Best ever Agatha Christie book

[istara]

Inspired by the recent Orient Express thread, and the fact that I've been saturating myself with AC detective fiction over the holiday season, here's a thread to vote for your favourite Agatha Christie novel. And to say why. And to express your love of AC in general.

Critics and non-fans - please stay away!

So, my favourite Agatha Christie novel:

The Man in the Brown Suit

Why?

Because Anne (the heroine) is so cool, the characters are such fun, the plot is really great as an adventure and as a conventional mystery story, it's just a wonderful book.

[astorian]

I liked "Curtain," the very last Hercule Poirot novel. Christie ended the series on a very high note.

Also, "The ABC Murders."

[CyberPundit]

It's been a while since I have read any Agatha Christies but I think the best were:
Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Curtain
And then there were none.

[Young Mr. Grace]

I was always a Poirot man myself. Of course Orient Express was great...

My favorite would have to be Murder of Roger Ackroyd. When I first read this, the identity of the killer totally escaped me until the end. One of the only times my jaw has dropped while reading.

[Ukulele Ike]

I'd have to go with And Then There Were None (originally published as Ten Little N-Words; alt title, Ten Little Indians).

I went through most of Christie's works while I was between the ages of 12 and 15, and I'd have to say that the above is about the only title I would consider re-reading today...

The Rene Clair film from 1945 ain't bad, either.

[RealityChuck]

I, too, haven't read Christie in years, but I'd say my favorite was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, mostly for my admiration about what she accomplishe with it.

[maralinn]

Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Crooked House, and ABC Murders.

[Mahaloth]

1. And Then There Were None.

2. Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

3. This one where Hercule solves the crime by using the Euchre sheets for the night. I forget the title.

[bristlesage]

Another And Then There Were None and Murder of Roger Ackroyd fan here. I also really like some of the short story collections, most notably The Labors of Hercules. Another one that hasn't been mentioned yet that I really enjoy is They Came to Baghdad. It's actually more of a spy novel than a mystery, and it reminds me of the 1954 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

[SpoilerVirgin]

I'm a sucker for romance, so my favorites lean heavily in that direction.

If I had to pick just one, it would be Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (The Boomerang Clue) Frankie! Bobby Jones! Much more action than your typical Christie novel, and even the usual "gang of bad guys" solution has a neat twist.

Other great romantic ones include Crooked House, The Pale Horse, Endless Night (romantic and very, very creepy), Death Comes As The End, the short story In A Glass Darkly, and anything featuring Tommy and Tuppence Beresford.

Crooked House, The Pale Horse, and Endless Night also have uniquely brilliant solutions, as do The ABC Murders, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, A Holiday For Murder, and Witness For the Prosecution.

[masonite]

Probably it's not the best, but my favorite, read over-and-over-again A.C. mystery has to be Mrs. McGinty's Dead. I read these books for setting and atmosphere, mostly, and MMGD best captures the eternal Autumn which is my image of England.

[ianzin]

Most of my favourites have already been mentioned. For sheer ingenuity, 'And Then There Were None', 'Roger Ackroyd' and 'Orient Express' would have to be included on any list of Christie 'greatest hits'.

There's one more which isn't really one of her best, but to which I'd just like to give an honourable mention. It's been a very long time since I read it, so please forgive any gross inaccurracy. I believe 'Endless Night' only has about three main characters in it, and I still didn't guess whodunnit!

[bristlesage]

SpoilerVirgin, Witness for the Prosecution, indeed. Oh, that's such a good creepy story. Even thinking about it convinces me there's someone behind me. Oooo-eeee-ooo.

[monica]

I'm not absolutely positive, but I think that the one I'm thinking of is called Endless Night. What I liked about it was
the ending, in which the person telling the story is the murderer- that took me completely by surprise!
If I'm mixing up stories, sorry- I used to read alot of Agatha Christie, and sometimes get some of the stories a bit confused.

~ Monica

[Arnold Winkelried]

Originally posted by Mahaloth
This one where Hercule solves the crime by using the Euchre sheets for the night. I forget the title.Bridge, not euchre. "Cards on the table (http://agathachristie.com/booksplays/bookpages/0431.shtml)" is the title.
monica - you're thinking of "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd".
My favourite would have to be "Murder on the Orient Express."

[SpoilerVirgin]

Originally posted by Arnold Winkelried
monica - you're thinking of "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd".
Actually, Endless Night and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd have the same basic solution, although they are very different books.

Roger Ackroyd is an entirely conventional drawing room mystery, except for the unusual ending. Endless Night is a creepy romance with all sorts of bizarre occult twists, but monica has the ending right in her spoiler.

[dangermom]

I think I like the spy ones best, though Tommy and Tuppence get a bit old after awhile. The ones where there's some big plot to overthrow all government, only the plotters are being manipulated by financiers. So 60's and James Bondy.

[Ukulele Ike]

The Big Four, wasn't it?

[Leaper]

Hey, fans of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I picked up a small book, a literary analysis of the type often used by Sherlock Holmes societies (in which the author assumes the book/story is real and uses analysis to work out what the author believes would be true if it really were real) that asserted that the killer was NOT who the book said it was! In fact,

it argued that the killer was really Dr. Sheppard's sister, who murdered Ackroyd to protect her brother, the blackmailer, who in turn left the manuscript and killed himself to protect her. The author bases this on her (I think) belief that the doctor wasn't intelligent enough to plan such a smart crime, the repeated assertion that the sister knew EVERYTHING that was going on in the village, a mysterious woman that one of the suspects claims to have seen the night of the murder, the fact that the manuscript never out and out says the he killed Ackroyd, and other analysis of the text.

Interesting, no?

[Mahaloth]

Originally posted by Leaper
Hey, fans of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I picked up a small book, a literary analysis of the type often used by Sherlock Holmes societies (in which the author assumes the book/story is real and uses analysis to work out what the author believes would be true if it really were real) that asserted that the killer was NOT who the book said it was! In fact,

it argued that the killer was really Dr. Sheppard's sister, who murdered Ackroyd to protect her brother, the blackmailer, who in turn left the manuscript and killed himself to protect her. The author bases this on her (I think) belief that the doctor wasn't intelligent enough to plan such a smart crime, the repeated assertion that the sister knew EVERYTHING that was going on in the village, a mysterious woman that one of the suspects claims to have seen the night of the murder, the fact that the manuscript never out and out says the he killed Ackroyd, and other analysis of the text.

Interesting, no?

Now I feel like I have to reread the book.

[Mudshark]

I've always liked Destination Unknown, Sad Cypress and The Body In the Library.

[istara]

I love the ones that give a really vivid snapshot of life in a certain place at a certain time, like They Came To Baghdad. The plot isn't that satisfying:
it's one of the neo-Nazi/Young Siegfried ones - New World Order conspiracy, etc
and frankly the absolutely fascinating, sexy, exciting bloke the heroine should end up with ends up dead early on (so she ends up with a boring dry stick IMO) but the initial descriptions of Baghdad of mid-last century are fascinating.

According to Iraqi friends of mine, many archaeological and historical sites in Iraq were destroyed beyond salvage in the last Gulf war, god knows what will happen if a new war happens. Still, it's interesting and sad to see how Iraq was - how open, how busy, how bustling and multi-cultural - before the reign of Saddam came in.

There's a great film of Endless Night - totally 70s setting, fabulous cast - to be honest I remember far more about the seventies-style house with moving bits to it than I do about the plot.

I find some of Christie's work has weathered time better than others. The bolshevik-nazi-conspiracy-type stuff feels rather dated now, though one can imagine how relevant that would have been to the paranoia of the age. Likewise some of the early short stories with Poirot are a bit twee (I've just been re-reading a whole lot recently).

I just reread And Then There Were None and it is very clever - but it doesn't have a happy ending in any way at all.

Other amusing title change: They Do It With Mirrors (UK) -> Murder With Mirrors (US).

[Eliahna]

Gah! I just looked up The Murder of Roger Ackroyd on a bookstore website to see about ordering it, when I saw a listing for Who Killed Roger Ackroyd. I followed the link, curious to know how this other book related... and the blurb gave away the solution to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Well, dammit! What's the point in ordering either now?

Mrs McGinty's Dead and They Do It With Mirrors are the two books that stand out in my memory, although I couldn't tell you why. I had an Agatha Christie fetish and read many of her books, but haven't picked one up in years. Oddly, I happen to be reading a biography* of her now....

* Not really a biography. One of those "What did she do in those days she was missing? Here's my theory..." type books.

[Mudshark]

Hey cazzle , I have a similar book called Agatha. Same book?

[Eliahna]

If it's by Kathleen Tynan, it's exactly the same :) Finding it a disappointment. I went on Amazon the other day to find a real biography, but somehow I got distracted and ended up buying $100 worth of Tudor histories and a Pratchett :blush: Will have to make a second attempt at getting a decent Agatha Christie biography - any suggestions?

[merrily]

I thought AC's own book about her life was fascinating, although be warned she doesn't mention the missing period at all. Her life really spanned the century (last century, now....).

Back when they had the Poirot series on every Monday night, I once told a friend I had to go home to watch Poirot. She said, "Perot? Ross Perot??!!"

[masonite]

At least it wasn't "Parrot? Hercules Parrot?"

[dr hermes]

If you want to read an offbeat Christie book, try her attempt at a Sax Rohmer thriller.. THE BIG FOUR (1929) Poirot goes up against a conspiracy of four criminal masterminds. The Fu Manchu analogue never actually makes an appearance, and most of the nefarious deeds are done by a master of disguise who keeps giving himself away.

Toward the end, Hercule`s formerly unknown twin brother Achille Poirot turns up.....As a thrilling pulp adventure, the book has no momentum or suspense, but it`s interesting to see Christie working in a different genre, and it`s fun to try and match her Big Four with the great villains who inspired them (the chameleon is apparently Bulldog Drummond`s archfoe, Carl Peterson).

[DMark]

I liked her play, "Mousetrap" - which I believe is/was the longest running play in history.

When I was travelling through Europe the first time, I got hooked on her books and was reading them back to back...then I started to get pissed off because a few of the books I bought were books I had already read, with NEW TITLES! So, I am still not sure if I read them all, but I like her style and there was the "quaint" factor of the age of innocence...when young women were smitten and young men were foolhardy...

[Mudshark]

Originally posted by cazzle
If it's by Kathleen Tynan, it's exactly the same :) Finding it a disappointment. I went on Amazon the other day to find a real biography, but somehow I got distracted and ended up buying $100 worth of Tudor histories and a Pratchett :blush: Will have to make a second attempt at getting a decent Agatha Christie biography - any suggestions?


Yeah, thats the same one I have.

I did see an actual autobiography somewhere.

[Leaper]

Originally posted by cazzle
Gah! I just looked up The Murder of Roger Ackroyd on a bookstore website to see about ordering it, when I saw a listing for Who Killed Roger Ackroyd. I followed the link, curious to know how this other book related... and the blurb gave away the solution to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Well, dammit! What's the point in ordering either now?


Aha! I believe that's the very book I was referring to earlier! It's a shame about what happened to you, though; something similar happened to me, when I read a mystery novel trivia book that I didn't realize asked questions about the most spoiler-ific plot points one can imagine. :)

As for my favorite... I don't know. I have a soft spot for A Carribean Mystery because seeing the TV movie version moved me to buy the book version, thus starting up my present-day reading habits at an early age.

[istara]

I would love to see the TV movie of that. I first read A Carribean Mystery in Italian (I was trying to learn Italian, so decided to work my way through a novel).

Interestingly - perhaps because my progress was so slow and I was literally reading every single word with a dictionary - I correctly guessed the murderer almost as soon as he/she appeared, I usually never have a clue who it is.

It's definitely still worth reading Roger Ackroyd even if you know who did it. It's the sort of book that you want to read at least twice - like seeing Sixth Sense - because your second read-through has a whole different perspective.

Likewise I still plan to see the Mousetrap someday, even though some idiotfuck at college deliberately blurted out the murderer to a whole group of us, when we were chatting about Christie/Mousetrap. He did it deliberately, he said, because he thought it was a bad play and wasn't worth seeing - somehow his personal opinion justified spoiling it for eternity for the rest of us. I am so, so sad I ever found out, and still angry towards such a selfish fucktard.

But I still expect to enjoy the play someday.