A real life mystery. Agatha Christie famously disappeared for 11 days. I believe nothing is known about what she did during those 11 days but there is plenty of conjecture.
I recently watched a movie that was based on this period of Christie’s life and the real life murder of a nurse, The Truth of Murder which was quite enjoyable.
There is a 1979 movie **Agatha/b with Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman which is also about the same period of her life.
Lovely, lovely thread. Please consider every post in the thread liked from me. I can’t tell if I’m keeping up my likes because of limitations of using kindle here.
It’s especially useful to me when posters take the time to explain literary allusions I assume were very clear to Sayers’ readers at the time. Or not. Thoughts?
It all makes me think about the ongoing debate over the positives and negatives of a great books curriculum/ common canon. Big negative… Racist, sexist, classist elements in books we might otherwise still be reading in schools.
Both are telling a story set in England in the aftermath of WWI.
There are major societal changes due to the huge numbers of dead, and shell shock of so many survivors. And, as CF pointed out, it impacts all classes.
Of course, Peter. His silliness seems to be a coping mechanism. Just like all the antics of the bright young things. Downtown Abbey, (our cultural touchstone?) describes the period.
What about General MacArthur? Sending his wife’s lover to an unnecessary death seem especially tragic to me in that context. I’m trying to think of war influences on Christie’s stories. Of course, Poirot.
We’ve noted that Judge Wargrave faking his own death without being discovered was hard to believe, but his actual death was even more far-fetched, right? What are the odds that the gun attached to the door knob with a rubber band would go off exactly as planned and hit him precisely where he needed to be hit? Outrageous – but if you decide to just kick back and enjoy the outrageousness of the story, it’s fun. For the Christie readers out there, do her other mysteries hold up better to close scrutiny?
Agatha Christie wrote the staged version of her novel and gave it a different ending.
She makes Vera Claythorne and Philip Lombard innocent, and has them escape the island together. Interesting, because I thought their crimes were two of the worst in the book. @AnAsmom, you made a similar comment in an earlier post. Maybe many readers shared that view, so for the play, Christie decided to eliminate the crimes/characters that were hardest to stomach.
How would you all “rank” the crimes of those on Judge Wargrave’s hit list?
As an architect my first thought was secret room, but alas they measured the house thoroughly early on. I was leaning toward Vera, and thought she would finally feel real guilt. But of course that was not convoluted enough!
@alh, one of the things I like best about the CC bookclub is because we spend time discussing the books it’s easy to go look up articles when questions come up. I do think that most of Sayer’s readers would have recognized more of the allusions that escape us today, some because they were topical and some because they did have a similar narrowly focused education. I’m not convinced you could say the same thing about all the references in Middlemarch though!
Well, well , My dear @Mary13 , I do declare that I will never be able to enjoy my scone and clotted cream with Gorgonzola ever again, for fear I will not only get the fake Gorgonzola, but it will be oozing with maggots” I so thank you for this enlightenment.
I think they are so unpleasant because it makes it easier for Christie to bump them off without upsetting the reader. Same reason for why they are undeveloped. The characters don’t really have “layers,” so it’s easier for us to see them in black and white terms. Emily Brent, ugh! Anthony Marston, double ugh!
I didn’t have much sympathy for any of the characters, but I would probably say Dr. Armstrong’s crime was the least egregious of the group. He had no malicious intent, seemed to feel some remorse, and changed his (drinking) ways afterward. (“God, it gave me a shock! Pulled me up.”)
I must admit I love these 2 authors. I have a bookshelf filled with their works. Most notable is that I lack copies of either of these particular. books. AC’s 10 little … is among my least favorites. I so enjoy amateur detectives, especially many of the less known characters (tommy and tuppence, e.g.) Miss marble and Lord Peter are lovely characters, but in Whose Body, he was a shadow of whom he was to become. EaRly novels for both, filled with cliches and stereotypes.
I was pleased to reread these books during this troubling time, even knowing exactly how they would end,
I think Christie couldn’t let us get to know the characters too well, or it would be obvious who the murderer was. It was a cute idea, but too clever to actually make a really good book out of it. I didn’t really think Dr. Armstrong deserved to be murdered.
I liked that Sayers tried to make Dr. Freke a more layered character.
One of my favorite scenes in the book was when Lord Peter met with Dr. Freke in his office, interacting with him in his role as a medical professional and also as a murderer. The two of them are simultaneously being truthful and lying, each knowing without saying exactly where the other stood. Very tense.
@mary13 agree with you about the waiting room scene. Such a moment we all could relate to, being in confined space, a waiting room and connected to those people, waiting with us. A slice of life.
Lord Ramsey was stripped of his glib, clever veneer, realizing some very heartwarming things about his murderer.
And, then the conversation with Freke, had an underlying intensity, because Freke knew he was in the mousetrap, they did an intricate verbal dance.
Those two scenes are good examples of how Sayers differs from AC, such insight,
Just read this in a short bio of Dorothy Sayers in The Guardian:
14 novels and short stories! Can any of you Lord Peter connossieurs give me, say, four novels (after Whose Body?) that you would recommend? The Guardian article says, “*Nine Tailors/I, an atmospheric tale of stolen jewels, faceless corpses and bell-ringing set in the fens of Sayers’s childhood, is generally felt to be one of the best of the Wimsey stories.” Agree or disagree?
