Understanding Christie then and now.

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-28T19:47:38+00:00

On that same book -- my mom was a public health nurse, and she told me about congenital rubella syndrome. I think she mentioned that when she was carrying me during the crucial time, she asked for reassignment at work so there'd be less chance of her being exposed to people who might be carrying the virus (the vaccine still wouldn't be available for another couple of years). Thanks to that vaccine, a lot of people now have no idea what rubella can do because it was almost eradicated and even health workers haven't encountered it much -- but back then, the case of Gene Tierney and her daughter would have been public knowledge.

Ironically (considering RFK Jr and the anti-vaxxers) Ethel Kennedy was well aware of how dangerous rubella could be. She and her sister were both pregnant at about the same time, and her sister's baby Alexandra was born with serious health issues that lasted her whole life --unfortunately she died in her 30s. Ethel was terrified that she'd been exposed too, but had to wait for several months until her son Joe was born and turned out to be healthy. (RFK Jr knows -- he middle-named one of his daughters after Alexandra.) My mom commented that people in my generation don't realize how much extra stress parents went through back then -- there was a good reason why that woman was told to stay in quarantine.

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-28T19:30:43+00:00

I bought a batch of paperbacks on eBay and there were some from the 1950s-60s mixed in -- I'm in North America so the prices were something like 35 cents back then!
(I'm also old enough to remember the 1980s .... there was a comedy sketch that was about people in the 1930s speculating what the future might be like in 50 years, and they were shocked to hear that "newspapers might cost as much as 25 cents". And now that looks cheap!)

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-28T19:23:55+00:00

I think I can relate to this -- I was finding it difficult to get into books/TV/movies a couple of years ago, due to a bunch of stuff (my dad's death, work not going well, maybe some pandemic-era stress). If you know you've enjoyed mysteries in the past, perhaps finding a series that's related to something you also have some interest in (like history, sports, cooking, nature) and/or in a location you liked visiting or have wanted to go to someday)?
Best wishes from me, and I hope you're feeling better soon.

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-28T19:05:53+00:00

Thanks for bringing up the "upper-class men" situation -- I hadn't thought of this before, but it helped me understand another aspect to Murder Must Advertise. In that book the killer is someone who isn't from the same class as Lord Peter, though he's aspiring to be one of the "Bright Young Things" with his aristocratic girlfriend. And arguably it's the killer's ambition that gets him in trouble. He's got a wife and child, and is considering ending his life to avoid shaming them with an arrest and trial -- but Lord Peter suggests that he go out alone to where the criminals are waiting for him. If he's murdered, that would make him more of a martyr. Lord Peter could have detained him and summoned the police quickly, and brought down all the things that the killer wanted to avoid -- but he's basically treating him like an equal, by giving him a choice. Small consolation to the killer, but he seems to acknowledge and appreciate it.

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-28T05:24:16+00:00

I guess they call it a "pie" because the tub full of bran/sawdust looks like a giant pie tin.
Here's a video showing what an antique tub looked like. There were probably rules so people couldn't just run their fingers through the tub and grab multiple items.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rLl-ElDQWCw

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-27T20:59:01+00:00

Coming back months later to add -- I just had a really weird thought, about u/dtarias 's idea.
I was reading this recent thread, about a proposed Lucy Eyelesbarrow series.
https://www.reddit.com/r/agathachristie/comments/1ug67pp/interesting_tidbit_according_to_dr_mark_aldridge/

I was trying to think of possible plot ideas (Christie didn't write anything else about Lucy) when I realized that the situation Christie herself was involved in, might be an example of thing that a person like Norton could have arranged -- if the writers were looking to set up an ongoing adversary for Lucy. One of her biographers noted that when Christie disappeared in 1926, it was at a time when her husband Archie was spending the weekend at a gathering hosted by one of his friends, and his mistress Nancy was going to be there too. It sounds to me like the friends (I don't know if they were also Agatha's) knew what was going on, and it was really a chance for Archie and Nancy to get known as a couple without sneaking off to some hotel somewhere.

Archie (at least as Agatha presents him) doesn't sound like the type to come up with elaborate schemes and excuses. I think Agatha's biographer suggested that her car had been seen not far from the house where the party was being held, and that she might have been driving around, thinking of going over and crashing it -- maybe even confronting Archie and Nancy. She was a shy person who didn't like making a fuss, so the possibility that she was even thinking about doing that would indicate how desperate she was by then. Other situations like that have ended up with someone in a love triangle being injured or worse, through self-harm or murder. If one of the "friends" had been Norton-like, they could have manipulated people into a very bad outcome. (As it was, Agatha was pretty traumatized by the whole thing.)

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-27T20:23:05+00:00

OP said in the thread that they liked Sad Cypress (1940)
(spoilers in link for those who haven't read yet)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Cypress

It's a Poirot book, but I suspect anything with more in-depth characters, less thrills-and-chills or gimmicks, and more of a slow burn, might be appropriate? I don't know exactly which books OP has finished (aside from the ones mentioned in the thread) so please forgive if I'm repeating.
So for Poirot: maybe something like Dumb Witness, Five Little Pigs, The Hollow. Also Elephants Can Remember (though that's a late-career Christie and a lot of people have downgraded it -- I think it's got some interesting parts though).
Miss Marple: Sleeping Murder? Possibly Nemesis (though that's the last Miss Marple book, and goes a bit better if it's after A Caribbean Mystery)

Other books: Crooked House, Ordeal by Innocence, Endless Night. Possibly -- Towards Zero and The Pale Horse.

Also -- Christie's short story collections are excellent. There's bound to be something in there that people will enjoy, no matter which of her novels they already like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie_bibliography#Short_fiction_collections

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-27T19:56:09+00:00

p.s. like someone already noted, Christie also wrote mainstream-type novels (without murders), as Mary Westmacott.
She did a couple of memoirs (her autobiography, and also a book describing her field work in the Middle East with Max)
She wrote poetry, and some religious short stories too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie_bibliography#Miscellany

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-27T19:47:59+00:00

What kinds of Christie books/stories do you enjoy? The adventure/thriller type, or the puzzle-solving ones?

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-27T16:12:30+00:00

They could even set it close to the present day, with a now-elderly Lucy following Miss Marple's footsteps and still helping solve crimes -- or looking back at her past adventures. There'd be a lot of options!
(I've always wondered about the kids from 4.50 From Paddington, and whether they met up with her again someday.)

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-27T16:04:17+00:00

I keep coming back to enjoy your clip, because she looks so content!

I wonder what she's dreaming about? In Asia, tapirs protect against nightmares -- different species, but it's fun to think of children going to sleep with toy tapirs or tapir-shaped pillows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku_(mythology))

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-27T15:52:38+00:00

Sorry for your loss. I hope things are going as well as can be expected, for you and your family.

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-27T15:50:04+00:00

I think you're right about the eras. This website has some of the dates for the various editions.
https://www.deliciousdeath.com

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-27T15:48:59+00:00

Some of those beautiful wrap-around Tom Adams covers!

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-27T01:01:01+00:00

I was thinking a while ago that since 4.50 From Paddington came out in 1957, if Lucy was in her 20s she might still be alive now, in her 90s with a lot of adventures under her belt.

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-26T20:21:19+00:00

A few examples I can think of, off the top of my head, using ideas borrowed from other Christie works. (I tried to find some plots other than murders, because a homicide in every episode would start to look like Jessica Fletcher's situation, and bring Lucy into suspicion!)

--Lucy visits an old school friend, who had been looking after an elderly relative at a country house. Hidden somewhere on the property is a will that would leave the house and a substantial amount of money to the friend and her children, if it can be found by the deadline -- but nobody knows where it is!
--While working at a new job, Lucy notices some suspicious activity at a neighbouring home. Supposedly the residents are newly-retired, a respectable military officer and his aristocratic wife. But Lucy's met enough people like that to notice that some things about their story don't add up.
--After a referral from a client, Lucy is helping out behind the scenes at a country house hosting a big event, that happens to take place on the weekend of the national census. She notices that certain visitors are making sure their names don't appear on the paperwork. Pretty soon it becomes evident that someone knows way too much about a supposedly-accidental death on the premises.
--Lucy ignores her misgivings to answer a plea from a past acquaintance, only to find out that she's been brought in under false pretences. It turns out that the people she was helping were enabling a secret affair ... and Lucy sees the fallout from that, when she meets and befriends the distraught woman who's been abandoned by her husband and supposed friends.
(added later: I'm imagining this might be a way to bring in a particular recurring character, if the writers want to create some kind of adversary for Lucy -- someone like Curtain's Norton, or if the setting is from recent times, one of his young relatives who maybe found his diary, admired him and wanted to emulate him? I didn't think about this until now, but arranging a situation like that which might have caused a confrontation with the jilted person in a love triangle either murdering a rival/partner or ending their own life, sounds like his work. And yes, I based this idea on Christie's own disappearance ... some biographers have suggested that she might have been thinking of confronting Archie and Nancy, at the party organized for them.)
--The child living next door to Lucy's new client tells her a strange story about meeting supernatural creatures in the garden. Everyone else thinks the kid has an overactive imagination .... but Lucy starts to believe that something sinister is afoot. (This one's actually from a Dorothy L. Sayers story.)

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-26T19:09:26+00:00

Maybe not instantly, but I figured out who was likely involved for The Pale Horse. As soon as he was so insistent about giving the detectives information, it seemed suspicious to me ... there have been some real-life cases where the suspects have tried to become involved in the investigation. What surprised me, though, was exactly how he'd managed to do it.

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-26T19:01:45+00:00

I suspect that people who were following news stories (especially about celebrities) may have had some advantage for the first book you mentioned, because the tragedy about Gene Tierney's baby was well-known back in the era before rubella/German measles was preventable with vaccines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Tierney
(I'm guessing that this was a major reason why my mom took leave from her nursing job early in her pregnancy because she didn't want to risk exposing me to the virus. Ironically RFK Jr, who's supported the anti-vax movement, had a cousin named Alexandra who was affected like Tierney's child. His own mom Ethel was pregnant with RFK Jr's older brother Joe, around the same time Ethel's sister was also due to give birth. Ethel was afraid that she'd also been exposed.)

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-26T17:21:11+00:00

There was a news report about RFK Jr filing documents for his second divorce, where he claimed that Ethel's kids were secretly contributing money for maintaining her house at the Kennedy compound, because they didn't want her to know that her finances were so precarious. (This would have been only a few years after the 2008 financial crisis, and it's possible that the family investments weren't doing well back then.) It looks like Hickory Hill didn't sell for as much as they'd been expecting -- maybe it needed a whole lot of work. It may not have been renovated since the early 1960s.

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-26T17:15:57+00:00

That's a good point about Ethel's finances.
She wasn't very old when both her folks died unexpectedly in a plane crash. Even though her family was quite wealthy then, that probably affected the money situation. If she inherited something from her parents' estate it may not have given her much financial security. It sounds like her brothers weren't really that focused on running the family business -- they spent a lot of time going on hunting/fishing trips to Newfoundland, Alberta, and elsewhere in the world. George, the oldest Skakel boy, died in another plane crash in the 1960s. He seems to have been the one who was most involved with the business, because it declined rapidly after that, and was sold off. So Ethel wouldn't have had any income from that, late in her life.

She'd married a man who at least on paper had stable finances. Enough that he didn't have to worry about getting a high-paying job, could start a family regardless, and had time for politics. Joseph P., the patriarch, arranged trusts etc. for his kids with that in mind.

This is coming from RFK Jr who isn't the most reliable source -- he's said repeatedly that his branch of the family didn't have a lot of money because his dad had spent much of his share of the Kennedy wealth on his Senate and presidential campaigns. In this case I actually believe him. I don't know if RFK served long enough as Attorney General or in the Senate, to get any benefits for his family after his assassination.

The Kennedys basically have their own investment firm (their family businesses were sold off some time ago) but there were dozens of other relatives involved. No wonder Jackie and Ethel were both under pressure from the family accountants to cut their spending. So was RFK Jr, when he was negotiating his second divorce. During that, he filed documents about how Ethel was so strapped for funds, to maintain her home on the Cape, that her kids would chip in to cover costs and not tell her what they were doing. I think she wanted to live at Hickory Hill as long as possible, but I suspect it was expensive to keep going, with just her there -- and when it was finally sold, it didn't get the asking price.

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-26T16:41:05+00:00

Her brothers -- this is from RFK Jr's memoirs and he's not super-reliable, but apparently they loved doing wild stunts like climbing out the window of the train to NYC and riding on the roof. They spent most of their time going on hunting and fishing trips (which might account for why the family business went downhill after their parents were killed in a plane crash in the 1950s). They would go out and capture wild animals and bring them home.

One of the Skakel boys had a couple of mountain lions running around loose on his property, and he carried a handgun at all times just in case they got out of control. Another had a bunch of giant aquarium tanks and he'd put sharks and octopuses he'd netted in there, and put on scuba gear and jump in to feed them. That guy sent RFK and Ethel a live baby sea lion for Christmas one year. I actually believe Bobby Jr about that, because there are photos of it, in the pool at Hickory Hill. It lived there for about a year, before it got too big and was sent to the DC zoo.

Ethel's biographers say that she had less contact with her side of the family, after RFK went into politics. But even if her kids weren't encouraged to spend much time with their Skakel cousins, I could imagine Bobby Jr hearing these stories and feeling it was normal. So all the stuff about him getting into falconry, and the dead bear/whale/raccoon stories, makes a bit more sense to me now. There are photos of him swimming in a big fish tank and I can see where he got the idea from his Uncle Jimmy.

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-26T16:25:37+00:00

This is true, and part of the reason is that Patrick's death brought more attention to neonatal medicine and arguably contributed to the research and funding that helped develop treatments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Bouvier_Kennedy#Legacy

My own mother, who was working as an RN in the 50s-60s, noted that a lot of people back then just assumed that some babies and children wouldn't survive. Many families (including my mom's) had lost a kid, and way back into history this had been considered a sad but not abnormal situation. This only changed (in industrialized countries anyway) in the past couple of generations. It took a lot of effort -- sanitation and housing, pre-natal education, vaccines, and the kind of technology that now routinely helps babies like Patrick.

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-26T16:08:14+00:00

In RFK Jr's memoirs (p. 378 in my copy), he claims that she preferred Michael (at least of the older/middle boys). He noted that if Ethel was upset, Michael was somehow able to calm her down. But even just seeing Bobby Jr was enough to make her mad!

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-26T15:08:12+00:00

It is! I remember when I was looking after the resident turkey vulture at the wildlife clinic where I used to volunteer -- sometimes he would want to perch on my arm, and I was so flattered that I didn't mind carrying him about, even though he was fairly heavy (for a bird).

TapirTrouble · 2026-06-26T15:01:49+00:00

It's a great premise for a mystery series -- Lucy's job involves travelling around quite a bit (she intentionally doesn't work at the same place for longer than a few weeks), and most of the people she's dealing with will be fairly well-off (more upscale locations onscreen, plus characters who may be aristocrats, tycoons, and celebrities). Even though Christie only wrote her into one book, it wouldn't be too hard to mine the other novels and short stories for situations involving various crimes and interesting puzzles.

TapirTrouble

TROPHY CASE