July 2021 – Countdown John's Christie Journal

#68 – Endless Night

Michael meets Ellie and they enjoy a whirlwind romance and are soon happily married. Yet as this is an Agatha Christie this won’t last as whilst “Some are born to Sweet Delight, Some are born to Endless Night”.

I can’t say too much more about the plot as most of the action takes place in the second half which makes for a very short review. On first reading I was actually angry with the solution but a re-read has given me a new perspective and I would now agree with what seems to be the general opinion that is one of the better late-period Christie’s.

Signs of the Times

Andrew Lippincott travelled on the Queen Mary. This was near the end of her life as she was retired in 1967 after 31 years of service during which she twice broke the record for crossing the Atlantic and served as a troopship during WWII.

#68 – Endless Night – WITH SPOILERS

I can’t say too much more about the plot as most of the action takes place in the second half. On first reading I was actually angry with the solution but a re-read has given me a new perspective and I would now agree with what seems to be the general opinion that is one of the better late-period Christie’s.

Signs of the Times

SPOILERS

Re-reading a book with an unreliable narrator gives the reader the fun of finding where they have incorrectly interpreted ambiguous statements.

At the start of the second page Michael writes:

“Or if this is a love story – and it is a love story, I swear – then why not begin where I first caught sight of Ellie standing in the dark fir tree of Gipsy’s Acre?”

Why not begin there? Well because that’s not the start of the love story – but the reader understandably believes that this is the story of Michael and Ellie when all the time it is that of Michael and Greta.

I feel that Christie gets just the right voice for Michael. On the surface, at least, he comes across as a bit of a jack-the-lad 60s chancer and put me in mind of Michael Caine as “Alfie” from the film version of Bill Naughton’s play. Caine would have been perfect for the rôle of Michael: initially as the working class young man trying to better himself in life, then as the charmer sweeping Ellie off her feet before being revealed as ruthless as Jack from “Get Carter” (breaks off to bring the opening credits up on YouTube: what a theme, the music mixing with the sound of the train as Jack sits reading “Farewell, My Lovely”).

The description of the episode in Hamburg, which we later learn is where he met Greta is cleverly done:

“It was when I was in Hamburg that things came to a crisis. For one thing. I took a violent dislike to the man and his wife I was driving…So I telephoned up the hotel, said I was ill and wired London saying the same thing…That rebellion in my life was an important turning-point in my life. Because of that and of other things, I turned up at the auction rooms on the appointed date.”

What were the other things alluded to by the bold type above? We know at the end that he met Greta – but it would be a rare reader who thought more about them at the time.

When she tells him her real name is Fenella he writes “I almost thought that she might have made it up! But of course I knew that was impossible.” How could he have known that for sure unless he had prior knowledge?

Whilst staying in London after the honeymoon and before moving into the house we have this passage:

“Of course I didn’t look and sound right yet. But that didn’t matter much. I’d got the hang of it, enough so that I could pass muster with people like old Lippincott, and shortly, presumably when Ellie’s stepmother and uncles were around, but actually it wasn’t going to matter in the future at all. When the house was finished and we’d moved in, we were going to be far away everybody. It could be our kingdom. I looked at Greta sitting opposite me. I wondered what she’d really thought of our house. Anyway, it was what I wanted.”

The italics are mine and highlight which “we” Michael is thinking of but also the fact that come the end it didn’t matter which woman he was with – everything ultimately about what he personally wanted and never mind any one else.

When I first read this I was disappointed due to similarities to one of my favourite Christie’s. I felt that some things you could repeat and others you should not. However on re-reading I found that actually what we are reading here is the inside story of a different classic Christie, although with a different outcome, and this pleased me very much.

Future Crimes (2021) edited by Mike Ashley

Following the success of its Crime Classics range, the British Library started a Future Science Fiction Classics range in April 2018. I haven’t tried any of the novels but have enjoyed all the short story anthologies of which this is the tenth and most recent.

Elsewhen by Anthony Boucher

Mr. Partridge has invented the world’s first successful time machine. Its capability is limited, but Mr. Partridge has a sudden realisation that “the one completely practical purpose of a short-range time machine was to provide an alibi for murder.”

He commits the perfect murder but then has to contend with private eye Fergus O’Breen, who Boucher had introduced him in straight mysteries “The Case of the Crumpled Knave” before transferring him to more fantastical problems with “The Compleat Werewolf”.

A nicely constructed inverted mystery which as with the best time travel stories wraps itself up neatly by the end.

Puzzle for Spacemen by John Brunner

Plenty of pilots commit suicide by blowout (opening an airlock whilst unsuited) but Clore’s psycho-profile says that shouldn’t have happened and Jennings, the man who assessed him is determined to prove that this was a case of murder.

Legwork by Eric Frank Russell

“Harasha Vanash was a twenty-four carat hypno: if an alien could think and imagine, that alien was his meat.” With fifty missions under his belt, the fifty-first shouldn’t have posed him any problems, after all he could make anyone see what he wanted them to see, so how could anyone possibly track him down?

This is a brilliant story – it seems as if Vanash is invincible and yet little by little, through deduction, coupled with the titular legwork, maybe, just maybe he can be hunted down.

Mirror Image by Isaac Asimov

R. Daneel Olivaw calls upon his old friend Lije Baley (their first case is told in The Caves of Steel) to help avoid an academic incident. Two mathematicians each claim that the other had stolen his idea and each is supported in this by his personal robot. How will Baley, who is no robopsychologist, break down this symmetrical position?

The Flying Eye by Jacques Futrelle

A weak thriller rather than a genuine mystery. This was the third a final story to feature Paul Darraq, a new series begun shortly before the author’s death on the Titanic.

Nonentity by E. C. Tubb

A good, albeit predictable, take on the lifeboat dilemma as the survivors of an explosion have to decide when their hopes of rescue are slim and becoming slimmer by the hour.

Death of a Telepath by George Chailey

Could you murder someone who can read your every thought?

Murder, 1986 by P. D. James

A deadly disease was brought back to earth by space explorers in 1980 and six years later mankind is split into two groups: Normals and Ipdics (Interplanetary Disease Carriers). When one of the latter is found murdered it is up to Dolby, the worst man on the force, to try to give her some form of justice.

This story is even more chilling read during the time of covid.

Apple by Anne McCaffrey

An act of shoplifting committed by telekinesis threatens to undo the hard work of the North American Parapsychic Center in convincing the general public that those who possess the Talent are a benefit to society rather than a threat. The only solution is to help hunt down one of their own – but at what cost?

The scenario is very reminiscent of the mutant versus human dynamic of the X-Men films.

The Absolutely Perfect Murder by Miriam Allen deFord

The collection ends as it began with time travel being the means of committing the perfect murder, but once again something goes wrong for Mervin as he tries to get out of an unhappy marriage.

With only one duff story out of ten I recommend this to fans of either genre, but especially to those of both.

The Name of the Rose (1980) by Umberto Eco (translated by William Weaver)

Umberto Eco presents the reader with an “(English translation of) my Italian Rose version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of a seventeenth-century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German monk toward the end of the fourteenth century.”

Adso of Melk’s life is drawing to a close but he takes up his pen to tell of the mysterious events at an unnamed Italian Benedictine abbey in 1327 when he was the “scribe and disciple” of Brother William of Baskerville.

William is a member of the Franciscan order, mentored by Roger Bacon and a friend of William of Occam, and is visiting the abbey to attend a theological debate on the poverty of Christ and his apostles, but on arrival he is asked to investigate the death of Adelmo of Otranto, an illuminator, whose body was found at the bottom of the cliff below the Aedificium, the tower containing the abbey’s famed library.

More deaths ensue as William endeavours to find a murderer and the secrets of the labyrynthine library.

He is capable of Holmesian deduction – approaching the abbey for the first time he tells the search party where to find the abbot’s horse and can even tell them its name – can decipher a cryptogram, and employs the latest scientific invention to aid in his labours. He is at once proud of his abilities and yet humble as when he speaks of why he stopped being an inquisitor:

“I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.”

This is a rich book, sometimes overly descriptive – I did skip a few of the longer passages – but the combination of medieval history, philosophy, theology, and a murder mystery make for an overall delightful reading experience.

This review is part of my new series on The 100 Greatest Literary Detectives.

Sherlockian Shorts #5 – The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Part 3

A series of posts, containing full spoilers, as I make my way once more through the complete canon, picking out points of interest and reflecting on my personal experience of the stories.

The Blue Carbuncle

This was my first Holmes story – in comic strip form in the Early Learning Centre Book of Spies and Detectives (or something like that). It included a make your own model of 221B Baker Street and figures of Holmes, Watson, and Peterson, the commissionaire. As the latter had a figure I assumed he also was a recurring character, but as far as I remember he never appears again.
Holmes has this to say about jewels in general and the Blue Carbuncle in particular: “It’s a bonny thing. Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil’s pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old…in spite of its youth, it has already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal. Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows and the prison?”
Reading the comic strip I could never understand the scene where Holmes bets Breckinridge that the goose is country bred when he believes it to be town bred.
In the story itself, whilst a copy of the “pink ‘un” may give an indication that Breckinridge likes a wager I don’t believe that the cut of whiskers is also the sign of a gambling man.
Holmes recognises when he lets Ryder go free, as is still often the case “Send him to gaol now, and you make him a gaolbird for life.”

The Speckled Band

I think all the cases preceding this have been in chronological order, but here Watson specifically tells us this takes place whilst they were still bachelors.
Dr Grimesby Roylott bends Holmes’ steel poker to demonstrate his strength, but Holmes shows he is the stronger by straightening it out again.

The Engineer’s Thumb

Includes one of the most memorable and terrifying illustrations in the canon.
Holmes does not actually impact the outcome of this story in any way but his deduction from the initial freshness of the horse that the engineer was driven around and back to his starting point is neat. I recently read a short story that put this device to a satisfyingly deadly effect.

Previous posts in this series:

#1 – A Study in Scarlet

#2 – The Sign of the Four

#3 -A Scandal in Bohemia, The Red-Headed League, and A Case of Identity

#4 – The Boscombe Valley Mystery. The Five Orange Pips, and The Man with the Twisted Lip