Bookscan #5
Book: THE ADVENTURE OF THE CHRISTMAS PUDDING
Writer: Agatha Christie
Fontana, 1990
This is a collection of 6 of Agatha Christie's stories:
1. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
2. The Mystery of the Spanish Chest
3. The Underdog
4. Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds 5. The Dream
6. Greenshaw's Folly
The first 5 of the stories feature Hercule Poirot and the last one features Miss Marple.
All the stories are pretty good and eminently readable. The title story stands out in being one of those rare Poirot stories that does not involve a murder. It is actually quite a pleasant little mystery. For me, "The Dream" turned out to be a rare story too - rare in the sense that I was able to solve the mystery way before the author revealed the solution. Go me!
As I had expressed in one of my earlier blogs, when I read a book, I try to pick up a tiny bit more than what the book gives me. In the course of reading this book, I picked up two things.
In one of the stories Christie randomly drops the name of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland. Curious to know what this queen has to do with murder, googled her and found that she is speculated to be involved in the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley in 1567. These royals!
The other bit I picked up was the meaning of the term, "elbow grease" (meaning hard work). I am not ashamed to admit that I had not come across this term until I read this book.
Writer: Agatha Christie
Fontana, 1990
This is a collection of 6 of Agatha Christie's stories:
1. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
2. The Mystery of the Spanish Chest
3. The Underdog
4. Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds 5. The Dream
6. Greenshaw's Folly
The first 5 of the stories feature Hercule Poirot and the last one features Miss Marple.
All the stories are pretty good and eminently readable. The title story stands out in being one of those rare Poirot stories that does not involve a murder. It is actually quite a pleasant little mystery. For me, "The Dream" turned out to be a rare story too - rare in the sense that I was able to solve the mystery way before the author revealed the solution. Go me!
As I had expressed in one of my earlier blogs, when I read a book, I try to pick up a tiny bit more than what the book gives me. In the course of reading this book, I picked up two things.
In one of the stories Christie randomly drops the name of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland. Curious to know what this queen has to do with murder, googled her and found that she is speculated to be involved in the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley in 1567. These royals!
The other bit I picked up was the meaning of the term, "elbow grease" (meaning hard work). I am not ashamed to admit that I had not come across this term until I read this book.
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