Mystery Reviews: Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger (1942)

Given my health issues, it's not surprising that I'm reading a lot more, especially since I have to spend so much time resting. Although I've read some good literary fiction and excellent non-fiction, when I am most tired, I turn to the fluff I love best: mysteries. And these days, I tend to move back and forth between tried and true classics from the golden era and contemporary cozies or police procedurals.

When I move in the direction of the golden era, I sometimes go back to my favorite writers and sometimes I go back and "discover" classic writers who are new to me. I enjoy both, but lately I've been on a bit of a Christie tear. Although I've read most of Christie's books (some more than once) it's been years since I've read a lot of them, so many years that they are either actually new to me or were read so far in the past they may as well be new because I don't remember them well. I certainly don't remember them well enough to remember "whodunit."

I find myself missing book review writing, so I thought that once in a while, I'd let myself exercise the old review writing muscles again. What better way to break back into review writing than with a review of an old-but-I-think-new-to-me Christie novel?

1942s The Moving Finger was the third Miss Marple novel ever published. I'm fairly certain this was the first time I ever encountered it, mostly because I don't remember ever reading a Miss Marple book in which Miss Marple appeared so little.

That was the book's most surprising feature by far. While Miss Jane Marple, Christie's white-haired detective, always has a kind of "background" role, she usually arrives on the scene fairly early and stays there consistently. While the main detectives hum along, attempting to solve the case, Miss Marple smiles gently, asks an inquisitive and seemingly innocent question or two (or four or eight or twelve) and before you can inquire, "Would you like another cup of tea, ma'am?" she has the thing solved. What's wonderful is that she always solves it with a twinkle and a sweet touch of poignancy, remembering someone she knew once who reminded her of the victim...and quite often the criminal. For a kind, elderly spinster, Miss Marple has no scruples about reminding everyone, character and reader alike, that people really can be quite wicked. And sad. And lonely. And unwise. And inattentive. It's in noting these kinds of characteristics in all people that she often discovers the line running right through the story that other, more professional sleuths all too often miss.

Speaking of missing, I miss her in this book. While I mostly liked the story's narrator, Jerry Burton, an airman recovering from an accident, I kept impatiently waiting for Miss Marple to show up on the scene and set him and his sister Joanna straight about what's going on in the little village in which they recently settled. They settle there in a rental home so Jerry can recover from his injuries; they think this out-of-the-way hamlet will provide Jerry with just the rest and peacefulness he needs. Little do they know that little out-of-the-way hamlets can sometimes be seething with scandals and unsolved crimes. This one certainly is.

In fact, the town of Lymstock, which "had been a place of importance at the time of the Norman Conquest"  but by "the twentieth century it was a place of no importance whatsoever," seems cozy and quiet enough for a convalescing soldier. But the Burton siblings haven't been there very long when they become the recipients of a nasty, anonymous letter, the kind put together with letters cut from an old book. It turns out that they aren't the only people in town to receive such a letter. Most of the town's most prominent residents have received at least one. These letters, whose typed envelopes tell little about their author, while the postmarks indicate the author is local, accuse people in vague and general terms of awful but unprovable things.

Jerry and Joanna find themselves trying to puzzle out the identity of the letter writer, but they, like the local police, can't get too far at guessing who it might be. In fact, in spite of the annoying embarrassment of the letters, hardly anyone takes them too seriously...until the shock of receiving one seems to send a resident into such a tailspin that she commits suicide. Or does she?

It's not long before a maid who served at the home of the dead woman also turns up dead, this time unmistakably murdered, presumably for something she might have seen. Before you know it, Scotland Yard is called in. And before you can pour yet another cup of tea (lots of tea gets poured in this one) another resident gets impatient with the professionals and calls in her old friend Jane Marple to try to figure things out.

By the time Jane got called, I was feeling rather impatient. She appears in only a handful of scenes, and while she's her sweet and smart self, asking the right questions and ultimately setting up the dangerous encounter with the correct suspect, I felt a bit cheated that we hadn't had more time with her. I'd be curious to know why she appears so little in the book. Did Agatha Christie already have a book ready in the wings without any Miss Marple at all, only to have her publishers tell her that the old lady's first two tales had been such a hit the public was demanding more? But if so, why not go back and put her in more from the start? It wouldn't have been so hard to do. If she was the friend of a resident in Lymstock, why not have her show up a fortnight earlier to visit? Or be called in by the friend before the first death in the town, just on the basis of the puzzle that needs solving about the author of the anonymous letters?

Besides being disappointed by not enough time with Miss Marple, I was a bit thrown off by the narrator. While I appreciated the way he thought through things regarding the mystery, I felt off balance by his lack of development from the beginning on. It took me a while to be sure he was male; it took me even longer to figure out his name (I don't think she mentioned it until well into the story, though she might have dropped it briefly and I just missed it). My favorite part of most Christie novels is her way with characterization, and she doesn't disappoint with a fine cast of townies and potential suspects, but I think she could have done more with her narrator, especially if we were getting page time with Jerry at the expense of page time with Miss Marple.

Ah well. Even Christie at her not-quite-best is still better than many people at their heights, and this was an enjoyable mystery with good touches of Christie humour and an interesting ending I didn't see coming. If you're a enthusiast for mysteries with elements of romance, I think you'll like what she does here too -- not in one part of the story, but actually in two.

I'm thankful that The Moving Finger wasn't where the Miss Marple stories ended...most of the best ones, in fact, were still to come.

***1/2 stars
First published in the US in 1942 and in the UK in 1943 

Dame Agatha Triumphs Again!

I have loved reading mysteries since I was very little. Trixie Belden and Encyclopedia Brown were the mysteries that kept me going for a long time, along with Cherry Ames (Nancy Drew was always there, of course, but I pretty much considered those a last choice if I'd run out of other books).

Around the time I was fourteen or fifteen, I discovered Agatha Christie on the shelves of our little local West End library, whose grown-up shelves I'd begun to explore. The sheer number of Christie mysteries excited me, and once I started reading them, I couldn't stop. I ran through everything the library had, then started picking up other writers. Ngaio Marsh was an author I read a good bit of when I was a young adult.

Then over the years I started finding other mystery writers I enjoyed: Dorothy Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Simpson, P.D. James, Ellis Peters, Deborah Crombie, Louise Penny, Henning Mankell, Susan Wittig Albert and sometimes other contemporary cozy writers, such as early Joanne Fluke, and most recently, Edith Maxwell. I sometimes go backward and discover writers that were post-golden era but not yet writing books in the modern cozy way: Patricia Wentworth and Catherine Aird come to mind here. Mystery stories, some of them literary and incredibly well-written, others more formulaic but still fun, became my go-to relaxing reading.

The sweet girl has never loved mysteries with the same fervor I did as a kid. She enjoyed the first six Trixie Beldens with me, but quickly lost interest in the series once Julie Campbell stepped out and left it to formula writers. She's enjoyed a few standalone mysteries, including an occasional foray into Sherlock Holmes short stories, and she doesn't mind books of other genres that tie in mystery elements (for instance, she liked the mystery elements in Harry Potter) but never really found them her thing, which is fine. Not everyone is a mystery reader.

But when I was planning her literature reading for this term, I decided to include a classic mystery. For one thing, we're exploring different writing genres this year (from a literary analysis and creative writing perspective) and for another, we're sticking mostly with 20th century literature to connect with her history studies. She's done a fair amount of semi-heavy-lifting in her lit work, and I thought a mystery might give her a light break in the middle of a busy spring. I also knew she would probably enjoy exploring an author who tried a really creative narrative strategy. So I put Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None on the syllabus, wondering how it would go.

And Then There Were None was originally published in 1939, and it's still (I think?) the best-selling mystery novel of all time. For good reason...it's a fascinating story with a really tricky plot, involving ten people on an island who begin to die off one by one, in accordance with a nursery rhyme left in their rooms and because each one of them has been accused (by the unknown party who invited them to the island) of being responsible for someone else's death.

I knew that the sweet girl would find Christie's movement in and out of different characters' minds rather fascinating, but I wasn't prepared (silly me) for how riveting she would find the book. "Do you mind if I stick with literature this afternoon?" she asked me one day last week. "Because I only have a few chapters left and I can't put it down."

Thank you, Dame Agatha! It was so much fun to talk about the book with her when she was done, and I loved it when she asked, "Are there other Agatha Christie books you think I might like?" Why, yes, dear girl! I think so! And I am compiling a list, including The Murder of Roget Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, Partners in Crime, and a Miss Marple (I haven't decided which one yet).

Good writing wins the day once again. It always does! 

Is Writing a Joy, or Is It Work? Yes.

Over the months, I’ve signed up for a few “writer’s pages” at Facebook, primarily because I enjoy the inspirational quotes, occasional writing prompts, and the spirit of camaraderie fostered by hearing other writers talk about writing. Today one of those pages posted this quote by Agatha Christie, which has garnered a number of comments, some in agreement and some not:

“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and aren’t particularly writing well.”

This is provocative. One responder claimed this was the reason she’d never be a professional writer. Another one said she wants to be a professional but will only ever write what she wants and as long as she loves it. (To which I say, “heh.”)

The problem (if it is a problem) is that, in good Anglican fashion, I both agree and disagree with Christie’s words, which means I both agree and disagree with the responders.

There is a very real sense in which being a professional – at anything, writing included – means showing up day and after day and doing the job. That includes days you don’t feel like doing it. And if you’re going to do something as mundane as, say, earn an income from writing, then you will likely be tackling some writing assignments that you would never touch unless someone said to you “we need this by Friday…can you do it?”

It’s what Jane Yolen helpful refers to as the B.I.C. approach to writing: “butt in chair.” There are days, quite frankly, when I would like to be elsewhere, doing something else, but I stick to the chair as though duct taped there because the work needs to be done.

Of course – and here’s the flip-side, folks – why would I be doing that if I didn’t want to write in the first place? There are a lot of other things I could be doing, but I choose to do *this,* even on the days when it’s hard or boring or lonely or not going well, because quite frankly I can’t imagine doing anything else. Even when I am not in the chair, I am thinking like a writer, processing like a writer, responding to life like a writer, working on projects in my head (whether that’s mentally mapping out a lead for a book review in the shower, planning a blog post while I cook, or having an inner conversation with one of my fictional characters while I fold laundry).

Not coincidentally, the Jane Yolen “B.I.C.” approach is one that she expounds in her lovely book titled Take Joy: A Writer’s Guide to Loving the Craft. Clearly Yolen, a highly prolific writer, sees no contradiction between saying that she loves writing and writes for the joy of it and that she needs a pragmatic/dutiful/persevering approach to writing sometimes. In fact, one might say that it’s the joy of the thing – the sheer enjoyment of finding the right word, of putting words together into phrases and sentences and paragraphs and stories – that keeps you in the chair (and keeps you from pulling out your hair) on certain days.

Even on the writing projects you really love, that you do not because they’re assigned or because anyone has promised you any recompense, you’re going to have times when you despair that the writing will ever be what you want it to be. Do you quit then? Well, sometimes. But if you’re a professional, you don’t quit for long stretches. You quit to go walk the dog or check the casserole in the oven or answer an email or read a book to your child or watch an episode of Sherlock or eat some ice cream. But you don’t quit forever. You go back to the page that day or that night or the next day, because you’re a writer…and writing is what you love to do.

Loving to write, however, doesn’t always mean that it’s going to be easy. I think this is where our culture tends to trip up with the whole idea of love and work or duty – seeing them as diametrically opposed when they’re really not. We say “I’m only going to do something if I really love doing it!” when what we really mean is “I’m only going to do it as long as it’s fun and feels easy and doesn’t take too much time or inconvenience my schedule.” It’s only when you really love to do something that you make room for it in your life even when it’s not easy, when you commit to doing it even when it’s difficult or when you aren’t doing it as well as you’d like to but still feel called to keep at it.

So the answer to “is writing hard work?” is a resounding yes, but that yes will feel much easier and more life-giving if your answer to “is writing a joy?” is a yes that reverberates even more loudly.

Celebrating Tommy and Tuppence

My contribution to the Agatha Christie blog tour celebrating the 120th anniversary of Agatha Christie's birth. Thank you for stopping by!

***********

The persistent tapping on the outer door of the office of the International Detective Agency caused an immediate flurry of activity. From behind one office door came a sudden wild staccato of typing, while from the other came the screeching wail of a violin in pain. Albert the office boy rolled his eyes as he carefully laid aside his spy thriller and wiped his fingers, sticky from sweets, before heading to the front door.

A couple of minutes later the typing ceased, and a small, neat head, topped with a shining bob of black hair, poked around the corner of the boss’ door. Red-haired Tommy had just put the violin back on the shelf and out of its misery. Now he obeyed his "secretary’s" beckoning hand and joined her to look through the small peepholes and into the outer office.

Tuppence too rolled her eyes. “You weren’t supposed to play the violin,” she hissed. “You know Albert likes to tell new clients that you’re on the phone with Scotland Yard.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson,” replied Tommy, stolid as ever. “But I don’t think it’s a new client this time.”

“No?” Tuppence stood on tip-toes, squinting. “Are you certain?”

“Pretty certain, my girl. I think it’s just the folks arriving for the blog tour.”

“For the what?” She raised her eyebrow.

“The blog tour. Oh, don’t look at me like that…I’ll be dashed if I can really explain the thing. We’re behind the times, you know, old girl!”

“I wonder….” Tuppence mused. “Are we really, Tommy? I mean, I know we’ve been around for a while now….but do characters like ourselves really go out of fashion?”

“Well…” Tommy critically appraised her outfit. “You’re certainly not dressed for the twenty-first century.”

“No,” Tuppence said slowly. “I suppose not. All the same, I find it rather comforting to know that there are people out there who still care. Who still know about us, Tommy, despite our age, and who think we’ve worn rather well. Because you know, they still read our books, don’t they? It’s not just all about Hercule and Jane, bless her…”

Tommy laughed. “Of course they’ve worn pretty well themselves, when you consider it.”

“Yes, but they had such good publicity! All those novels! All we ever got was four novels…four novels, Tommy! And a handful of short stories! Though I must admit,” Tuppence added with a faraway look in her eye, “I loved those short stories.”

Tommy regarded her with affection. “You always were a bit of a romantic, Tuppence. Full of nostalgia.”

She smiled at him. “Well, one good thing about living on forever in reader imaginations is that we always get to stay young and adventurous.”

*************

Although I suppose it could be argued that Tommy and Tuppence are minor league detectives compared to the great Hercule Poirot and the amazing Jane Marple, I have always had tremendous affection for these lesser known sleuths of Agatha Christie’s.

Last year I went on a Tommy and Tuppence reunion tour and re-read all the books in which they’re featured. They loomed so vibrant in my reading memory that I was almost astonished to discover their scarcity in Christie’s canon. But in many ways, that simply adds to their mystique. They pop in and out of Christie’s long writing career, like old friends that every once in a while she simply had to revisit.

They show up early (very!) in 1922’s The Secret Adversary, beaten out only by Poirot’s first case. As dashing young adventurers, their story has far more of the romantic and comedic spy thriller about it than the straightforward cozy-whodunit.

They come back in 1929’s short story collection Partners in Crime, still arguably my favorite Tommy and Tuppence book (in case you couldn’t tell). Their witty banter seems perfect for these shorter tales, and I’ve always wished for more stories from this period in their detecting/spying careers.

They arrive on the scene again in N or M? of 1941, a terrific espionage novel set in war-time. We don’t see them again until 1968’s By the Pricking of My Thumbs, a somewhat disturbing novel set in a very different season of Christie’s writing. They appear again in the poignant Postern of Fate, a novel marked by a great deal of nostalgia – and the last novel Christie ever wrote (though others were published later).

Admittedly, the final two books don’t show Christie at the top of her game. But considering there were only five Tommy and Tuppence books altogether, it seems striking to see the placement of those books in her canon. It suggests a great love for these lively characters when you realize that Christie created them so early in her career and felt an urge to return to them so near the end of it.

And although Christie seemed to save her most brilliant plots and creative bits of writing for other detectives, there’s a wonderful vibrancy to Tommy and Tuppence. Why do I love them so? Let me count the ways…

1) I love that they’re a couple. All of Christie’s other detectives may have help or even partners of a sort (“mon ami, my dear Hastings!”) but Tommy and Tuppence are truly a team. Each brings unique strengths to the work they do. Tommy is completely solid, faithful and trustworthy. Tuppence, as Christie herself once described her, is "scattily intuitive" (love that phrase)! Tommy may be the “official” investigator in the world’s eyes, but Christie -- and the elusive Mr. Carter -- both know that he’d be nothing without Tuppence. And Tommy knows it too.

2) They’re funny. Really, truly funny, in that stolid British way. From Tuppence’s penchant for buying hats to Tommy’s gallant flirtations, they make me laugh.

3) Albert.

4) They age! Miss Marple, like your maiden aunt or your first Sunday School teacher, has been old ever since you met her. Even Poirot, by the time we first see him, is already retired and moving into a long second career. But Tommy and Tuppence are different every time we see them, and grounded, at least somewhat, in real time.

They meet during World War I, their courtship, marriage and early career are totally defined by the 1920s. Their work for the government, in their late middle-age, is colored by World War II, the war in which their own grown children serve. In the final books, Christie even gives us a glimpse of them when they’re elderly, and of course part of the delight comes in seeing how essentially unchanged they are.

OK, don’t push the timeline too hard – it won’t stand the scrutiny. Still, every time Christie popped in on Tommy and Tuppence (or they popped in on her?) she showed them in a different season of life. It gives them an extra layer of reality, so that you almost feel as though you’ve been flipping through the photo albums on their coffee table. It also makes you miss all the intervening years you don’t get. I still long to see Tommy and Tuppence sleuthing up a storm while Derek and Deborah are in nappies. Can’t you just imagine Tuppence, pushing a pram, hot on the trail of some underworld crook?

Long live Tommy and Tuppence Beresford! They deserve to be celebrated.

Two More Agatha Christie Reviews

I'm continuing my quest to read all the novels of Agatha Christie from the 1920s. You can go to my earlier post to find new links to my reviews of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) and The Big Four (1927). Just scroll to the bottom of the post to find my list of reviews, with titles listed by publication date.

I've read The Man in the Brown Suit (1924) and hope a review will be coming soon. I'll continue to post whenever I edit/add links.

Agatha Christie in the 1920s

I've always had a bit of a love-hate affair with Wikipedia. Back when it was still a novelty, some of my graduate level students would use it rather liberally as a source for academic papers. And while I discouraged that kind of use, I've come to realize it can be a help even in researching more academic sorts of topics, especially if you focus on the "external links" at the end, which can lead you to good websites of primary sources.

But one thing I've come to love about Wikipedia is the thoroughness of many of its articles on pop culture and literature. I love looking up favorite authors there, not only to find links to good sources, but because you can also find full bibliographies right there at your fingertips. Without having to lug out large reference books (which, depending on publication date, might or might not have a full listing of a more contemporary author's books) you can peruse a full listing of an author's works, usually in publication order.

I'm a sucker for publication order. There's something about it that satisfies all my inner "J" (that's the "J" that comes at the end of the Myers-Briggs personality type test) the same J'ness that loved doing shelf-reads when I worked in a library. I love seeing the order of things. In the case of an author's work, I love seeing the order in which they wrote their books, especially if they wrote a lot of them. That doesn't mean I will always go back and read their books in a certain order, or that I won't have favorites I return to disproportionately, but it's such fun to note the development of characters, themes, images and ideas when you read an author from start to finish.

Agatha Christie, the great mystery novelist, has long been one of my favorite writers. I discovered her when I was about fifteen. Our local library had at least two or three shelves stuffed with her books, and I worked my way through the lot of them. Of course, back in the technological dark ages (long before Wikipedia!) I didn't have a handy list of what she wrote when. With Agatha, more of a pulp novelist (though a brilliant one) it matters less what order you read things in than it would with a more sheerly "literary" author. But I still did little inner cartwheels when I came across her Wikipedia bibliography not long ago. Suddenly I could see when and where she introduced her various detectives, and note where her particular masterpieces arrived in her writing career. Great fun for a "J" gal like me.

So I've begun working my way through, in order, Christie's novels of the 1920s, the first decade in which she was published. I think Hercule Poirot, with his love of method and order, would be really pleased! In the last few years I'd read the first two anyway, when I'd gone in search of the first Poirot and the first Tommy and Tuppence. I plan to review them all on Epinions, a fact which I hope won't annoy the ever-patient book category leads too much, since I'm having to get them to add some of these to the database. (When I requested she add a book from 1923, the CL informed me that she thought this was probably the oldest "new" book she'd ever been asked to add to the database!)

If you're a Christie fan...or thinking of becoming one...I hope you'll take a look at my Christie reviews from the 1920s. Here are the first three (linked) with the last just posted this morning. As I keeping reading and adding to my reviews, I'll edit this listing and try to give a shout-out.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) -- the first novel starring Hercule Poirot, the amazing Belgian detective, and his stolid English sidekick Hastings

The Secret Adversary (1922) -- the dashing crime novel that introduces Tommy and Tuppence, two of my favorite Christie detectives (though they only starred in a handful of books over the years)

The Murder on the Links (1923) -- Poirot and Hastings together again! Poirot proves the superiority of his detective methods, and Hastings finds romance.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) showcases Christie's audacious artistry and provides one of the best surprise twists ever. Poirot is on the job again, though the beginning of the story finds him "retired" and growing vegetable marrows.

The Big Four (1927) brings Poirot and Hastings back together to hunt down four arch-criminals trying to take over the world!