Reading Recommendations: A Christie in Disguise

Dear listeners,

This is the annual period where I begin to feel like I'm racing towards the end of the year, trying to get all the podcasting done before taking a break over Christmas. As such, my reading becomes very functional for a while — if it's not a book I need to look at for the show, I'm not reading it. There's something immensely satisfying about crossing books off my research list, counting down towards the cosy period when I'm going to read nothing but stories I choose for pleasure! Are you also planning your winter reading? Let us know what you've got lined up, I need inspiration.

If you enjoy these book recommendation newsletters, in which we offer you a peek into our personal reading experience while we are working behind the scenes on the show, you might like to catch up with the last edition here or share your own reading plans in the comments here. The entire Shedunnit newsletter archive can be found here.

Caroline Has Read: Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott

I am convinced that this was Agatha Christie's most successful experiment with horror fiction. (Mary Westmacott, of course, being Christie's "secret" pseudonym for her six non-crime novels.) This one from 1944 follows a self-satisfied, middle class English woman as she travels back home from visiting her married daughter in Baghdad. Owing to some bad weather, she misses a connection and has to wait for an unknown number of days at a remote rest-house on the Turkish border until the next train can get through. She quickly finishes the small amount of reading material she has with her and runs out of writing paper. There is nothing to do and nobody to talk to, beyond the staff who have no interest in engaging with her.

For the first time in her life, she has nothing but her own mind to fill her days. She takes desultory walks in the surrounding desert, reliving happy memories of her wonderful husband, lovely children, and attentive neighbours. But the more she thinks about her life, the more she comes to realise that she has been living in a smug, self-centred bubble, absolutely unaware of what is really going on around her. Her life is nothing like she has always assumed, nor do her loved ones feel the way about her she supposed that they did. It's an intense and fascinating psychological portrait. Christie wrote this book in three days straight without sleeping during WW2, and the intensity of tone and the narrative momentum is consistent with this mode of creation. This was a re-read for me — I haven't touched a Westmacott for a few years but I needed to revisit them for a future project and I've been very favourably impressed. I'd highly recommend this book.

Caroline Will Read: The Burning Court by John Dickson Carr

I've long been a bit of a JDC sceptic — I suspect because I read a couple of duds by accident as my first ones of his and it put me off — but my guest for the Green Penguin Book Club episode that is coming out next week has convinced me to give this 1937 standalone mystery a go. Apparently it has both a locked room and witches! I'm excited.

Leandra Has Read: Death of an Author by E.C.R. Lorac

This bibliomystery opens with the reveal that Vivian Lestrange, the author of a popular crime novel titled The Charterhouse Case, might be a woman. Gasp! The cool, well-spoken young woman is adamant, however, that she wants to keep her true gender from the public media. This becomes a problem when that same woman enters a police station and introduces herself as Eleanor Clarke, claiming that her employer — the author Vivian Lestrange — is missing.

While the ending disappointed me, I loved how Lorac addresses the question of whether or not one could recognise a woman's writing from that of a man's. I would also venture a guess that Death of an Author was inspired by the events following Anna Katharine Green's publication of The Leavenworth Case in 1878, one of the great nineteenth century crime novels. At the time, members of the Pennsylvania Legislature debated over whether a woman would have the capability of writing such a book. If you aren't convinced by my theory, consider this: setting aside the similarities between The Leavenworth Case and The Charterhouse Case, doesn't Vivian Lestrange sound an awful lot like Violet Strange, the girl sleuth also created by Green? Murder by Matchlight remains my favourite of Lorac's works thus far, but I did enjoy this book quite a bit.

Leandra Will Read: Murder for Christmas by Frances Duncan

I will be rereading Murder for Christmas in the next month. In this 1949 mystery, Benedict Grame has invited an unusual grouping of guests to Sherbroome House for the holidays. One of those guests is Mordecai Tremaine, an amateur sleuth with a secret penchant for reading romance novels. He accepts Grame's invitation with a sense of foreboding, and his instincts are proven correct when Father Christmas is discovered dead under the tree as the clock strikes midnight on Christmas Eve.

I recall really enjoying Mordecai Tremaine's demeanor and his approach toward investigating the crime at hand. Frances Duncan's writing style sets a wonderful atmosphere of anticipation as well. If you are looking for a Christmas mystery this winter season, then I recommend this one!

That's what we've got coming up reading-wise. What are you planning to read this month? Let us know by replying directly or by leaving a comment to join the conversation with other readers. We'll have one more update this year in mid-December which I expect will be fairly festive... If you'd like to follow our reading adventures in between these posts, I (try to) publish monthly reading updates on my blog/newsletter and Leandra documents what she's reading on her YouTube channel.

Until next time,

Caroline

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