1. Was this your first time reading the book or a reread?
I think it was the first time. However, I read through a LOT of Agatha Christie about 25 -30 years ago, so I may have read this one then. If so, I had no specific memories of it.
3. If your first time, or if you can remember your first time, reading it, which clues did you pick up on, and which did you not notice? And did anyone work out whodunnit from the clues?
I figured out early on that Philippa was Pip and everyone was making the mistake of assuming Pip was a man. And I caught the "Lotty" slip but didn't connect it to the "dead" sister being called Charlotte. So most of the ending was a surprise to me, but that is par for the course with me and whodunnits. I am delightfully easy to surprise.
4. If you have read other Agatha Christies, are there any that you find have particular things in common with this book? Did reading this remind you of other Agatha Christie books, or even other books of the time by other authors?
As I said above, I went through a phase of reading all the Agatha Christies 25+ years ago -- all or most of them, anyway -- and never felt the need to reread any. So I don't have any sense of how it fits into her larger work (though I tend to think of her books as being set in an earlier era and was surprised by the post-WW2 setting of this one). I'm not a huge mystery reader and to me, for older detective novels, Dorothy L. Sayers is the gold standard. I found this lighter and less in-depth than a Sayers novel, but enjoyed it all the same.
5. What did you think of the characters? Were there any that you felt particularly drawn to, who you enjoyed, or liked, or found entertaining? Were there any that you didn't like, or found boring, or poorly portrayed? And did your feelings about any characters change over the course of the novel?
I thought the characters were a lot of fun, all interesting in their way though none of them delved into very deeply. I thought, as CuriosityKilled said above, the Edmund/Philippa romance would have been a lot more convincing if their characters had been better fleshed out.
I did read Hinch and Murgatroyd as a lesbian couple but I didn't like the one glimpse we got into their private life -- Hinch so dismissive of Murgatroyd and the "grey fluff" she has instead of a brain. That didn't feel like a healthy or respectful relationship, even when treated as slightly-comic relief.
The treatment of Mitzi, who appears to have been an ... actual Holocaust survivor who saw family members killed in front of her? ... as a hysterical laughing-stock not only by the characters but to some extent by the narrator too, was hard to take. It was probably the only thing that dampened my enjoyment of the story.
7. Was there anything you found not very believable in the story? Anything where you thought this doesn't quite work?
I found it as believable as any other mystery novel, which is to say, not very, but it seemed consistent within its own internal rules. If anything I thought the timeline of Letty/Lotty moving around in the dark on the night of the "burglary" and getting back into place quickly enough to make it look like she'd been shot was a little incredible, but I guess it was a while before anyone got a lighter working and there was a lot of confusion and milling around.
8. What were your overall thoughts and feelings about the book? Its strengths and weaknesses?
I liked it a lot for the type of book it was -- plot-driven rather than with a lot of character development, but the plot kept me turning the pages so it did what it was meant to do! And I liked the humour -- there were a few places I genuinely did LOL.
I've been thinking about how much the aftermath of the second world war forms a background to this story.
Miss Marple points out that you can't be sure that people are who they say they are which forms the whole are Patrick, Julia and Phillipa who they purport to be part of the plot.
Then you have Mitzi, as displaced citizen of another country who has seen horrors the others can't imagine. I think she is meant to be a comic character, contrasting those exaggerating, unreliable foreigners from the stoic reliable English. The whole 'keep calm and carry on' mentality seems firmly embedded in these characters make-up.
Finally there is the low level crime they are all indulging in. Doing 'favours' to get their hands on rationed goods, turning a blind eye to what their neighbours are doing.
I think those ingredients could make for an interesting novel in the hands of a writer less interested in detective puzzles and more interested in character.
Another thing I've been thinking of is would Dora Bunner have benefited from Miss Climpson's agency as set up by Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey? It was an agency set up to give work to impoverished females such as Bunner, who in the guise of doing secretarial work would find things out for Lord Peter. Bunner had a good memory for seeing things, and though she couldn't deduce what they meant, could have been an asset with a bit of training.
@fineline's objections to Miss Marple hiding in the cupboard I'd agree with, but it's not the first or last book where Miss Marple is put in danger as part of the denouement.
Oh, just to point out, it was @Cathscats, not me, who said that. I kind of liked Miss Marple hiding in the cupboard - I found it amusing, and a clever trick. The random revelation that she can do voice imitations was a bit surreal, but I don't particularly expect realism from the character of Miss Marple!
And I do agree that attitudes to, and understanding of, trauma - and indeed foreigners - was different back then, and those elements of the novel are very much of their time. Still jars on me though, to read. An aspect of the novel that, to me, really doesn't age well. I was thinking too that at this point in history, Brits in general wouldn't yet have the knowledge and understanding of the extent of what happened in the Holocaust. We get taught this stuff now - there is loads of info on it - but without this, to just hear accounts of it from a random person, who is seen as neurotic and hysterical, and a foreigner in a society that didn't really trust foreigners, people wouldn't believe it. I get the characters not believing it, though I would rather (and a totally unrealistic expectation, I know) have a narrative voice that puts into perspective that this attitude is based on the limitations of their time. I think to some extent some authors do do this sort of thing - even with limited knowledge themselves, they express awareness of people's foibles and prejudices, including their own, and question assumptions of the time. But the novelists who do this tend to be writing a very different sort of novel.
@Sarasa - yes, I liked how the context of the particular point in history, post-war, was used not just as interesting background, but as a clue in itself, underlying many of the plot devices. The idea that many people's lives were disrupted, many people starting again from scratch, and that this was a very different time from when everyone easily found out information about people in their village, because they knew their families, their backgrounds. It felt to me that Agatha Christie was enjoying playing with this sense of anonymity, the idea that anyone can start a new life with no one knowing them, to the fullest extent.
I agree these characters could have been explored in way more depth and have the makings of very interesting characters in the hands of a different author. There was a sense of a lot hidden behind the fronts they were portraying, which I found fascinating. I found Philippa interesting, because while Patrick and Julia mocked her bland lack of curiosity, I interpreted this as a mask she was wearing, to lay low and just get on with her life and try to take care of her son and hope people don't find out what she saw as the shame of her husband's behaviour. I thought we got more of a glimpse of her at the end, when she reveals her identity, but not much. Same with Julia - she has this constantly bored, superior air, but once she is exposed and can be honest about who she is, she is more interesting, very direct and upfront, and kind to Philippa when she realises who she is. And Edmund also became more interesting and likeable, and I'd have loved to see more of his and Philippa's characters and relationship. But it's only when characters' secrets are exposed that they all become more real, so right at the end of the novel. Though of course it's not the scope of this sort of book to explore the characters in detail - these are all interesting little glimpses, but ultimately all function as clues or red herrings. I think this is a sense I got in all the Agatha Christie novels I read - that there are these characters we never really know, can never really trust, because one of them is a murderer, and the whole point is we don't know which one. So they all have these interesting, hidden backstories which may or may not be relevant, and they are likely not what they seem. We know we'll get a fuller, more accurate glimpse of them at the end, but then they're gone because the story has ended.
Interesting that quite a few of us guessed Pip was Philippa - I suppose the plot convention of someone being a different gender from anticipated may have been less conventional when the novel was written, but more a norm now, and of course these days we're all more aware of not assuming gender. I remember I guessed simply because Pip is quite a natural shortening of Philippa.
I suppose, in terms of character, the opposite sort of novel to this is the psychological thrillers where you often know the murderer from the start, but you don't know what happened or why they did it, and the whole story is an exploration of the characters, switching from the present situation, many years after the killing, to the past, looking back to the lead up to the killing, and you have to piece together what happened. So the mystery is more what happened and why - a whydunnit rather than a whodunnit. I'm thinking specifically about the ones that Ruth Rendell wrote as Barbara Vine, but there must be plenty of other authors who do this.
1. Was this your first time reading the book or a reread?
If I had read the book I don't remember it, but I recognised the story and remembered who the murderer was from watching the Geraldine McEwan version fairly recently.
3. If your first time, or if you can remember your first time, reading it, which clues did you pick up on, and which did you not notice? And did anyone work out whodunnit from the clues?
I picked up on the references to Charlotte's condition that meant she had a goitre and remembered that Letty was really Lotty, hiding her scar with a necklace. I was surprised I didn't notice that Dora Bunner sometimes called Letty, Lotty, even though it is obviously there in the text. I also guessed that Phillipa was Pip - maybe because nobody really calls boys Pip now, but Pippa or even Pip are still nicknames for Phillipa. I felt that clue was a bit too obvious. The final clue I noticed this time round was that Belle Goedler had not seen Letty since she came back from overseas. Charlotte's excuse for this was not very convincing, given Letty and Belle had been good friends and it would be strange for Letty to decide never to see her in person again, even when she knew Belle was dying.
4. If you have read other Agatha Christies, are there any that you find have particular things in common with this book? Did reading this remind you of other Agatha Christie books, or even other books of the time by other authors?
There is a short story 'Sanctuary' in which Bunch and her vicar husband Julian Harmon also appear so early on in the novel I was expecting events from that story to occur. I had to look on the internet to find out what other story I remembered Bunch from.
The book also reminded me of a 'Crooked Heart' which is the first book in the series by Lissa Evans. We read the second book, Old Baggage (a prequel to 'Crooked Heart') for the book club last year. It is set in WWII and has themes of people pretending to be people they are not and committing minor crimes to survive or improve their finances, aided by 'stealing' others identities at times due to deaths and confusion during the war.
5. What did you think of the characters? Were there any that you felt particularly drawn to, who you enjoyed, or liked, or found entertaining? Were there any that you didn't like, or found boring, or poorly portrayed? And did your feelings about any characters change over the course of the novel?
I like Bunch in this book and in Sanctuary, though I notice she did not appear in the McEwan T.V. adaption and plays a much bigger part in the short story.
Mitzi was overly exaggerated and a negative stereotype, however it was clever how Lotty used other people's prejudices to convince them that Mitzi was lying and hysterical, when actually she was often picking up on the truth and wasn't overreacting given it ended up she was really living with a murderer. At least she got to be a hero in the end, but it was implied this would 'fix' her problems and make her no longer scared of authorities, which seems highly unlikely.
7. Was there anything you found not very believable in the story? Anything where you thought this doesn't quite work?
The high number of people pretending to be someone else was unbelievable. I also found it annoying that the book hinted that the Colonel's wife, Laura Easterbrook, was also not who she was pretending to be, but we never found out exactly what she was hiding and the Colonel didn't seem to be unhappy being hoodwinked, anyway.
I found it annoying that we weren't sure if the colonel and his wife were genuine or not. Isn't there another one where the Indian colonel turns out to be a thief? Retired colonels turn up a lot in detective stories I think there are a few Sherlock Homes ones with them ?
I was bored by the colonel and his wife - I found I wasn't interested in them, and so I guess I didn't care if they were genuine. Clearly the colonel was quite full of himself and liked showing off. I saw their role as providing a gun (against their knowledge).
I did like Bunch, and she is in the McEwan TV adaptation, but she isn't called Bunch in it - she is just called Mrs Harmon. I guess because the other characters aren't so familiar with her, and she's not an old friend of Miss Marple's as she is in the book. She is younger, in fact, in the TV version than she seems to be in the book. Her main appearance in the TV version is at the beginning - and this is a scene which I think actually works better on screen than in the book - where she is the last to arrive at Miss Blacklock's house, all flustered, and she asks outright when the murder is, which shocks/amuses the other characters, because they had all come for that reason too, but were pretending they'd just popped by for other reasons, because they didn't want to look nosey or tasteless. I found it a brilliantly funny scene in the TV version, because there is a lot of physical comedy in it, the various facial expressions, and people meeting eyes, trying not to laugh, and the immediacy of it.
One of the things that came up earlier in the thread was the use of the word "pussies" to describe the older middle ladies of the milieu. The other word that used to be around was "tabbies". Because I was interested I found a HuffPost thread, published in the early days of the Trump presidency, questioning the origins of the use of pussy. Apparently women were referred to as pussies in a non-sexual way for the first time in writing in the 1500s. That article also discussed the way Trump used pussy to describe men, as soft and easily pushed around, another way of saying "like a girl".
My impression is that pussy wasn't used generally as slang for genitalia until probably the 1970s, although I couldn't find confirmation of that. I certainly remember a rash of t-shirts in the mid-1970s with pictures of drunken cats and the caption that "Happiness is a tight pussy" (and being bemused by them). I haven't seen that particular design around since. This rather suggests that the meaning was obscure enough at the time to be an amusing thing to wear in certain circles. As the genitalia meaning is now in such common use that most people would recognise the t-shirts as rude, the design has disappeared.
I wonder if we're not reading back the way vocabulary has changed over time. Another example that comes to mind of a word that would have been read differently is "gay". Characters would exclaim "Aren't we being gay?" when they meant having a fun time.
I adored Bunch and her vicar husband and would happily read a whole book about them.
Then you should read The Murder at the Vicarage, which is Marple’s first novel. (She appeared first in short stories.). That novel is narrated by Bunch’s husband.
My impression is that pussy wasn't used generally as slang for genitalia until probably the 1970s, although I couldn't find confirmation of that.
In the 1950s I heard a joke about farm animals trying to cross a pond. I don't remember the details, but the punchline was, "Wherever you see a satisfied cock, there is a wet pussy."
I did like Bunch, and she is in the McEwan TV adaptation, but she isn't called Bunch in it - she is just called Mrs Harmon. I guess because the other characters aren't so familiar with her, and she's not an old friend of Miss Marple's as she is in the book. She is younger, in fact, in the TV version than she seems to be in the book. Her main appearance in the TV version is at the beginning - and this is a scene which I think actually works better on screen than in the book - where she is the last to arrive at Miss Blacklock's house, all flustered, and she asks outright when the murder is, which shocks/amuses the other characters, because they had all come for that reason too, but were pretending they'd just popped by for other reasons, because they didn't want to look nosey or tasteless. I found it a brilliantly funny scene in the TV version, because there is a lot of physical comedy in it, the various facial expressions, and people meeting eyes, trying not to laugh, and the immediacy of it.
Oh yes, I forgot Bunch did make a small appearance, but that Miss. Marple was a friend of Miss. Murgatroyd, rather than Bunch's Godmother in the adaption, so she played a much smaller part.
Thanks for the reminder that Bunch and Julian Harmon are in another novel Cathscat. I didn't find that information out when researching what other book they were in. I guess Agatha Christie must have liked them too as they appeared in a few books and stories!
I am also reminded of 'The Moving Finger'. In that book a brother and sister are actually a brother and sister, but an anonymous letter writer sends them a letter accusing them of actually being an unmarried couple.
I wonder if we're not reading back the way vocabulary has changed over time. Another example that comes to mind of a word that would have been read differently is "gay". Characters would exclaim "Aren't we being gay?" when they meant having a fun time.
I hadn't seen anyone reading back or not realising that language usage changes? People were saying that it feels odd to read as a modern reader, now that pussy has another meaning, which suggests people do realise.
I had pointed out, from checking the OED, that the genitalia meaning has been around for a few centuries, so is not a new word. You can check the OED too to verify this. First recorded usage of this meaning was 1699. A hundred and fifty years after the first usage of pussy as a term of endearment for a woman.
I was suggesting that while the coarse meaning was likely not commonly used or known among polite society at the time of Agatha Christie writing, Agatha Christie herself may have known about it, from all the research she clearly did. So she may have been being a bit mischievous, knowing that most wouldn't know that meaning, but some might. But they wouldn't suspect her, an innocent old lady, of knowing (which is a theme of her novels, and particularly this novel, that people make a lot of assumptions about old ladies). But as I said, that's clearly it's not the meaning intended by the character who uses it.
I'd say that doesn't seem beyond the scope of possibility - simply the fact that Agatha Christie might know this meaning. It's speculation, of course, but so is the idea that she wouldn't know.
Thinking of pussies there is the 1970s sitcom Are You Being Served, where Mrs Slocombe is always looking for her pussy. The joke being, of course, that she doesn't understand the double meaning. I guess Christie did, but a lot of her readers probably didn't.
I watched the McEwen version of A Murder is Announced last night. It's available on the ITV hub for the next few days. Didn't spot Bunch at all, Murgatroyd being the person Miss Marple stays with, and the colonel's dodgy wife wasn't in it at all. Instead there was a sub-plot about him and Mrs Swettenham. No Philippa and Edmund romance either. I quite enjoyed it, but still think I prefer the Joan Hickson version. However that wasn't available on iplayer. I did enjoy looking at everyone's dream of a perfect English village.
My husband, who doesn't know the book, is still puzzling why Miss Blacklock used such a complicated scheme to murder Rudi.
@Sarasa, now I'm wondering if I'm getting mixed up with the other version, because I just found the McEwan version on YouTube, and have watched the beginning, and Hinch and Murgatroyd are very different from the characters I was remembering, visualised in my head. And that scene where Mrs Harmon (Bunch) arrives and asks when the murder is doesn't happen - it's Murgatroyd who mentions it. Also, I was sure that Philippa had blonde hair. I have seen this version a lot more recently than the other version, though still several years ago. I'm not even sure now if what I'm remembering is the other version or just mental images I imagined from the book. I remember Hinch and Murgatroyd as being older, with Hinch very tall with big shoulders, and Murgatroyd kind of round and plump. I have them visualised very clearly in my mind, also Philippa with her blonde hair. The Joan Hickson version isn't on youtube though, so I can't check if it's from that one. I know I have seen it though because I remember a version where the cat's name is Delilah rather than Tilgath Pileser, and Wikipedia informs me this is the Joan Hickson version.
Yes, the cat is not in the McEwan version at all. I watched the McEwan one recently and still got confused due to all the versions! I have watched the recent adaptions of Agatha Christie stories where the T.V. adaption changes the murderer all together. They are still good stories, but I prefer the original solutions and it will be even more confusing in the future to remember what happened in a particular story if this trend continues.
The main thing I remember from the Hickson version is the scene where Murgatroyd is murdered. I also think it was a lot more subtle about the relationship between her and Hinch. I thought the McEwan version did a good job of making Mitzi a more credible character, no screaming.
Yes, I really liked Catherine Tate's depitction of Mitzi, and a very good Eastern European accent too, as of course Catherine Tate is very skilled at imitating accents.
I find I can easily get confused if I've read a book and watched a movie version about which part is in the book and which part in the movie - and extra confusing if there is more than one movie! But I googled for images of the Hickson version, and there are lots of images of Hinch and Murgatroyd, because people are now finding it interesting to examine their lesbian relationship. And those images are the ones I remember, though the tallness must have been in my imagination from the book, as they seem to be the same height. Here is a very interesting article with lots of images, which talks in detail about their relationship and also addresses the issue that Trudy mentions, of Hinch being dismissive of Murgatroyd- the article suggests this is more a superficial thing, to protect her, but that beneath the surface they have a really strong relationship. But the article is talking about the Hickson film adaptation, not the book.
Ah, and here I have just found images of all the characters in the Hickson version. This is the Philippa I was visualising too, exactly, and the Mrs Harmon, so maybe the scene I thought I was remembering came from this one - because that is the Mrs Harmon face shape and hair I see in my mind. It is very strange, though, that I was visualising them so strongly, because I didn't think I'd seen this since I was a teenager, and I know I've seen the other one more recently, around ten year ago. Maybe I did also find the Hickson one on youtube at some point and watched it again.
I found both versions of the film online to watch and watched them both, and I think I had them a little muddled in my mind. I do like the Hickson one better, though I prefer Catherine Tate's portrayal of Mitzi.
Comments
I think it was the first time. However, I read through a LOT of Agatha Christie about 25 -30 years ago, so I may have read this one then. If so, I had no specific memories of it.
3. If your first time, or if you can remember your first time, reading it, which clues did you pick up on, and which did you not notice? And did anyone work out whodunnit from the clues?
I figured out early on that Philippa was Pip and everyone was making the mistake of assuming Pip was a man. And I caught the "Lotty" slip but didn't connect it to the "dead" sister being called Charlotte. So most of the ending was a surprise to me, but that is par for the course with me and whodunnits. I am delightfully easy to surprise.
4. If you have read other Agatha Christies, are there any that you find have particular things in common with this book? Did reading this remind you of other Agatha Christie books, or even other books of the time by other authors?
As I said above, I went through a phase of reading all the Agatha Christies 25+ years ago -- all or most of them, anyway -- and never felt the need to reread any. So I don't have any sense of how it fits into her larger work (though I tend to think of her books as being set in an earlier era and was surprised by the post-WW2 setting of this one). I'm not a huge mystery reader and to me, for older detective novels, Dorothy L. Sayers is the gold standard. I found this lighter and less in-depth than a Sayers novel, but enjoyed it all the same.
5. What did you think of the characters? Were there any that you felt particularly drawn to, who you enjoyed, or liked, or found entertaining? Were there any that you didn't like, or found boring, or poorly portrayed? And did your feelings about any characters change over the course of the novel?
I thought the characters were a lot of fun, all interesting in their way though none of them delved into very deeply. I thought, as CuriosityKilled said above, the Edmund/Philippa romance would have been a lot more convincing if their characters had been better fleshed out.
I did read Hinch and Murgatroyd as a lesbian couple but I didn't like the one glimpse we got into their private life -- Hinch so dismissive of Murgatroyd and the "grey fluff" she has instead of a brain. That didn't feel like a healthy or respectful relationship, even when treated as slightly-comic relief.
The treatment of Mitzi, who appears to have been an ... actual Holocaust survivor who saw family members killed in front of her? ... as a hysterical laughing-stock not only by the characters but to some extent by the narrator too, was hard to take. It was probably the only thing that dampened my enjoyment of the story.
7. Was there anything you found not very believable in the story? Anything where you thought this doesn't quite work?
I found it as believable as any other mystery novel, which is to say, not very, but it seemed consistent within its own internal rules. If anything I thought the timeline of Letty/Lotty moving around in the dark on the night of the "burglary" and getting back into place quickly enough to make it look like she'd been shot was a little incredible, but I guess it was a while before anyone got a lighter working and there was a lot of confusion and milling around.
8. What were your overall thoughts and feelings about the book? Its strengths and weaknesses?
I liked it a lot for the type of book it was -- plot-driven rather than with a lot of character development, but the plot kept me turning the pages so it did what it was meant to do! And I liked the humour -- there were a few places I genuinely did LOL.
Miss Marple points out that you can't be sure that people are who they say they are which forms the whole are Patrick, Julia and Phillipa who they purport to be part of the plot.
Then you have Mitzi, as displaced citizen of another country who has seen horrors the others can't imagine. I think she is meant to be a comic character, contrasting those exaggerating, unreliable foreigners from the stoic reliable English. The whole 'keep calm and carry on' mentality seems firmly embedded in these characters make-up.
Finally there is the low level crime they are all indulging in. Doing 'favours' to get their hands on rationed goods, turning a blind eye to what their neighbours are doing.
I think those ingredients could make for an interesting novel in the hands of a writer less interested in detective puzzles and more interested in character.
Another thing I've been thinking of is would Dora Bunner have benefited from Miss Climpson's agency as set up by Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey? It was an agency set up to give work to impoverished females such as Bunner, who in the guise of doing secretarial work would find things out for Lord Peter. Bunner had a good memory for seeing things, and though she couldn't deduce what they meant, could have been an asset with a bit of training.
Oh, just to point out, it was @Cathscats, not me, who said that. I kind of liked Miss Marple hiding in the cupboard - I found it amusing, and a clever trick. The random revelation that she can do voice imitations was a bit surreal, but I don't particularly expect realism from the character of Miss Marple!
And I do agree that attitudes to, and understanding of, trauma - and indeed foreigners - was different back then, and those elements of the novel are very much of their time. Still jars on me though, to read. An aspect of the novel that, to me, really doesn't age well. I was thinking too that at this point in history, Brits in general wouldn't yet have the knowledge and understanding of the extent of what happened in the Holocaust. We get taught this stuff now - there is loads of info on it - but without this, to just hear accounts of it from a random person, who is seen as neurotic and hysterical, and a foreigner in a society that didn't really trust foreigners, people wouldn't believe it. I get the characters not believing it, though I would rather (and a totally unrealistic expectation, I know) have a narrative voice that puts into perspective that this attitude is based on the limitations of their time. I think to some extent some authors do do this sort of thing - even with limited knowledge themselves, they express awareness of people's foibles and prejudices, including their own, and question assumptions of the time. But the novelists who do this tend to be writing a very different sort of novel.
I agree these characters could have been explored in way more depth and have the makings of very interesting characters in the hands of a different author. There was a sense of a lot hidden behind the fronts they were portraying, which I found fascinating. I found Philippa interesting, because while Patrick and Julia mocked her bland lack of curiosity, I interpreted this as a mask she was wearing, to lay low and just get on with her life and try to take care of her son and hope people don't find out what she saw as the shame of her husband's behaviour. I thought we got more of a glimpse of her at the end, when she reveals her identity, but not much. Same with Julia - she has this constantly bored, superior air, but once she is exposed and can be honest about who she is, she is more interesting, very direct and upfront, and kind to Philippa when she realises who she is. And Edmund also became more interesting and likeable, and I'd have loved to see more of his and Philippa's characters and relationship. But it's only when characters' secrets are exposed that they all become more real, so right at the end of the novel. Though of course it's not the scope of this sort of book to explore the characters in detail - these are all interesting little glimpses, but ultimately all function as clues or red herrings. I think this is a sense I got in all the Agatha Christie novels I read - that there are these characters we never really know, can never really trust, because one of them is a murderer, and the whole point is we don't know which one. So they all have these interesting, hidden backstories which may or may not be relevant, and they are likely not what they seem. We know we'll get a fuller, more accurate glimpse of them at the end, but then they're gone because the story has ended.
Interesting that quite a few of us guessed Pip was Philippa - I suppose the plot convention of someone being a different gender from anticipated may have been less conventional when the novel was written, but more a norm now, and of course these days we're all more aware of not assuming gender. I remember I guessed simply because Pip is quite a natural shortening of Philippa.
I suppose, in terms of character, the opposite sort of novel to this is the psychological thrillers where you often know the murderer from the start, but you don't know what happened or why they did it, and the whole story is an exploration of the characters, switching from the present situation, many years after the killing, to the past, looking back to the lead up to the killing, and you have to piece together what happened. So the mystery is more what happened and why - a whydunnit rather than a whodunnit. I'm thinking specifically about the ones that Ruth Rendell wrote as Barbara Vine, but there must be plenty of other authors who do this.
If I had read the book I don't remember it, but I recognised the story and remembered who the murderer was from watching the Geraldine McEwan version fairly recently.
3. If your first time, or if you can remember your first time, reading it, which clues did you pick up on, and which did you not notice? And did anyone work out whodunnit from the clues?
I picked up on the references to Charlotte's condition that meant she had a goitre and remembered that Letty was really Lotty, hiding her scar with a necklace. I was surprised I didn't notice that Dora Bunner sometimes called Letty, Lotty, even though it is obviously there in the text. I also guessed that Phillipa was Pip - maybe because nobody really calls boys Pip now, but Pippa or even Pip are still nicknames for Phillipa. I felt that clue was a bit too obvious. The final clue I noticed this time round was that Belle Goedler had not seen Letty since she came back from overseas. Charlotte's excuse for this was not very convincing, given Letty and Belle had been good friends and it would be strange for Letty to decide never to see her in person again, even when she knew Belle was dying.
4. If you have read other Agatha Christies, are there any that you find have particular things in common with this book? Did reading this remind you of other Agatha Christie books, or even other books of the time by other authors?
There is a short story 'Sanctuary' in which Bunch and her vicar husband Julian Harmon also appear so early on in the novel I was expecting events from that story to occur. I had to look on the internet to find out what other story I remembered Bunch from.
The book also reminded me of a 'Crooked Heart' which is the first book in the series by Lissa Evans. We read the second book, Old Baggage (a prequel to 'Crooked Heart') for the book club last year. It is set in WWII and has themes of people pretending to be people they are not and committing minor crimes to survive or improve their finances, aided by 'stealing' others identities at times due to deaths and confusion during the war.
5. What did you think of the characters? Were there any that you felt particularly drawn to, who you enjoyed, or liked, or found entertaining? Were there any that you didn't like, or found boring, or poorly portrayed? And did your feelings about any characters change over the course of the novel?
I like Bunch in this book and in Sanctuary, though I notice she did not appear in the McEwan T.V. adaption and plays a much bigger part in the short story.
Mitzi was overly exaggerated and a negative stereotype, however it was clever how Lotty used other people's prejudices to convince them that Mitzi was lying and hysterical, when actually she was often picking up on the truth and wasn't overreacting given it ended up she was really living with a murderer. At least she got to be a hero in the end, but it was implied this would 'fix' her problems and make her no longer scared of authorities, which seems highly unlikely.
7. Was there anything you found not very believable in the story? Anything where you thought this doesn't quite work?
The high number of people pretending to be someone else was unbelievable. I also found it annoying that the book hinted that the Colonel's wife, Laura Easterbrook, was also not who she was pretending to be, but we never found out exactly what she was hiding and the Colonel didn't seem to be unhappy being hoodwinked, anyway.
I did like Bunch, and she is in the McEwan TV adaptation, but she isn't called Bunch in it - she is just called Mrs Harmon. I guess because the other characters aren't so familiar with her, and she's not an old friend of Miss Marple's as she is in the book. She is younger, in fact, in the TV version than she seems to be in the book. Her main appearance in the TV version is at the beginning - and this is a scene which I think actually works better on screen than in the book - where she is the last to arrive at Miss Blacklock's house, all flustered, and she asks outright when the murder is, which shocks/amuses the other characters, because they had all come for that reason too, but were pretending they'd just popped by for other reasons, because they didn't want to look nosey or tasteless. I found it a brilliantly funny scene in the TV version, because there is a lot of physical comedy in it, the various facial expressions, and people meeting eyes, trying not to laugh, and the immediacy of it.
My impression is that pussy wasn't used generally as slang for genitalia until probably the 1970s, although I couldn't find confirmation of that. I certainly remember a rash of t-shirts in the mid-1970s with pictures of drunken cats and the caption that "Happiness is a tight pussy" (and being bemused by them). I haven't seen that particular design around since. This rather suggests that the meaning was obscure enough at the time to be an amusing thing to wear in certain circles. As the genitalia meaning is now in such common use that most people would recognise the t-shirts as rude, the design has disappeared.
I wonder if we're not reading back the way vocabulary has changed over time. Another example that comes to mind of a word that would have been read differently is "gay". Characters would exclaim "Aren't we being gay?" when they meant having a fun time.
Then you should read The Murder at the Vicarage, which is Marple’s first novel. (She appeared first in short stories.). That novel is narrated by Bunch’s husband.
Oh yes, I forgot Bunch did make a small appearance, but that Miss. Marple was a friend of Miss. Murgatroyd, rather than Bunch's Godmother in the adaption, so she played a much smaller part.
Thanks for the reminder that Bunch and Julian Harmon are in another novel Cathscat. I didn't find that information out when researching what other book they were in. I guess Agatha Christie must have liked them too as they appeared in a few books and stories!
I am also reminded of 'The Moving Finger'. In that book a brother and sister are actually a brother and sister, but an anonymous letter writer sends them a letter accusing them of actually being an unmarried couple.
I hadn't seen anyone reading back or not realising that language usage changes? People were saying that it feels odd to read as a modern reader, now that pussy has another meaning, which suggests people do realise.
I had pointed out, from checking the OED, that the genitalia meaning has been around for a few centuries, so is not a new word. You can check the OED too to verify this. First recorded usage of this meaning was 1699. A hundred and fifty years after the first usage of pussy as a term of endearment for a woman.
I was suggesting that while the coarse meaning was likely not commonly used or known among polite society at the time of Agatha Christie writing, Agatha Christie herself may have known about it, from all the research she clearly did. So she may have been being a bit mischievous, knowing that most wouldn't know that meaning, but some might. But they wouldn't suspect her, an innocent old lady, of knowing (which is a theme of her novels, and particularly this novel, that people make a lot of assumptions about old ladies). But as I said, that's clearly it's not the meaning intended by the character who uses it.
I'd say that doesn't seem beyond the scope of possibility - simply the fact that Agatha Christie might know this meaning. It's speculation, of course, but so is the idea that she wouldn't know.
I watched the McEwen version of A Murder is Announced last night. It's available on the ITV hub for the next few days. Didn't spot Bunch at all, Murgatroyd being the person Miss Marple stays with, and the colonel's dodgy wife wasn't in it at all. Instead there was a sub-plot about him and Mrs Swettenham. No Philippa and Edmund romance either. I quite enjoyed it, but still think I prefer the Joan Hickson version. However that wasn't available on iplayer. I did enjoy looking at everyone's dream of a perfect English village.
My husband, who doesn't know the book, is still puzzling why Miss Blacklock used such a complicated scheme to murder Rudi.
I find I can easily get confused if I've read a book and watched a movie version about which part is in the book and which part in the movie - and extra confusing if there is more than one movie! But I googled for images of the Hickson version, and there are lots of images of Hinch and Murgatroyd, because people are now finding it interesting to examine their lesbian relationship. And those images are the ones I remember, though the tallness must have been in my imagination from the book, as they seem to be the same height. Here is a very interesting article with lots of images, which talks in detail about their relationship and also addresses the issue that Trudy mentions, of Hinch being dismissive of Murgatroyd- the article suggests this is more a superficial thing, to protect her, but that beneath the surface they have a really strong relationship. But the article is talking about the Hickson film adaptation, not the book.