The Works of Agatha Christie

[hal9000]

Alas, I do not have a copy of Hallow'een Party to check, so I thought I would appeal to the intellect of the Agatha Christie fanatics (there are usually a couple on each board!)

I listened to a radio play of Hallow'een Party and in spite of its apparent reputation as being one of her lesser works, I was thoroughly chilled and creeped. I do have a question however - is the unsolved murder of the schoolteacher killed several years prior to the start of the story revealed? In all of the hoohah about wells and pleasure gardens and Greek mythology in the denouement, if her murderer was revealed to be the killer of the later victims, I must have missed it. Was the dead schoolteacher also romantically involved with the current teacher who was into the occult and stuff?

Cheers!

[Smilla]

Uh, I've got nothing on your questions, hal, but I'll chime in that I love Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. One of the scariest books I've ever read in any genre.

[Deleted]

hal900, it's been a long time since I read that one (though I do think I have a copy of it buried somewhere). IIRC, the answer to your first question is yes. I don't remember the details of the plot well enough to answer your second question, sorry.

[hal9000]

Thanks, guys. I really enjoyed Hallow'een Party, so I'll get my mum to dig her copy out of her collection.

Shamefully, the only Agatha Christie novel I have read is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and Appointment With Death, which I read before I visited Petra! I also saw the film with Peter Ustinov, Lauren Bacall and Hayley Mills eons ago.

[Yossarian]

Ooh, I love Agatha Christie too! I read a whole bunch of her books when I was pregnant. My favourites are: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Moving Finger, and the very creepy Crooked House.

I am loving the new BBC adapatations of the Marple and Poirot stories. I'm such a sucker for British crime and/or period drama.

[Deleted]

My favorite AC books are the Mysterious Affair at Styles, 10 Little Indians, Curtain, Murder in Three Acts, and the ABC Murders.

[Yossarian]

10 Little Indians is a good one too. As is One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. I also liked A Caribbean Mystery.

Christie's own life was also very interesting; if you can get your hands on her memoirs it's well worth the read. A lot has also been written about her "disappearance" too, some of it quite conspiratorial!

[tszuj]

Love her! My favourites are Sleeping Murder, The Pale Horse, and The Big Four because it's so wacky (more like a Bond novel). My copy of 'Then there were none" has the original title, so I'm careful not to read it on the tube. I've been working my way through all her books this year.

[chiqui]

Christie's own life was also very interesting; if you can get your hands on her memoirs it's well worth the read. A lot has also been written about her "disappearance" too, some of it quite conspiratorial!

She wrote a memoir of her early life with her archhaeologist husband in Egypt called Come, Tell Me How You Live that is very funny and interesting. It's the only book of hers I've read actually. I'm not much for murder mysteroies because I have a tendency to flip ahead.

[tabby]

My copy of 'Then there were none" has the original title, so I'm careful not to read it on the tube.

I saw a copy of the book with the original title in the bookstore about 20 years ago, and I had to pick my jaw off the floor. I can't imagine it would be sold that way today. (I've been reading the GK Chesterton Father Brown series recently, and the n-word shows up a lot. But not on the cover.)

Miss Marple is one of the series I go to for comfort reading.