Charging around like a mad thing the last week or so and my reading has been of the quick and easy variety and I have found myself revisiting old friends as I do not have time to concentrate and focus on new stuff.
So I have been doing an Agatha – at the moment I am halfway through Death in the Clouds and this morning I finished Halloween Party and the other day A Pocketful of Rye. When I first read Halloween Party I was not sure about it, one of Dame A's later books written in the sixties and the rather rambling style of her older age had begun and can get tedious. However, I found the story more interesting this time around. I get very cross with people who say she cannot write and her characters are cardboard. They are anything but. And here is a passage that I think is rather fine:
"What am I seeing? thought Poirot. Is this the result of enchantment? ……this was not an English garden in which he was sitting. There was an atmosphere here…it had qualities of magic, of enchantment, certainly of beauty, bashful beauty yet wild. Here you would have your nymphs, your fauns, you would have Greek beauty, and yes you would have fear too. In this sunken garden there is fear…"
The motive for the murder here is that somebody says they have seen a murder, they did not realise it at the time but now they do. Later on the person who said this, a teenager, is found dead. The same device is used in the Caribbean Mystery, a Miss Marple, when she is shown a photograph of somebody who is identified as a murderer. Next day he is dead. There is the usual misdirection in both the stories so take nothing at face value.
I do enjoy reading Dame Agatha when I know the answers. I had not read Death in the Clouds for some years and at the beginning of the investigation there is a list of items which I passed over on first reading. Not so this time. Dame Agatha has given the reader the clue and we ignore it at our peril.
Incidentally, I have noticed in reading some of the titles the last week that it does not matter if you are young and in love and the hero and heroine in one of her mysteries, you are just as likely to be the murderer. If you were the happy couple in a Ngaio Marsh story you were always innocent. Dame A was not so nice….
I have also been re-reading Eva Ibbotson who is a simply enchanting writer. I love her stories. I have older editions on my shelves and prefer them to the newer ones of a few years ago which were marketed for teenagers with awful covers. Totally misguided.
I can really recommend her. I posted about her some years back
http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2008/06/eva-ibbotson–.html
http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2007/03/eva_ibbotson.html
Her books are full of delight and humour and wit and have an enchantment about them that is quite difficult to pin down. Set in Vienna and abroad and Brazil and feature ballet dancers, opera and music. Some off the wall characters in the nicest way. Do read them if you can. I adore them.
I have to thank Will at Alma Books who sent me a new copy of Heidi this week which I sat and read again. Another revisit of a gorgeous book of my childhood. More of that later.
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