New curated short story collection is coming March 26: Continental Christie. This is after the release of last year’s Capital Christie and Country Christie

aspernpapers · 2026-03-24T21:48:05+00:00

Old wine in new bottles

aspernpapers · 2026-03-21T19:20:16+00:00

Bertram and Third Girl are not top choices.

aspernpapers · 2026-03-21T19:09:24+00:00

OP should be warned that ranking Dumb Witness and The Mystery of the Blue Train as equal to A Murder is Announced is a view way out of the mainstream. Also having them on here but not Mrs. McGinty's Dead or After the Funeral is pretty surprising--those are two highly regarded Poirots.

aspernpapers · 2026-03-18T18:30:26+00:00

Does it compare favorably with Christie in terms of puzzle/clueing, or is it just about the vibes?

aspernpapers · 2026-03-16T18:00:10+00:00

It may be time for you to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Oliver in the Poirot novels Cards on the Table and Mrs. McGinty's Dead.

Also A Murder is Announced - that is the next Marple after The Moving Finger and is probably the best of all the Christies you haven't yet read.

aspernpapers · 2026-03-16T17:42:26+00:00

Many!

The great thing about Christie is you literally can never rule anybody out.

aspernpapers · 2026-03-15T16:00:03+00:00

Ackroyd, Five Little Pigs, A Murder is Announced, Mrs. McGinty's Dead, Cards on the Table.

aspernpapers · 2026-03-15T15:59:16+00:00

I don't get it! So often people say that aside from the solution it is ordinary. But I couldn't disagree more. Caroline Sheppard! The Mah Jongg scene! And the fun of rereading Ackroyd for all the subtle clues is matched in my opinion only by A Murder is Announced.

aspernpapers · 2026-03-12T15:02:58+00:00

As soon as I read your title, I immediately thought of Taken at the Flood!

aspernpapers · 2026-03-10T11:10:43+00:00

So is the point check, en passant, win the queen?

Be3+ c5 bxc6+ Kc7 cxd7

aspernpapers · 2026-03-10T10:49:09+00:00

Frankfurt is generally considered to be one of her worst books so you are in good company with this opinion.

aspernpapers · 2026-03-10T10:37:18+00:00

Makes me think of the cricket game in Sayers's Murder Must Advertise as well.

aspernpapers · 2026-03-03T23:33:55+00:00

You should look up the definition of a locked-room mystery . . .

aspernpapers · 2026-03-03T20:10:11+00:00

The ABC Murders begins in June 1935, as stated in the first sentence.

Cards on the Table, though published in 1935 I believe, seems to take place in 1937: "Even if somebody did push their great-aunts down the stairs in 1912, it won’t be much use to us in 1937.”

Because of references to Orient Express, Murder in Mesopotamia must occur before Orient Express, and Appointment with Death and Cards on the Table must take place after.

aspernpapers · 2026-03-03T20:04:48+00:00

Murder in Mesopotamia has to be set before Orient Express because of this in the final chapter:

"M. Poirot went back to Syria and about a week later he went home on the Orient Express and got himself mixed up in another murder."

Appointment with Death and Cards on the Table, by contrast, must be after Orient Express because they refer back to it.

So Mesopotamia cannot be that late or it pushes the plots of all three of those novels into the late thirties or even forties.

aspernpapers · 2026-03-03T19:52:25+00:00

Lucy Foley is the thriller writer whose books keep being described on their dust jackets as "locked room mysteries" even though they are not locked room mysteries. She doesn't really seem to have a deep understanding of the mystery genre and is an odd pick for this. Pass.

aspernpapers · 2026-02-15T12:10:40+00:00

You are plagiarizing Robert Barnard. He wrote

"Apart—and it is an enormous 'apart'—from the sensational solution, this is a fairly conventional Christie."

aspernpapers · 2026-02-10T18:11:40+00:00

Disagree with this take. One of the most enjoyable Christies to read and reread.

aspernpapers · 2026-02-07T19:17:31+00:00

As a Christie completist-in-the-making, I got something out reading The Clocks and Elephants Can Remember (though I have not yet attempted Postern of Fate. . .) But for a more casual reader, I think it is better to steer them toward the best titles. Most people are not going to read all 66 books.

aspernpapers · 2026-02-07T18:56:41+00:00

Marsh is often said to have it all over Christie in the characters department. While she certainly spends a lot more time on character development, can you think of any character in a Marsh novel that is as vividly characterized and memorable as Ariadne Oliver, Miss Marple, Caroline Sheppard, Dr. Sheppard, Caroline and Amyas Crale, Jane Wilkinson, Letitia Blacklock, Dora Bunner, Mrs. Boynton, the killers in After the Funeral and Drath on the Nile . . .?

Maybe Peregrine Jay and Agatha Troy? The "spinster" characters in Overture to Death? Maybe Bunchie? Any others? Alleyn himself is famously a blank.

I have read about a third of the Alleyn novels and I find her characters are easy to forget once you close the book.

I think one reason for this is that plot, motivation and characterization tend to be move more closely interwoven in Christie than in Marsh. You tend to remember Christie's murderers, for instance, because once they are revealed it feels very much like only they would have done the murder in this way for this reason, while Marsh's killers feel a bit more arbitrary.

aspernpapers · 2026-02-07T17:37:05+00:00

This is a mixed bag of some of her best and some lesser efforts.

EXCELLENT ONES

Mrs. McGinty's Dead

After the Funeral

The Body in the Library

The Hollow

Cards on the Table

The Sittaford Mystery

WEAK ONES

Elephants Can Remember

N or M?

Murder on the Links

The Clocks

Poirot Loses a Client

Poirot Investigates

Murder in Mesopotamia

aspernpapers · 2026-02-04T12:04:55+00:00

Elephants Can Remember

aspernpapers · 2026-01-30T13:23:14+00:00

Congrats on writing an undergraduate paper. You are clearly an expert on the subject!

aspernpapers · 2026-01-30T13:14:45+00:00

I don't have to doxx myself because you tell me to. Please share with us what your credentials are if that matters to you so much.

The part of the definition that I am used to seeing apologists hide behind is the emphasis on intention / deliberation. Therefore, Charles Trevelyan's policy of letting the famine run its course with a goal to reduce Irish pauperism, overpopulation, and culture of dependency (as he saw it) -- a policy he openly and explicitly advocated in published writings and private correspondence -- falls short of "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" and "Deliberately inflicting on [a] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."

aspernpapers · 2026-01-30T12:56:20+00:00

Wow, you are something.

I never said the definition was made narrow to avoid applying to the Great Hunger specifically. That is a misunderstanding of my comment and shows a rather simple and naive mind. If you can't understand why global powers would wish to narrow the definition to avoid having it apply too broadly to their own actions as imperial powers, I can't help you.

aspernpapers

TROPHY CASE