Theodicius
Good. Evil. Bratwurst.

I was told I had to pick up a copy of Mary Higgins Clark’s My Gal Sunday, by people who insisted it was the best husband/wife team since Nick and Nora Charles.

Not even close. (more…)

My local PBS station is carrying this show, and I caught three episodes last night. It’s a passable mystery, though I have to admit I’m usually at least 15 minutes ahead of the detectives, so I can’t say it’s plotted very well.

But it was good to see Felicity Kendall in action again. Sigh. I really had something for her back when we were both young. Good Neighbors. I scoured the video stores for episodes of Solo. And she still looks good today. Deeper Sigh.

Now, if they ever did a buddy series with Felicity Kendall and Lis Sladen, I don’t think my heart could take it.

I suppose I should mention something about the Da Vinci Code, as everyone else seems to be getting drawn in, so here I go.

It’s a well-written thriller, in general, but the historical research is amazingly shoddy. As fiction, I’d give it a B, but if he submitted the “research” behind it as a term paper, it’d get an “F” at most, and we might even have to invent a lower grade for it. He begins with a page stating “facts”, virtually none of which is actually true in the strictest sense, though a few items you could “spin” into being acceptably true, in the sense that claims made in TV commercials are “true.”

You see, I’ve been down this “historical” road a few decades ago, when I read “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”, but it seems Dan Brown lacks the critical skills required to be a researcher or historian. He seems to believe everything he reads (’it’s in a book, therefore it must be true”) which is a fatal flaw when doing research, though quite essential, if only in a temporary sense, when reading fiction.
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OK, sonow I’ve seen a few episodes of the TV series based on Kathy Reichs’ books, what do I think?

Ick.

First, ifyou’re expecting to see anything resembling the books, you’ll be disappointed. This Tempe Brennan also a Forensic Anthropologist, but that’s where the resemblance ends. This one seems to go out of her way to physically deck at least one person every show. There’s also more sex in the show than the books, and none of the supporting cast seems to have made it into the show intact, either.

The writing is incredibly spotty (one show Boreanz calls her”Bones” all the time with no issues, another everytime he does she snaps”Don’t call me bones!”). There are all the cliche characters and gags, nothing real in it at all. You might be watching Quincy reruns, except the plotting isn’t as good.

As a show about Temperance Brennen, it stinks. As a show about a forensic anthropologist, it’s no better than average, maybe worse. If you watch the show, my advice is to turn off your brain before you turn the show on; you’ll enjoy it more. The more you think about what you’re seeing, the worse the show will seem. If you have to watch TV, I suppose this is OK. But you’re better off reading any of Kathy Reichs’ books than watching it at all.

Just finished To The Nines by Janet Evanovich. The first and last book of the series (I did another in the sequence as abridged audio on my recent trip to Phoenix; I did the book to check the real series.)

Evanovich has a way with dialogue. Her plots are more from the thriller genre than the mystery genre, as she doesn’t require anyone to do much thinking. For example, as soon as she introduced the evidence for the existence of the WebMaster in this book, I knew the rest of the story. It wasn’t at all hard to see who the main villain was, and I ended up cursing the supposedly intelligent characters in the book for not recognizing something so obvious right away. The remainder of the plot required the good guys collectively act like idiots for the remainder of the book.

Between that and the annoying characters she’s populated her world with, there’s every reason for me to avoid stopping by here again. Even though Lula did manage to discover the major drawback to the Atkins diet (there’s blessed little to crunch on in it) I really never want to meet up with her again. Life’s too short to spend it with characters who make you wince.

And that’s the bottom line. I cringed often in this book, mainly at the characterizations of ethnic minorities, but at other points as well.

Here’s why the BBC is wrong in their current portrayal of Jane Marple. (For those who haven’t watched the new Miss Marple series, imagine a skinny Margaret Rutherford. No, I take that back; it’s a slander against Dame Margaret.)

Their new actress has her loving murder mystery stories.

Yes, that’s what turned me off about her. Jane Marple, as she reminded me in Nemesis, hates reading about murders. She really doesn’t like them, and further, isn’t really interested in crime at all. Not one bit. But why then does she seem to be in the middle of crime so often? She considers herself to be one of those people murder just happens around. Rather like one of her relatives, who had been in so many accidents (by both taxi and railway) that no one else in the family would travel with her. Murders just seemed to happen in her vicinity, and so she would get drawn in. Not by choice, but by circumstance.

I really can’t take any portrayal of Jane Marple seriously that involves her actually being interested in solving crimes. No, Joan Hickson’s portrayal may not have been perfect, but she’s miles ahead of anyone else I’ve ever seen in the role. Aunt Jane is one of my favorites, and I simply won’t watch the new series at all. To this point I had been impressed with the casting choices the BBC had made with the heroes of my youth (Suchet as Poirot and Davidson as Campion were both nothing short of inspired selections — I danced with joy when I first saw them — Petherbridge as Wimsey and Bret as Holmes took some getting used to but were brilliant, at least while Bret’s health held up, and Warwick and Annis as Tommy and Tuppence were simply wonderful) but this Jane Marple has been a serious mistake; they’ve slipped up horribly with her. It’s an even worse choice than Simon Williams as Roderick Alleyn, which they immediately rectified with Patrick Malahide, who while nowhere near perfect was a definite improvement. (OK, since my eldest daughter’s middle name is Ngaio, perhaps I can be considered a bit hard to please when it comes to Alleyn.)

Sara Paretsky has a way.

She has a way of creating characters you enjoy being around, and a way of creating characters you want to avoid being around. She has a way of making them speak as if they were in the room with you. She has a way with plotting, and a way with pacing, that keep you interested, keep you turning pages.

But that’s not what I meant. I’ve been holding off on writing this because it’s going to link to something else; I know it. but here goes.

Sara Paretsky has a way of pulling topical happenings into her books, and making abstract things seem more real for doing it.

In Blacklist, the topicality is provided by the PATRIOT Act. The subplot is about a boy at a private school who happens to be the wrong ethnic group, and has the wrong place of worship, who attracts blame for all sorts of things for no other reason than that. And it’s about what rights the US Government has taken away from us so it can hunt down anyone it so chooses to hunt, regardless of the facts in the matter.

The story is good, but I have to admit she didn’t “palm the ace” quite as deftly as she usually does. One of the breathtaking revelations in this novel was so painfully obvious to me the moment it first appeared that I began to lose some respect for Ms Warshawski when she didn’t immediately reach the same conclusion. It seemed to me that Paretsky intentionally dumbed down our intrepid heroine in a weak attempt to sneak one by the reader. I don’t mind it when an author tries to sneak one past me, but I feel cheated when she doesn’t put her heart into the effort; almost insulted by the lack of respect she is showing for my attention.

But the major point here is the side effects of the nefarious Act, and how much it requires us to trust that our government will only do good things and only has good intentions. To one who has lived through Watergate, and all the subsequent “gates” (schemes from both parties, I’m an equal-opportunity mistruster) this indeed seems like we’ve slid through the looking glass. I’m supposed to trust people I wouldn’t buy a used car from? Oh, there are individuals in government that I feel I can trust, but just give a blank check to anyone in a uniform? Come on, get real. I’ve spent time in a uniform myself. I know the kind of heroes who wear one, and I know that villains can wear one, too. (Remind me sometime to tell you why I left the military; I met some fine people there, but I also met some real scum. And the scum was winning.)

I’m sure I’l soon launch into some more analysis on the political side of this, but suffice it to say this is a good read, if you’re sane enough to be able to stand the politics.

by Lev Grossman

I really don’t remember when I’ve read a book that irritated me this much. I’m generally a sucker for old manuscript-based thrillers. Possibly it’s because I collect old books myself, but for whatever the reason, a search for old documents will generally find me coming along for the ride.

So it’s no surprise I bit on the premise here: a man is contracted to catalog the book collection of a wealthy family, looking in particular for a specific book. The book is one of those mythical beasts, the only evidence for its existence is what is generally accepted as a forged printing of it. The book doesn’t exist. Or does it?

The plot and the pacing go well enough, though we are expected to swallow several rather large presuppositions to get the story started, such as that the man contracted to catalog the collection knows next to nothing about books, and even less about cataloging them. We’re never given an acceptable reason why he was offered the job in the first place (the closest it gets is the old “I knew I could trust you when I saw you” kind of thing) and worse, we don’t have a good reason for him to accept the job. He seems to have no real interest in books, old or new, he’s due at a top-paying job across the Atlantic in two weeks and he’s spending the time with eleven crates of musty old books and playing what sounds like a prettty boring computer game, rather than preparing for the trip. Yeah, right. That really makes sense.

If you manage to swallow plot setup points like those, the pacing moves along fairly well, and the story develops as the Duke wantshim to drop the search while the Duchess wants him to continue). Then, abruptly, it ends. No climax, no ultimate struggle. Nothing. It just ends. Our hero shows up, breathless, with the codex in his hand, the crypto solved, and nothing whatever comes of it. Nothing changes, nothing is rescued or destroyed. We don’t even know whether our hero gets to start his new job (he was threatened with its loss during the quest for the codex) or what happens to the software company of his friend/acquaintance (which was also threatened with destruction by the Duke’s men).

This non-ending reduces the book to triviality. Why did the author even bother telling the story? What was the point? Basically we have a passably well-written book with nothing to say to us. If all you want to say is that everything is futile, and nothing can be achieved, then be consistent and shut up; if everything’s futile, then your story is as well, so don’t bother anyone else with it.

The structure of a thriller calls not only for a real ending, which Grossman fails to propvide, but for a brief “cooling-down” period after the climax, in which we are given the opportunity to recover our breath while the author fills us in on what finally happens with many/most of the sub-plots that were introduced along the way to keep the suspense building. Here, the author shirks his duty to his readers completely. We get nothing in return for our investment in the characters. No satisfaction at all.

Avoid this book. I can’t think of any circumstances under which I’d support buying it. Counting the speckles in the plaster on the ceiling will pass time more enjoyably. There’s no joy in this read, and if you’re a masochist, there are several other more efficient ways of inflicting pain on yourself, most of which will cost less.

Egad, a consecutive string of turkeys. I need to read something good to get this bad taste out of my mouth.

A first novel from Christine Kling.

Les Standiford, you should be ashamed of yourself. Mentioning Seychelle Sullivan in the same breath as John D [MacDonald] is a crime. I’ll admit I’m probably not a good judge of potential, and since it’s her first book maybe I should cut her some slack, but if John D had written this it would lining a bird cage or a cat box somewhere.

The link to Travis McGee is obvious; Sullivan is in salvage. But it stops there. There is the stupid but thorough cop who adds 2+2 and gets the square of the hypoteneuse, the old friend cop (only this one’s recently retired; seems like you can’t have a good guy on the force in this particular world). There’s the home for wayward girls (and you know what it really does to the girls, don’t you?) the ex-lover too nasty to be with but of course too noble to be part of the plot against her. Sullivan herself is too smart for the bad guys to put up with having her around, yet everyone believes nasty things said about her by a drunken racetrack loser. Yep, I can believe that, I can.

I got the feeling for about the middle third of the book the author was stuck for how to stretch it out. So we have a bunch of hand-waving (some hands containing weapons) and water-churning until enough pages have gone back to draw the tale to a close.

Maybe it’s just the linkage with MacDonald that’s triggering this in me; if so, that’s not Kling’s fault. But this tale was tiresome, I frankly almost didn’t finish the book. Life’s too short to waste it reading really bad books. This book seemed to hover gently right on the line between mediocre and bad. It’s quite possible the author has grown past this level now. If you think so and are willing to check it out, try one of her latest books. The only defensible reason for picking this one up is to complete a collection.

Double Sin, published in 1961, is a collection of stories written by Dame Agatha Christie. The publication date puts it toward the end of her “dry period” where her books were more automatic writing than inventiveness, but don’t let the timing put you off. Many of the stories come from the very fertile earlier periods of her career, and there are some real classics in here.

Of the eight stories presented, half are Poirot, and few of them of the automatic variety. Two more are Miss Marple’s, but those are among the more pedestrian of her adventures, and could be missed without regret. And finally, there are two examples of Christie’s gothic touch (non-series). Dame Agatha wrote a number of gothic stries as well, and they are interesting outings as well.

The longest story in the batch, The Theft Of The Royal Ruby, gets reprinted in nearly every Christmas Mystery collection; there are elements of the heart-warming in it as much as mystery. “Wasps’ Nest” plays the least fair with the reader, but that’s OK, in its way, because it’s not really a mystery story. It’s more of a brief step by the Belgian over the line from dectective story to gothic. The question to be solved isn’t so much “who did the crime?” as it is “What’s going on here?” As such, the lack of fairplay is forgivable.

This is one of the better books in this stretch of Christie, probably due in no small part to being comprised of earlier stories. Recommended.

The latest book in my return trip through Agatha Christie’s world is Cat Among the Pigeons. Someone is killing the schoolmistresses of one of the most exclusive girl’s schools in Britain.

This one comes from the period where Dame Agatha was truly sick and tired of Hercule Poirot; it’s one of the books where she keeps him offstage for as long as possible, bringing him in 2/3-rds the way through when one of the school girls finds something in a tennis racket, and remembers being told about him by an aunt, so she leaves school to find him.

Plot devices here include the kidnapping of the daughter of a foreign potentate. I find myself asking why I don’t find the plotting here as tiresome as in the Hilda Johansson tale I chatted about earlier, because I’m moved to give this book a higher ranking. Two reasons come to mind: first, the devices weren’t nearly as tired when Dame Agatha was writing, and that Dame Agatha wields them in a more believable story.

As for clues, no she doesn’t play fair this time. She gives Hercule Poirot access to information we don’t get until he announces the solution of the case, and she allows Hercule to guess correctly the interpretation of some clues that admit multiple interpretations without suffiecient evidence.

As a puzzle, it’s not one of her best. As a Poirot story, it’s almost non-existent, unless you’re partial to Deus Ex Machina endings. But it’s a passable story. All told, I wouldn’t recommend it unles you’re trying to be a completist. (If you’re looking for good mysteries, in fact, I’d suggest skipping this entire period; until she resigns herself to Poirot’s continued existence, the Poirot books are simply a master going through the motions, “phoning it in,’ as it were.)

Maybe I’ve just overdosed on the period lately, but this particular mystery, by Jeanne Dams, left me completely cold. Try as I might, I just could not get interested in any of the characters presented in it. That’s a bit unusual, as I have generally liked her work (enough to locate signed firsts of her first three books, featuring Dorothy Martin).

The basic plot is is that the uncle of Hilda’s (for lack of a better term) boyfriend has disappeared, and the last reported sighting of him before he disappeared has him murdering his rival for election to the town council. Plot devices include liberal dosages of laudanum, prejudice against both sewedes and irish, con men, and the power of a family to make a murder investigation stop in its tracks.

Also the story steps upon one of my political peeves: democrat=Good, republican=Evil. For the record, I am not now, nor have I ever been a republican. I simply believe that democrats are just as likely to abuse power as republicans (maybe that comes from growing up in the era of Richard Daly, but then again Boss Tweed was also a democrat, wasn’t he?) and I’m getting tired of novels portraying the one but not the other. One of my favorite lines from Rod McKuen (now if that doesn’t date me, I don’t know what does) went: “Black isn’t always beautiful, but any man who thinks it always ugly should be shown the ugly side of white.”

The period touches in the book simply serve to make the idea of a maidservant/detective all the more unbelievable. The plot itself might be good, I don’t know. It was hard for me to pay attention to it because the characters were so uninteresting. In fact I finished the book solely because I kept hoping for it to suddenly get better, I’d enjoyed her Dorothy Martin books enough to make me expect it would. It didn’t. It will be the last Hilda Johansson I read; life’s too short to waste it on unenjoyable books. Not recommended. If you want to read about the period, grab a US History text.

James Patterson’s recent outing for profiler Alex Cross was, to be blunt, a disappointment. The premise is that Alex Cross has left the DC police and joined the FBI in order to have more time with his family. We’ll leave the obvious point that this is unrealistic and scarcely credible alone, chalking it up to the required “suspension of disbelief” that reading every novel involves.
But after passing over that point, there are just too many stale plot cliches. The mother of his (Alex Cross’s) child reappears with a nasty lawyer and you can deduce every detail of the progression of that subplot just from that statement. Another subplot revolves around how the supervisor of Cross’s mandatory FBI orientation and training classes feels towards this new guy the the bigwigs recruited and brought in by promises. Yep, you guessed it. Most of the other devices in this novel have beards fully as long or even longer.
Still, I’ve always said that I don’t mind a trip down a familiar road so long as the tour guide makes it enjoyable. The major plot involves a white slavery ring operated by a Russian mafia, ex-secret police, gangster. It involves the kidnapping and delivery into slavery of white suburban soccer moms to order (with the token gay request thrown in for diversity) from a catalog assembled by the organization. Fortunately, Patterson manages to avoid descending into the obvious titillation offered by this premise, and the pacing of developments and plot twists in it occasionally show flashes of his mastery of the genre. But generally speaking, instead of a tight plot and good characterization we get a lot of running around with accompanying shouting and waving of hands, with no real satisfying conclusion at the end of it all.
It’s a rather pedestrian effort from a writer I’ve come to expect more of. Diehard fans of Alex Cross will want to pick it up, if for no other reason than it marks a sea change in his life. If you’re new to Alex Cross, pass on it; you’ll find material at least as good in almost any book selected at random from this genre.

My latest batch of mystery books, by Anne Perry, leave me a little puzzled. I’ve written before about her books (liked the Pitt — Cater Street Hangman — but not the Monk) but I may be changing my mind. To the extent that I may not be able to finish the latter one.

The Pitts (Charlotte and Thomas) are a husband and wife team in the Victorian era. He is a police inspector, she “merely” his wife. Perry does a fairly good job of evoking the sense of the period, I suppose. But I’m starting to wonder about a couple of things.

For one thing, her books don’t “feel” like the books and stories I’ve read that actually were written during the Victorian era. There’s a lot more societal detail, and she lays on the atmosphere with a trowel, something the real Victorian authors never did. I suppose a partial explanation for this is that she’s “overcompensating,” she’s trying to emphasize the time period when the story takes place, and cannot (or does not) expect her readership to be aware of what the Victorian detective story actually reads like. So she overemphasizes the feel of the epoch, to be sure we “get it.”

This in itself isn’t disturbing, but there’s an undercurrent I’ve started to notice that is. I’m not at all sure of this, but I’m beginning to feel Ms Perry herself doesn’t really like this period. It started gnawing at the back of my mind during the Monk novel, and now that I’ve done three of her novels (and am working on a fourth) the idea is growing more steady on its legs.
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OK, so the secret is out: I’m addicted to Dutch mystery writers. This one is part of the series written by Janwillem van de Wetering about the two Amsterdam cops Grijpstra and De Gier. But the addiction doesn’t just extend to this series. I’m also in love with Maj Sjowal and Per Wahloo’s output, and even the pseudo-Dutch output of Nicholas Freeling. I freely admit, however, for the American market these books are an acquired taste.

In this one, the two cops are called to the scene of an all-too-neat corpse, a murder staged to look like suicide. De Gier beds the widow, and looks forward to more of her, until she insists his cat would have to go. Grijpstra deals with the politics of his superiors in hos own cynical way, adn eventually the two converge on the solution.

The somewhat cynical outlook of the book isn’t the hard-boiled cynicism of American novels, but rather an amused one, coming from a man who knows what he is saying is absurd, but says it anyway because he must if he is to keep his job. And, since he knows he also must catch the bad guys with some efficiency if he is to keep his job, he always finds a way to keep politics from blockinghis path.

Probably not for the average American reader, but if you’re wiling to take a trip into a mindset from a different society, it’s worth the trip.

It strikes me that I’ve stopped talking about books on the blog. Let’s rectify that now.

Double Sin is a collection of Agatha Christie shorts, involving Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, but also including some non-series stories with a gothic taste.

The title story, while a Poirot, isn’t the best in the book. Infact the entire books is a bit of a pedestrian excursion for Dame Agatha. The best story is probably the “Theft Of The Royal Ruby,” a Christmas-themed story.

As always, if you’re after lifelike characters, pass this one by. But if you’re into puzzles, it’s an adeqaute delight.

by Jonathan Kellerman. This is the second Alex Delaware mystery I’ve read (the first being The Web.

Kellerman’s books aren’t really “whodunits.” as they don’t play by those rules. They’re more “novels of suspense.” There’s no real puzzle to solve, as you can generally keep up with the sleuth’s knowledge through the entire book, and you know who did it as soon as the sleuth does. But it’s a good ride.

Kellerman keeps you wondering, though I admit my attention did flag a couple of times during the ride. There’s always enough suspense to keep the pages turning. You get a lok inside the world of psychologists (”pop” and otherwise) with agood cynical look at both TV types and activists. Along with a quite plausible scheme for bilking the California government for a 6-7 figure income. (Given the state of California’s finances, that in itself, is probably not very hard.)

by Dick Francis. I’ve always liked the way Francis has with a plot, though it has seemed in his recent books he’s gone out of his way to toss in more sex. I suppose he’s trying to be modern, but it just seems forced. I’ve never minded sex (or violence — why do those two always seem to go together?) when it’s a part of the plot or the character development. But both are off-putting when they’re just tossed in without thought or purpose. At least he only wastes a tad under a page on it in this book; as I said, he seems to be treating it as an obligatory add-on, rather than an integral part of the story. Sort of like those gratuitous scenes in an American movie that are there to give it an ‘R’ rating, showing it to be a ’serious’ movie, but which can easily be excised for sale to American broadcast television.

The theme is a variation on “You can’t go home again.” A newly-promoted member of the British Foreign Office makes some friends in the US, and accompanies them back to England, where they run into a spot of bother. Since his mother remarried and he was adopted by his stepfather, no one in the English countryside they’ve traveled to tumbles to the fact he actually grew up there (including the sister of one of his playmates). A tad difficult to swallow as he instantly recognizes some of them, but there you have it.

Beyond that little faux pas, Francis does his usual good job. We see the people both through the eyes of a child growing up there, and through the adult coming back, who realizes he doesn’t know these people as well as he’d like, and who doesn’t fit in there any more. The child draws the man into some complications (including the unnecessary sex scene mentioned above). It’s also hinted at rather strongly that he may actually be a half-brother to one of the locals, from the “wrong side of the blanket.” It’s not a cozy, and it’s not a whodunit in the strict sense, as Francis tips you off very early as to who at least one of the Bad People is. But he can’t let that go untwisted, and so deftly palms an ace, only to reveal the major player from the bad side right at the end. The final trap the hero walks into is again obvious, but the face behind it isn’t.

As usual for Francis, no loose ends are left dangling, and not only does our hero emerge from his trials victorious, he also gets the girl. Escapist? Of course. But if I wanted realism, I’d read the paper. Or one of the hundreds of biographies being published today. I get enough of reality by living, thank you very much. I need to see the Good Guy win and even get the girl from time to time; it gives me what I need in order to pick up my lance, mount my charger and Get Back In There. Highly recommended.

One of the “Home Repair” mysteries from Sarah Graves. This is my first venture into this series, and I’m disappointed. I was looking for a modern series; It struck me that, aside from Dick Francis, all the mystery authors I was seriously reading and collecting were dead. There was Tom Clancy, but I gave up on Jack Ryan after he became president and solved all the Isreali/Palestinian problems, and John LeCarre didn’t seem the same after the Soviet Union fell.

I have to say, though, that I’m not sure if I’m disappointed at the book itself, or because the book didn’t come close to living up to the hype that was stuffed into the first three pages. I found little of the “tart wit”, “zingy dialogue,” etc., I was promised.

What I found instead was a fairly serviceable plot, with the only “home repair” I noticed being dumpster diving for shutters and the handy tip that you need to clamp the work in place before applying the belt sander (so much for “Diane Mott Davidson with a toolbelt insetad of recipes;” since woodworking is my hobby, perhaps there were more tips that went by without being noticed). It wasn’t hard to see the end coming, especially when the (rather obvious) dope dealer died. Still it was handled with aplomb, and I always say I don’t mind knowing where I’m going as long as the trip is fun. I did wince, however, when the murderer, who went to great pains to remove something incriminating from one of the victims, was found, some 200 pages later, to still be carrying, in a pocket, that incriminating piece of evidence.

Bottom line? Don’t go into this book expecting the greatest mystery read of all time, or even of the year. The characterization is reminiscent of James Patterson’s all-woman murder society (it strikes me as I write this that, aside from Hercule Poirot, I haven’t run into any male protagonists in quite some time, the guys are always the villains and sometimes the sidekicks) but it’s a rung or two below that in terms of execution. It’s an adequate storyline, though; not a waste of time.

Recommendation? Tentative. I’m going back to sample another book (and possibly two) from this series before I give up on it. I haven’t however, decided to start buying hardcovers of it.

I’ve gotten behind on writing about the books, haven’t I?

In this one Dame Agatha’s favorite avatar, Ariadne Oliver, calls Hercule Poirot to come party because she thinks something is wrong. They have their usual discussion about women’s intuition, and, sure enough, someone dies.

The story is her usual good puzzle, though definitely not prime Agatha. (Of course, once you’ve tumbled onto her tendencies, you can pick out the killer, but that’s cheating. Stick to following the clue trail.) It comes from the mid 50’s, a prolific period for her, even if the quality of the period is adversely affected by the quantity.

Party begins, famous writer Ariadne Oliver on scene to write the clues for a Murder Hunt. The Girl Guide who was playing the part of the victim in the hunt is found dead. The Lady of the House vanishes after her brother, whom she fears, arrives in his yacht.

Dame Agatha was the Queen Of The Cozies. This book, while not of the mettle that defined her greatness, is still a good puzzle.