Three Books by Agatha Christie (Fontana, 1958-1961)

I'm beginning to think I should re-name this blog "I Found It At the Lifeline Bookfair"!  I found these on a small table devoted solely to the books of Agatha Christie at last weekend's Autumn book fair:

A Pocket Full of Rye (1958)

"An unusual sound penetrated through the almost sound-proof door of Mr. Fortescue's office.  Muffled, it was yet fully recognisable, a strangled agonised cry..." 

Even as Miss Grosvenor, Mr. Fortescue's secretary, came up to him, his body was convulsed in a painful spasmodic movement. 

Words came out in jerky gasps. 

"Tea—what the hell—you put in the tea—get help—quick get a doctor—"

And that is, unfortunately, the end of Mr. Fortescue—but the beginning of one of Agatha Christie's most ingenious stories that takes all of the skill of Inspector Neale to solve.

 

The Labours of Hercules (1961)

A modern 'Labours of Hercules'—it was an idea that appealed to Hercule Poirot.

In the period before his retirement, he decided to undertake twelve cases with special reference to the twelve labours of ancient Hercules.

Amusing and original, each case more baffling than the last, we guarantee the Labours of Hercules will test the wits of the most ingenious armchair detective.

Peril At End House (1961) 

An
unknown
agent
was
methodically
planning
her
death 

—the heavy picture that fell across her bed
—the rock that landed at her feet
—the car brakes that failed
NOW—a bullet that missed her head by inches

Fontana cover artists of the late 50s and early 60s clearly had a thing for depicting young women in peril!

Murder is Easy by Agatha Christie (Fontana, 1960)

Another from Fishermen's Wharf Markets:

 

  Murder is easy....

... so long as no one suspects you and the person in question is the last person one would suspect.

Surely you won't let Agatha Christie diddle you again--it would be again, wouldn't it?

I'm trying to figure out what's up with the woman on the cover.  I can't decide whether she is a) frightened, b) sinister or c) doing some weird kind of face toning exercise!

Dark Duet by Peter Cheyney (Fontana, 1963)

 

KANE looked at her appreciatively.  "I don't know whether anybody's ever told you, but you've got the swellest pair of legs I've ever seen" he said.  Valetta looked at him sideways along her dark eyelashes.  He thought she was very beautiful; her mouth delicate, sensitive, almost tremulous.  He could look at her for hours on end.  It was that sort of mouth...

And.... here we have some more fiction about World War II--in this case from the pen of pulp writer Peter Cheyney.  Firstly published in 1942, this book contains three linked novellas about two spies/assassins working for the British Government.  Though they are definitely working on the side of good, they are not particularly moral characters, nor do they operate by a gentlemanly code.  The whole thing is altogether more gritty than the previous generation of spy thrillers, and seems to have been influenced by hard-boiled detective fiction (another genre in which Peter Cheyney specialised!)

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (Fontana, 1959)

Found on a stall at Fishermen's Wharf Markets in Port Adelaide:

 

Thundering along on its three days' journey across Europe, the famous Orient Express suddenly comes to a stop in the night.

Snowdrifts block the line somewhere in the Balkans.  Everything is quiet and passengers quickly settle down for the night, including Hercule Poirot.

In the morning an American millionaire is found stabbed, many times--Poirot is very much wanted.  The untrodden snow seems to prove that the murderer is still on board.  Poirot begins to think--and a brilliantly ingenious solution is found...

 And without a doubt, the solution is brilliant ingenious.  (No, I'm not going to tell you what it is.  This blog is a Spoiler Free Zone!  If you haven't already read Murder on the Orient Express--one of Christie's best known books--do so and find out the solution for yourself.)

This is the sort of plotting that earned Agatha Christie the sobriquet "the Queen of Crime".  At times her prose was merely functional, her characters two-dimensional, her attitudes snobbish and old-fashioned.  She was never adverse to using stereotypes, particularly when depicting foreigners or members of the lower classes.  However, she knew how to weave together the real clues and red herrings to create a mystery that kept the reader guessing right to the end.

The Woodville Wench by Maureen Peters (Fontana, 1973)

Picked up at a local school fete:

 

The King's Wife...

Determined to rise above the poverty of her upbringing, Elizabeth Woodville uses her great beauty to win a place in the royal family.

Edward Plantagenet

the handsome young King, risks everything to marry her.

Cecily, of York

the King's mother, welcomes her as a daughter

Richard of Gloucester

Edward's brother, offers her protection when his own life is in jeopardy.

Considered an upstart by many, Elizabeth reigns supreme during the bitter years of the Wars of the Roses.  But behind the brilliant mask is a cold and lonely woman, shivering in the chill of her husband's waning passion, fearful of what lies ahead...

This is an example of what I think of as "cleavage history", where the author takes a real woman from history and writes a wildly romantic fictionalised version of her life.  You can usually spot these by the models on their front covers who generally wear some kind of pseudo-historical garb complete with a deeply plunging  neckline.

In this case our heroine (who seems to have picked her dress up at Biba and who is sporting some very 1970s blue eyeshadow) is Elizabeth Woodville and the story the author is telling is the story of the War of the Roses.

The other giveaway for a "cleavage history" novel is the choice of adjectives on the back cover, which often includes words such as "passionate", "untamed" and "determined".  The Woodville Wench may not be passionate and untamed, but by Jingo! she's determined.

Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie (Fontana, 1962)

One more from the Lifeline Bookfair!

 

Sir Charles Cartwright, the distinguished actor, had invited the local vicar and his wife to a house-warming party  at his new country cottage.  The Reverend Stephen Babbington unaccustomed as he was to strong liquor, nervously sipped his cocktail with a slightly wry expression on his face.  The other guests continued to chatter.  Suddenly Mr Babbington's hand clutched at his throat, and, in a moment, he collapsed--dead.

This was only the first act in the drama--a three-act tragedy, with a mysterious death in every act.  It is Hercule Poirot, the indomitable Belgian detective, who moves behind the scenes of this play and who finally rings down the curtain.

 The man on the cover of this book is either dead drunk--or just dead!  Since the author is Agatha Christie, I'm guessing the latter.

(See also my post on the 1964 Pan edition of the same title.)

Never A Dull Moment by Peter Cheyney (Fontana, 1955)

 

In NEVER A DULL MOMENT, our tough, wise-cracking hero, Lemmy Caution of the F.B.I., finds himself in England caught up in a tangled web of intrigue and international espionage.  As usual, Lemmy finds it hard to keep his mind on business when two such lovelies such as Tamara and Julia are on the scene--or maybe they are his business!  Here indeed is vintage Cheyney of the kind that prompted one reviewer to write: "Heavens, what a craftsman!  How adroitly he keeps a story in and briskly shakes together all the right ingredients--sex, violence, mystery."

Now this is an odd one: an English author whose main character (and narrator) is a hard-boiled, tough-talking American FBI agent.  The result is... well, it reads like bastardised Damon Runyon:

"An' I reckon that the dame is gonna talk without a lot of pressin'.  I reckon she was plenty scared when Nikolls took her outa the cottage an' she thought she was goin' to get herself nicely creased out an' chucked in the river.  An' she has plenty of time since then to think over what's gonna be good for her."

 (Page 93) 

Still, there's nothing like stealing from the best!

Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie (Fontana, 1957)

WHO DID IT?

Four people are playing bridge when their host, who is sitting out, is murdered.

Only one of them could have done it--while he was dummy.  Each player has committed at least one murder before.

There are no clues; nothing but the people themselves.

Hercule Poirot was to later call this one of his most interesting cases.

We think you will agree!

Classic Christie--four suspects in a locked room with the victim!

As a bonus, this book introduces Agatha Christie's alter-ego: crime-writer Mrs Ariadne Oliver.  She has a lot of fun with the character:

"I say, I'm terribly sorry.  Am I interrupting anything?" she asked breathlessly.

"Well, you are and you aren't," said Mrs Oliver.  "I am working, as you see, but that dreadful Finn of mine has got himself terribly tangled up.  He did some awfully clever deduction with a dish of French beans, and now he's just discovered deadly poison in the sage-and-onion stuffing of the Michaelmas goose, and I've just remembered that French beans are over by Michaelmas."

(Page 112)

Finn--Belgian.  One wonders if Christie felt the same way about her detective!

The Secret Woman by Victoria Holt (Fontana, 1972)

 

Voyage into mystery...

When Anna Brett sets sail for a Pacific island, she is already in love with Redvers Stretton, captain of the Serene Lady.  Stretton has lost an earlier ship in mysterious circumstances, and with it some priceless diamonds.

On the primitive island of Coralle, with its beliefs in witchcraft and the powers of darkness, the truth about Captain Stretton comes to light.  And the haunting riddle of the Secret Woman is finally revealed...

Here we have a variation on the Women Running From Houses theme--Woman Standing in Front of a Palm Tree.

This book actually got me thinking: namely that Gothic Romances share a lot of the ingredients of crime fiction, but they're mixed in different proportions.  Here we have a story filled with crime--murders, attempted murder, sabotage (the hero's ship is blown up), theft (the priceless diamonds mentioned above), blackmail and identity theft (the plot's resolution turns on the swapping of two babies many years before).  Yet none of these seem really important--instead the story focuses on the emotions of our rather passive heroine.

Again, unlike in crime fiction, no one actively seeks to solve the crimes or bring the perpetrators to justice in this book .  The heroine, as I said, is rather passive and very naive.  She lets things happen to her rather than directing events.  The hero is absent through most of the book and if anything, is even less interested in investigating mysteries than the heroine.  There's an anti-heroine (in another kind of story she'd be a femme fatale!) who is responsible for the murders and attempted murders.  However her misdeeds take place offstage--and her downfall is recorded in a short chapter and is brought about by accident.  None of her co-conspirators are caught or face any kind of punishment for their crimes.

So I'm left imagining the story as written by a different author: a story where hard-boiled Captain Stretton searches for the men who blew up his ship and stole the diamonds, and tangles with the shady dame who tries to poison him....

Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie (Fontana, 1958)

I found this one at a trash and treasure market:

 

Curious things are happening in a students' hostel.

Various ill-assorted objects disappear--a powder compact, bath salts, an electric light bulb.  A rucksack is slashed, a silk scarf is wantonly cut up.

Hercule Poirot visits the hostel.  He observes the occupants closely--Colin McNabb, the flaming, redheaded medical student; dark, clever Valerie Hobhouse who works in a beauty parlour, and all the others.  At first their relationships and characters, though intricate seem innocent, but Poirot is uneasy.  Gradually his worst fears are confirmed, a murder is committed and one after another all sorts of ugly details come to light.

Once more Hercule Poirot--and Agatha Christie--achieve a masterpiece of detection.

Hmmm.... a "flaming" medical student!

This book is ventures into strange territory for Agatha Christie.  Usually she was most at home in the world of upper-middle class England--a world of retired colonels and village clergymen--with occasional excursions into the haunts of high society.  A student hostel, on the other hand, is not only less genteel than the places she usually sets her novels, but is decidedly more modern as well.  First published in 1955 when Christie was nearly 65, the student characters in Hickory Dickory Dock belong to a much younger generation than the author.  In a way this book shows Christie's discomfort with the changing world of the mid-twentieth century, an unease that became more evident in her stories as the 1950s became the 1960s. 

(Incidentally, are couple on the cover of this edition of Hickory Dickory Dock are meant to be the students in question?  If so, they're oddly middle-aged for undergraduates!)

A Penknife in My Heart by Nicholas Blake (Fontana, 1960)

One last book by Nicholas Blake--found at the Lifeline Bookfair:

Charles Hammer was ruthless ; he needed money quickly and he would get it if a certain person died.  When he met Ned Stowe he saw how he could commit the perfect murder.

Ned was by no means ruthless--but he was desperate.  Passionately in love with Laura, he was tied to a neurotic, clinging wife.  He sometimes felt he'd do anything to get rid of her.

Hammer proposes a contract.  As it works out it binds the two men together in a terrible grip which only death can relax.

If this plot seems familiar, it is.  Patricia Highsmith told the same basic story in Strangers on a Train (1950).  (Of course Blake denied having read Strangers on a Train, or having seen the Hitchcock movie of the same name!)

Head of a Traveller by Nicholas Blake (Fontana, 1962)

Yet another prize from my Lifeline Bookfair Crime Spree!

 

They found the body in the Thames--the head, weeks later, in a string bag hanging on a tree.

 Short and sweet--and oh, boy, doesn't it make you want to read more!

Mind you, the blurb makes the book appear more hardboiled and gritty than it is.  And if it had been published in America, and started with the discovery of a headless corpse floating in the Hudson or San Francisco Bay, this book probably would be that kind of detective story.  One would expect the hero (either a jaded PI or a world-weary cop) to track the murderer through the mean back streets of the city, encountering various underworld types along the way.   However, Head of a Traveller was written by a British author, and the detective is a gentleman amateur who tracks the murderer to the country estate of a poet!

A Tangled Web by Nicholas Blake (Fontana, 1958)

Another book from my Lifeline Bookfair crime spree:

 

"... Daisy was conscious of his eyes upon her... something flashed between them, like magnesium, and in that instant he was printed on her memory for ever--the thin, swarthy face, the mouth arrested in a half-smile, the eyes brown, alert, ready to dance, with a sort of wildness asleep behind their steady gaze.  A poacher's face she said to herself ... she might as well have said an angel's ... or a fallen angel's--she was never to care which..."

Daisy and Hugo's love is a tangled web of joy and tragedy, vice and innocence, betrayal and loyalty.  This is a story which cannot be put down.

Who is the tough cookie on the cover of the book?  She certainly isn't Daisy, for Daisy is a true innocent (albeit one with bad taste in boyfriends!)

A Tangled Web is an updated and  fictionalised retelling of the story of John Williams, who was hanged for murder in 1913,  and of his mistress Florence Seymour.

Bride of Pendorric by Victoria Holt (Fontana, 1974)

Another paperback from the Green Shed.

 

Till Death us do Part...

Favel Farrington and her new husband were almost strangers.  In Capri the dashing young heir to Pendorric had swept the lovely English girl into marriage with the sudden fierceness of a summer storm.

Favel was dazed with happiness--until she discovered that someone was planning a very special place for her in the family--in the vault with the other legendary "Brides of Pendorric" who all dies so mysteriously, and so tragically...

"To Death us do Part" took on a new and ominous meaning.

 On the cover our heroine flees a burning building--but she doesn't seem to be in too much of a hurry, given she took time to don the elaborate whatever-it-is she's wearing and do her makeup.   She has also taken the time to stop and pose dramatically, with one arm flung up to shield her forehead.  (There's something wrong with that arm, by the way, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is!)

The novel itself is much less interesting than its cover--nothing much happens to the heroine in the first two hundred or so pages of the book except suspicions, forebodings and the occasional Grim Warning.  As in most gothic romances, the actual star of the story is "Pendorric", the house in which it takes place.  Here's a question: why do the heroines of gothic romances never find themselves menaced in flats or suburban bungalows, and "swept" into marriage with dashing yet sinister actuaries or accountants?

Swing, Brother, Swing by Ngaio Marsh (Fontana, 1974)

 

Rivera had advanced in the spotlight.  He seemed rapt; at once tormented and exalted.  He swayed and jerked and ogled, a puppet of his own music.  As the performance rocketed up to its climax, he swayed backwards at a preposterous angle.  Then a screaming dissonance abruptly tore loose from the general din as the spotlight switched to the tympani.  Lord Pastern, wearing his sombrero, had risen.  Advancing to within five feet of Rivera, he pointed his revolver at him and fired...

Oh my!  Hot jazz, aristocrats (common people seldom star in Ngaio Marsh's mysteries where even policemen are pedigreed) and murder all mixed up together.  And bound within one of Fontana's better photo-covers.  I love the dramatic foreshortening of the murder victim, lying there with some kind of spike sticking out of his white dress shirt.  The image just draws you in and makes you want to find out what's going on.

Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes (Fontana, 1974)

I bought this in what you might call a charity stall clearance sale--the sellers were losing their storage space and were offering their books at "$10 for all you can carry!" just to get rid of them.  I went around filling a shopping bag with everything and anything that looked remotely interesting.

Von Aschenhausen sat on the edge of a large desk.  His eyes were fixed on the man standing over the girl roped to a chair.  He spoke again: "You fool.  You stupid little fool.  Can't you see I must, I will find out?  Kurt, try some more of your persuasion..."

The girl felt a hand of iron on her aching shoulder.  She tried to turn her face away from the glare of the powerful lamp, but it still pierced her eyelids  with a dull-red burning.  She struggled weakly against the ropes that held her, but they only cut deeper into her breast and thigh...

What is it with cover blurbs and ellipses? 

Above Suspicion was Helen MacInnes' first book and was originally published in 1941.  The villains of this story are (not surprisingly) Nazis.  Interestingly, these fictional Nazis actually seem a bit less evil than their real-life counterparts--probably because in 1941 the full extent of the Nazis' crimes were not known.

There's a sprinkling of propaganda throughout this story (again not surprisingly--1941!)  Most of it is of the "this is what we're fighting for/against" variety as the very English hero and heroine are chased around pre-war Europe:

"You believe you have not changed.  And yet under the leadership which you praise so much you may only read certain books, listen to certain music, look at certain pictures, make friends with certain people.  Isn't that limiting yourself?"

"Oh well, limiting yourself to the good, eliminating the bad--all that is better in the end."

"But who is to say what is good for you or bad for you?  Is it to be your own judgement ... or is it to be some self-appointed leader who can't even speak grammatical German?"

(Page 21) 

There's also a sympathetic American journalist who comes to the aid of our beleaguered heroes--surely a shout out to the United States which in 1941 was not in the War exactly, but certainly coming to the aid of those who were. 

Sadly, Fontana decided to package this book in an ugly seventies photo-cover, with anachronistic models posed in a vaguely dramatic manner.  It's horribly generic, and only gives the loosest idea of what the book is actually about.

A Tale of Two Murders by Elizabeth Ferrars (Fontana, 1961)

Bought in the same batch of books as Always Say Die.

It entertained Hilda Gazely to speculated about the strange woman who walked the river bank at sunset.  But murder and the facts which came to light afterwards made her ask herself desperately how she could have been so complacently blind to what had been happening around her.  Hilda was unusually impressed by Inspector Crankshaw and told him all she could--then she became uneasy.  She was sure that something she had seen, done or said was utterly wrong.

 The problem with writing about mysteries is you really can't say too much without giving away important plot points.  Suffice it to say that a thoroughly nasty character is murdered, and almost all the suspects have good reason to do away with him.

A Tale of Two Murders also introduces the delightfully cynical, "heard-it-all-before" Inspector Crankshaw:

    Not impatiently, but in a considering tone, as if , as if he were speaking mainly to himself, to clear his own mind, Crankshaw said, "A widower, faithful to the memory of his wife, not many friends, but such as he had, good ones--that's the picture, then."
    She raised her head quickly, grateful that he should have understood, and was shocked to see the irony in his small, sly eyes.

 Oh, and in the end, Crankshaw gets his man.

Always Say Die by Elizabeth Ferrars (Fontana, 1962)

Another gem from Lifeline:

Violet Gamlen had been missing for a year.  Speculation and rumour ran wild, but one person thought he knew her whereabouts-

'Don't you see, that man's started gardening again.  He couldn't bury a body amongst all that weed without the signs of digging betraying him, but when it's been all freshly dug...'

 I kept trying to work out what was wrong with this cover, until I realised that the artist had problems with both perspective and proportion.   The cat leaping out at our frightened heroine is seemingly enormous, and meanwhile the lady herself appears to have a very large right arm and a very small left one.

Not that it matters, because the mystery of what happened to Violet Gamlen and who was responsible for it was enthralling and kept me guessing until the end.  Elizabeth Ferrars is one of those writers who is now less well known than she should be given the length of her career and the number of books she wrote.  However, unlike some of her better known contemporaries (Ngaio Marsh, for example) most of her books are standalone novels.   The lack of a continuing detective hero probably made her "brand" less memorable than it could have been.