Category Archives: Books & Novellas

Bina007 discusses the deeply unsuccessful Poirot novel Murder In Mesopotamia set on an archeological dig in Iraq. The glamorous Mrs Leidner is receiving threatening letters. Is her German spy first husband still alive? Are they from his vengeful younger brother? Or is she just writing them to herself?

Spoiler free to the end music and spoiler full thereafter.

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Bina007 discusses the Agatha Christie crime caper Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, published in one of the most prolific years, 1934. Despite containing a Wodehousian-named character called Bassington-Ffrench, the novel is pleasingly free of Woosterish-pastiche. Rather, it’s a well-plotted murder mystery and a wry, progressive commentary on the British class system. It also contains yet another wonderful female protagonist, Lady Frankie Derwent. A spoiler-filled discussion of the solution is after the closing music.

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Bina007 reviews Agatha Christie’s Lord Edgware Dies aka Thirteen To Dinner, originally published in 1933. A famous actress turned aristocrat is the prime suspect when her hated husband is stabbed, allowing her to marry yet higher in society. However, she has a perfect alibi having been at a dinner party at the time. Poirot investigates! A spoiler-filled discussion of the solution is after the closing music.

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Bina007 reviews Agatha Christie’s homage to The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Sittaford Mystery, originally published as The Murder At Hazelmoor in 1931. Snowbound moors, a seance, and a tolling prison bell signal murder, and Agatha Christie conjures up another courageous smart young woman to investigate. There’s no Marple or Poirot but plenty of gothic atmosphere. A spoiler-filled discussion of the solution is after the closing music.

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In this spoiler-free episode Bina007 reviews the first Mrs Marple novel, Murder At The Vicarage, originally published in 1930. This is the novel people think Christie always writes! A pretty English village and the narrator is a clergyman and the victim is a retired military man. But the novel is actually spikier, nastier and more subversive than the chocolate-box cosy image. A spoiler-filled discussion of the solution is after the closing music.

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In this spoiler-free episode Bina007 reviews the hilarious thriller, The Seven Dials Mystery, originally published in 1929. Slated by critics, the novel is a superb pastiche of po-faced boys-own spy novels of the time and stars Bundle Brent as a Bright Young Thing out to unmask a secret society. A spoiler-filled discussion of the solution is after the closing music.

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In this spoiler-free episode Bina007 reviews the novel Agatha Christie struggled with before her disappearance, The Mystery of The Blue Train. In later life, she complained it was commonplace, but I find it to be a compelling Hercules Poirot murder-mustery set aboard a luxurious train, complete with a reckless heiress and her stunning jewels. A spoiler-filled discussion of the solution is after the closing music.

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In this spoiler-free episode Bina007 reviews the compendium mystery novel The Big Four, published by Agatha Christie in the wake of her mysterious disappearance in 1926 when she desperately needed money. She hated it, the critics hate it, but it’s actually a rather fun and satisfying set of mysteries with a bizarre James Bond twist – complete with secret evil lairs, poisoned darts and international criminal conspiracies!

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In this brief episode Bina007 critically discusses Agatha Christie’s mystery-thriller-adventure-comedy mash-up, The Secret Of Chimneys, originally published in 1925. It’s a story of blackmail, murder, hidden jewels, and royal coups! The novel is great fun and incredibly silly but tells us a lot about Christie’s attitudes toward men, and gives us a more grown up version of her New Woman. More negatively, it tells us about a certain kind of lazy racial prejudice circulating at the time. Spoilers after the end credit music.

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In this brief spoiler-free episode Bina007 critically discusses Agatha Christie’s fourth novel and first standalone adventure, The Man In The Brown Suit, originally published in 1924. Smart, beautiful, courageous Anne Beddingfield sees a man murdered at a tube station and follows the clues all the ways to South Africa and romance! The novel is great fun and slightly silly but stars both my favourite Christie heroine AND my favourite villain. That said, it is of its time when it comes to depicting racial attitudes and has some rather bizarre things to say about marriage.

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In this brief spoiler-free episode Bina007 critically discusses Agatha Christie’s third novel and second Hercules Poirot murder-mystery, published in 1923. The novel is flawed and doesn’t repay a reread other than to show us Christie in debate with herself about what kind of detective novelist she wants to be – and that is very much NOT a Gaston Leroux or Arthur Conan Doyle but rather someone who focuses on logic and psychology rather than material clues.

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In this brief episode Bina007 continues her brief introduction to the full-fledged VOK Agatha Christie reread by reviewing Christie’s second novel and first Tommy and Tuppence thriller, The Secret Adversary, published a hundred years ago. It is a fast-paced fun novel that reads like a cross between John Buchan and PG Wodehouse with a side order of Evelyn Waugh’s Bright Young Things. It reflects the economic travails of post-war England – the rise of the New Woman – and the fear of communist revolution.

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