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Murder Preferred: Including: The Patriotic Murders & A Murder is Announced & Murder in Retrospect
Murder The Patriotic Murders & A Murder is Announced & Murder in Retrospect
- GenresMystery
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1950
2 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Agatha Christie
5,822 books75.5k followersAgatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan.
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
This best-selling author of all time wrote 66 crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and six novels under a pseudonym in romance. Her books sold more than a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation. According to Index Translationum, people translated her works into 103 languages at least, the most for an individual author. Of the most enduring figures in crime literature, she created Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. She atuhored The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theater.
Associated Names:
Agata Christie
Agata Kristi
Агата Кристи (Russian)
Агата Крісті (Ukrainian)
Αγκάθα Κρίστι (Greek)
アガサ クリスティ (Japanese)
阿嘉莎·克莉絲蒂 (Chinese)
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
This best-selling author of all time wrote 66 crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and six novels under a pseudonym in romance. Her books sold more than a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation. According to Index Translationum, people translated her works into 103 languages at least, the most for an individual author. Of the most enduring figures in crime literature, she created Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. She atuhored The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theater.
Associated Names:
Agata Christie
Agata Kristi
Агата Кристи (Russian)
Агата Крісті (Ukrainian)
Αγκάθα Κρίστι (Greek)
アガサ クリスティ (Japanese)
阿嘉莎·克莉絲蒂 (Chinese)
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 22, 2015
There is an error in the description. This is a collection of two Poirot novels and one Marple.
The Poirot novels date from the early 1940s, and so have a preoccupation with the Second World War and reflect Christie's preoccupation with the dislocations and lasting social changes wrought on England by the war. These are also among the last cases in Poirot's pre-retirement detection career, and mark the point where Christie was at last able to act upon her active dislike of this little egomaniac, and begin writing stories about the much more congenial Miss Jane Marple.
The opening story, The Patriotic Murders, is a fine example of how very tired and rote the Poirot formula was by 1940. Recognized mainly for it being the last appearance of Inspector Japp and for an uncommonly political plot line, the story fails to gel. Among the weakest of Christie's novels, her attempts at misdirection only serve to lead the alert reader straight to the culprit. Even so, the solution does not rely upon exposing the easily proven missteps in the bizarrely complicated murder plot, but instead upon Poirot deducting unlikely conclusions from tenuous evidence. This is also a story that relies very heavily upon the idiot device, where persons tell a lie and withhold evidence for no reason other than the sake of the plot. The most extreme example being the surprise reveal at the end, a reveal the would have pointed directly to the culprit immediately but was withheld until the close for no discernible reason beyond plot protection. Like other Poirot novels there is a nursery rhyme theme (One, Two, Buckle My Shoe is the alternate title) but unlike earlier efforts, there is almost no attempt to make the rhyme part of the solution or be more than a motif.
A Murder Is Announced is a huge improvement, and the anchor to the collection. Newly published at the time of this collection, we see Miss Marple at the height of her powers, and Christie obviously enjoying her freedom from the fussy tyranny of Poirot. The strength of the story is that Jane is so in her element as an undercover agent working village society that we never for a moment doubt the unfolding of the story. This is, unfortunately, another "obvious" Christie story, one where an attentive reader will identify the murderer with ease by simply choosing the only person in the story who it simply cannot be and figuring out how it could be. This does nothing to detract from this classic puzzle story.
For the final novel we return to Poirot. Murder in Retrospect evinces as much of Christie's fatigue with the annoying Belgian as The Patriotic Murders, and is the last book in the original Poirot series. The imaginative strategy here is for Christie to avoid a war theme by presenting the detective with a cold case from the 1920s, and to write around Hercule rather than through him. The bulk of the evidence is presented by way of evidence in letter form, and describes events that took place sixteen years before. These letters are written at Hercule's request, and we do travel with him as he meets the witnesses and asks for testimonies, but this framing means that we are Poirot-free for nearly half the novel. Again, an attentive reader catches the culprit easily, but because of this framing, knowing the murderer actually works to Christie's benefit in the latter chapters as Poirot visits the witnesses in turn and asks exactly the questions one wants answered. The rhyme for this novel is Five Little Pigs (also an alternate title), but again there is no importance to the rhyme aside from a unifying motif to the series. In fact, Christie is so entirely disinterested in developing the motif that she never tries to apply pigs four or five to their subjects and just lets the reader do the work for her (pig four fits because "roast beef" is a euphemism, but I never could figure out why pig five was supposed to apply to Angela).
The summing up is one dud, one classic, and one midrange. Certainly worth the reading.
The Poirot novels date from the early 1940s, and so have a preoccupation with the Second World War and reflect Christie's preoccupation with the dislocations and lasting social changes wrought on England by the war. These are also among the last cases in Poirot's pre-retirement detection career, and mark the point where Christie was at last able to act upon her active dislike of this little egomaniac, and begin writing stories about the much more congenial Miss Jane Marple.
The opening story, The Patriotic Murders, is a fine example of how very tired and rote the Poirot formula was by 1940. Recognized mainly for it being the last appearance of Inspector Japp and for an uncommonly political plot line, the story fails to gel. Among the weakest of Christie's novels, her attempts at misdirection only serve to lead the alert reader straight to the culprit. Even so, the solution does not rely upon exposing the easily proven missteps in the bizarrely complicated murder plot, but instead upon Poirot deducting unlikely conclusions from tenuous evidence. This is also a story that relies very heavily upon the idiot device, where persons tell a lie and withhold evidence for no reason other than the sake of the plot. The most extreme example being the surprise reveal at the end, a reveal the would have pointed directly to the culprit immediately but was withheld until the close for no discernible reason beyond plot protection. Like other Poirot novels there is a nursery rhyme theme (One, Two, Buckle My Shoe is the alternate title) but unlike earlier efforts, there is almost no attempt to make the rhyme part of the solution or be more than a motif.
A Murder Is Announced is a huge improvement, and the anchor to the collection. Newly published at the time of this collection, we see Miss Marple at the height of her powers, and Christie obviously enjoying her freedom from the fussy tyranny of Poirot. The strength of the story is that Jane is so in her element as an undercover agent working village society that we never for a moment doubt the unfolding of the story. This is, unfortunately, another "obvious" Christie story, one where an attentive reader will identify the murderer with ease by simply choosing the only person in the story who it simply cannot be and figuring out how it could be. This does nothing to detract from this classic puzzle story.
For the final novel we return to Poirot. Murder in Retrospect evinces as much of Christie's fatigue with the annoying Belgian as The Patriotic Murders, and is the last book in the original Poirot series. The imaginative strategy here is for Christie to avoid a war theme by presenting the detective with a cold case from the 1920s, and to write around Hercule rather than through him. The bulk of the evidence is presented by way of evidence in letter form, and describes events that took place sixteen years before. These letters are written at Hercule's request, and we do travel with him as he meets the witnesses and asks for testimonies, but this framing means that we are Poirot-free for nearly half the novel. Again, an attentive reader catches the culprit easily, but because of this framing, knowing the murderer actually works to Christie's benefit in the latter chapters as Poirot visits the witnesses in turn and asks exactly the questions one wants answered. The rhyme for this novel is Five Little Pigs (also an alternate title), but again there is no importance to the rhyme aside from a unifying motif to the series. In fact, Christie is so entirely disinterested in developing the motif that she never tries to apply pigs four or five to their subjects and just lets the reader do the work for her (pig four fits because "roast beef" is a euphemism, but I never could figure out why pig five was supposed to apply to Angela).
The summing up is one dud, one classic, and one midrange. Certainly worth the reading.
Displaying 1 of 1 review