deserves to be acknowledged as a mostly very well done locked room mystery. More importantly, it's a tremendously fun and entertaining detective story that gently pokes fun at its exotic, pulpier cousins, the thriller. A showcase why the 1930s were the Golden Decade of the Golden Age. 

Notes for the curious: Hercule Poirot has been accused of having been in a position to have prevented the second murder discovered in the first-class carriage of a boat train, but I can't see how. Even if he told Japp about his suspicions, he could not have acted upon it without something more substantial to go on. Poirot admitted he had no idea how this person could have done it or why. I don't think Japp would have wanted to make the murderer aware of their suspicions. Poirot was as surprised as anyone else when this person entered the picture ("why did no one mention this before?"). Only the reader was really aware. By the time Poirot begins to catch on, the wheels of the second murder was already set in motion. So you can't really pin that second murder on his conscious. There is, however, some hilarious, unintended foreshadowing to Curtain (ROT13: “zba nzv... jura V pbzzvg n zheqre vg jvyy abg or jvgu gur neebj cbvfba bs gur Fbhgu Nzrevpna Vaqvnaf”). Another interesting footnote is that a character appears in the story named Jules Perrot. I thought it was interesting as Frank Howel Evans short stories about a retired French detective, Jules Poiret, is often cited as an inspiration for Hercule Poirot.