Perform the ritual that puts me in the part

[sovay]

Being left to my own devices this week with a pile of unfamiliar Agatha Christie, I naturally read them one after the other. I have nothing especially to note about Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (1934) or The Sittaford Mystery (1931) except that it turned out to be a duplicate of the US-titled The Murder at Hazelmoor and I swapped it out for Dolores Hitchens' Cat's Claw (1943), but Christie's They Came to Baghdad (1951) is a reasonably wild ride of a novel which mixes several different flavors of spy thriller with a romance conducted on an archaeological dig at Tell Aswad, which I didn't even need to bet myself had been excavated by Max Mallowan. Minus the nuclear angle, its global conspiracy is right out of an interwar thriller—Christie to her credit defuses much of the potential for antisemitism with references to Siegfried and supermen instead—as is its Ambler-esque heroine gleefully launching herself into international intrigue with little more than her native wits and talent for straight-faced improvisation, but its spymaster is proto-le Carré, the chronically shabby, fiftyish, vague-looking Dakin, a career disappointment rumored to drink who never looks any less tired when dealing with affairs of endangered state. He gave me instant Denholm Elliott and never seems to have recurred in another novel of Christie's, alas. I made scones with candied ginger and sour cherries and lemon tonight.

Comments

[regshoe]

It is fun when Agatha Christie ventures away from the classic murder mystery she's best known for into something like spy thrillers! I remember finding those books a bit uneven, but always interesting.

[sovay]

It is fun when Agatha Christie ventures away from the classic murder mystery she's best known for into something like spy thrillers! I remember finding those books a bit uneven, but always interesting.

I don't think I had read any of her novels before that weren't some form of detective story! Do you have any other recommendations? I agree on both the unevenness and the interest. (They Came to Baghdad has no pacing to speak of and a random whack of Kipling on top of its post-atomic politics and I didn't care.)

[regshoe]

Hmm—it's been a while since I read any of her books and the ones I remember liking best are detective stories with something about the structure subverted rather than something completely different. And Then There Were None is excellent; I remember liking Towards Zero when I first read it; N or M? is murder mystery and spies. I've read one of her books published under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring, and I remember thinking it was fascinating how much like her murder mysteries it was for a book with no murder in it—it's a sort of psychological character study/family drama and very good.

[sovay]

the ones I remember liking best are detective stories with something about the structure subverted rather than something completely different.

Thank you! I have read And Then There Were None and N or M? but neither of the other two you name. The Malden Public Library has several shelves' worth of Christie, so when I return this set, I'll look for your recommendations. (Towards Zero was conspicuously absent the last time I was there, probably on account of the recent adaptation.)