Another bookish year has passed and I did accomplish quite a lot this year. I’ve never read 55 books but I wanted to read more so here I am with my record so far, one that I don’t think I will be able to beat for quite some time.
So my first challenge, just like every year, is my Goodreads.com challenge and I planned to read 30 books in 2019 so I passed with flying colours
One Tuesday evening a group gathers at Miss Marple’s house and the conversation turns to unsolved crimes…
The case of the disappearing bloodstains; the thief who committed his crime twice over; the message on the death-bed of a poisoned man which read ‘heap of fish’; the strange case of the invisible will; a spiritualist who warned that ‘Blue Geranium’ meant death…
Now pit your wits against the powers of deduction of the ‘Tuesday Night Club’.
About the book
Fourth Agatha Christie’s book that I read and I need to say that this is the one that I liked the most. I think I’m going to read other Agatha’s books now that my “Italian publisher”, Mondadori, is publishing the books again with the covers that I like.
Anyway, this book is like the Decameron by Boccaccio in which a group of people are in the same room and everyone tells a story. In this case they are detective stories (and they aren’t escaping the plague) and each person tells her/his story and the others need to find out the culprit. Obviously Miss Marple finds out everything.
"A Study in Scarlet" is the first published story of one of the most famous literary detectives of all time, Sherlock Holmes. Here Dr. Watson, who has just returned from a war in Afghanistan, meets Sherlock Holmes for the first time when they become flat-mates at the famous 221 B Baker Street. In "A Study in Scarlet" Sherlock Holmes investigates a murder at Lauriston Gardens as Dr. Watson tags along with Holmes while narratively detailing his amazing deductive abilities.
About the book
Yes, I decided to read a book that I should have read a long time ago. I don’t know why I’ve always postponed reading this book since I think I bought Doyle’s books 20 years ago and I’ve never read them. Did I like it? ? Hmm, the two stars seems to say no.
I do have opposite feelings about this book.
I liked the beginning, the characters’ introduction and the case, but I didn’t like the second part and this is the part that I read faster, because I did like the past narration. But I’m one who likes victory against religions where leaders are crazy people and by all means, I know that not all “rebels” win, but give me hope in a “fantasy” world? Yes I know that the case in the present couldn’t be presented as it is if the good guys won in the past, so it’s a circle with no end.
When Tommy and Tuppence visit an elderly aunt in her gothic nursing home, they think nothing of her mistrust of the doctors; after all, Ada is a very difficult old lady.
But when Mrs. Lockett mentions a poisoned mushroom stew and Mrs. Lancaster talks about "something behind the fireplace," Tommy and Tuppence find themselves caught up in a spine-chilling adventure that could spell death for either of them . . .
A duty visit to Tommy's elderly and unpleasant aunt results in a strange inheritance, black magic--and danger for Tommy and Tuppence Beresford.
About the book
This is a different reading for me , because I didn’t know that Agatha wrote books other that Poirot and Miss Marple series. The main characters here are Tommy and Tuppence Berefords, an old couple that in the past were spies or this is what I gathered by the book. In fact this is the fourth book in the series and it is one of the last books written by Agatha.
The book starts with the couple’s visit to their aunt who is living in an hospice and here Tuppence meets Mrs. Lancaster who seems crazy and who tells her about a girl in a chimney. Some weeks later, the aunt dies and the couple goes back to the hospice to collect her personal belongings and they find a picture that Mrs. Lancaster gave to the aunt before she left. Tuppence thinks that her “leaving” is hiding something different and she starts an investigation because, among other things, she believes she recognises the house drown in the picture.
An elderly spinster has been poisoned in her country home. Everyone blamed Emily’s accident on a rubber ball left on the stairs by her frisky terrier. But the more she thought about her fall, the more convinced she became that one of her relatives was trying to kill her. On April 17th she wrote her suspicions in a letter to Hercule Poirot. Mysteriously he didn’t receive the letter until June 28th… by which time Emily was already dead.
About the book
Second book that I read about Hercule Poirot. I don’t know, I’ve just this craving to read all about Agatha’s books that I have at home (not many though, I only have one more). At least I will finish the Mount TBR challenge…
Anyway. The book starts in April when the protagonist invites her relatives for Easter, but while they are at their aunt’s house, she falls down the stairs. Everyone thinks that it was because of her dog’s ball, but the woman thinks otherwise. So she writes Poirot a letter but this letter arrives late, two month late, when she is already dead (for natural causes). As soon as Poirot receives the letter he leaves for the woman’s house just outside of London.
Here, he finds out that the old woman left everything to her Lady-in-waiting and nothing to her relatives and this change of the will happened soon after the accident with the ball.
What will he discover? The woman was killed or was it really natural causes?
