Agatha Christie

If there is one author that I have reread on more than one occasion it is Agatha Christie. Somehow I seem to have to keep reacquiring here books as well. I know I have to thin the collection every so often before I end up on TV as a hoarder, but I invariably find my self regretting certain book donations.


This time I am restricting my rereading to Miss Jane Marple who I am really appreciating this time around. There are twelve stories in her series and they are available in  three separate omnibuses.


 I just finished the second omnibus which contained A Caribbean Mystery, A Pocket Full of Rye, The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side and They Do It Withh Mirrors.


Jane is at her best in these stories as is Agatha of course. By now Jane's nephew Raymond has been a successful writer and likes to help out Auntie Jane by sending her on a winter trip to Barbados to help her recuperate from a severe bout of bronchitis, or by providing her with a home help which slowly drives her crazy. Well, Jane never gets crazy, just irked in a gentle way.


But where ever Jane is she is forward thinking at the same time as she looks to the past for behavior patterns that are part and parcel of human nature.  Jane is fully aware of how she comes across and a fragile, elderly gentle lady and she plays this role to the hilt using it to great advantage while she is honing her edges on unsuspecting people.

Christie 1926

After reading the story I can watch a version to it on Netflix and compare them. I have watched at least two TV or movie versions of The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side. The book continues to surpass the adaptations. It is a version of murders in a country house but even though it is a classic mystery the clues are not all clearly set before the reader at one time, rather like the unveiling of Salome and her seven veils, the picture slowly comes into focus as Miss Marple peers though all the distractions and red herrings to see the solid core of the mystery.

I liked the Joan Hickson version of the story but I always wish they would give the poor woman more than one hat. I really don't believe she would wear the same hat to garden in that she wears to church and other social events. It is a subtle way to dumb her down and give the viewer a distorted vision of Miss Marple a person who bumbles into the answers rather than using her very acute mind.


The term Geezer lit is popping up these days and some times Jane Marple is included in the genre. Geezer of course really refers off eccentric elderly old men usually. If it is broadened to include women Jane  still doesn't qualify because she is not odd or eccentric but very normal.  Hercule Poirot on the other hand is geezer personified.


I have recently come across another series of Christies that I am going to try. It is that of Superintendant Battle of Scotland Yard. The first of the series The Secret of Chimneys was written in 1925. This was written about five years before the Marple books and five years after the Poirot books.