I picked up an old Bantam mmpb of an Agatha Christie novel , POSTERN OF FATE .
It was the last novel she wrote wrote in her life , and featured what I guess could be called her #3 series characters , Tommy & Tuppence , a married couple team . Tuppence is the woman .
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...I had picked up before , and been somewhat irritated by , and had a hard time getting through and lost/whatever my copy before that became an issue the first book in the series , which was of short stories " oarodying different writers " , per Wikipedia ( which writers ??? genre onews ??? ) , and which I found overly cutesy/twee , I guess...
This joins them many years beyond those Roaring Twenties-era stories , naturally aged to the Seventies , and I suppose their seventies .
The short story collection was Partners in Crime. For a detailed analysis of who was being sent up, see Mike Grost's article here. The characters first appeared in The Secret Adversary, a spy novel. N or M? has them middle-aged, in a spy adventure set during WWII. In By the Pricking of My Thumbs they are retirement-aged, and Tuppence tries to find a old woman who she fears has been murdered. I found N or M? not very good. By the Pricking of My Thumbs has a memorable opening scene set in an old folks home, and a decent mystery and twist ending. I haven't read the others.
I've tried several times to read Agatha Christie, including Murder on the Orient Express but never finished any of them. I enjoyed some of the Poirot mysteries on PBS but never had an interest in Miss Marple. It seems that I'm a Sherlock Holmes guy!
I have a HUGE collection of Agatha Christie films... but shamefully, have never read even a single one of her stories!
Which is a bit baffling, considering I have read 1 Raymond Chandler novel, 1 Earl Stanley Gardner novel, every Ian Fleming 007 book, most of the John Gardner 007's, 25 Leslis Charteris books, and, get this, 4 John P. Marquand novels!
But then again, I've never read any H.G. wells, either...
I have no problem with older material either. Christie, Holmes, the Shadow, etc. There is a definite reason that these and others are called CLASSICS and they should be enjoyed by everyone throughout the ages.
I have never managed to solve a mystery before Ellery Queen, but that doesn't lessen my enjoyment of the works, and it's interesting to compare the written word to the adaptations when possible, although I must admit that when I've read a Poirot, I've always heard David Suchet's voice as the title character. He, out of everyone who has portrayed the Belgian detective, has definitely nailed the character.
I adore Agatha Christie. I went on a huge binge years ago when I read And Then There Were None on vacation. I then started with Poirot from the beginning until Roger Ackroyd (which blew my mind), then I read a bunch more, including some Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, Parker Pyne and some standalones (love Crooked House). The first book I got for my kindle was the Mysterious Affair at Styles. Not all of her works are perfect, but the great ones are amazing and rest are at least entertaining.
Lee Houston, Junior said:
Just as Joan Hickson nailed Miss Marple.
Christie has been ill-served by a lot of "off-model" Poirots and Marples -- I won't say "bad" because I've certainly seen some enjoyable performances by the likes of, say, Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov. But she's also benefited from Suchet and Hickson, the two best page-to-screen personifications I have ever seen for any fictional character.
There's something very, very pleasurable about seeing a character up on the screen and saying "Yes, yes, yes that's exactly right!"
Francesca Annis played Tuppence in the ITV adaptations. Man, was she gorgeous. Ralph Fiennes dumped Alex Kingston for her, and she's 18 years older than Kingston.
...Perhaps I'm projecting somewhat , but the fact that this was her last ( -written ) novel does cause me to make a few ( what might be ) projections onto it...and the fairly odd way it works out and winds up .
I haven't read any of her novels, but enjoyed a number of her plays - the Mousetrap amongst them. With the exception of Sherlock Holmes & Dupin, I don't read much detective fiction, but I always thought I should give Agatha a try - Roger Ackroyd sounds like a great read. I have seen lots of films based on her novels, most of which were entertaining enough.