Six by Agatha: PBS MASTERPIECE MYSTERY!

[dulcinea3]

I liked last night's presentation, although again they changed it quite a bit.  However, at least this time they kept the murderer and motive the same.  I guess I wasn't paying attention well enough and must have looked away for a second, because I thought that Lewis Serrocold was in full view in the window the entire time.  Because of that, I thought that they were going to change the murderer!  But I was wrong.  It was fun seeing Joan Collins, although I thought it was ironic that they had her playing an American character.  But I think that in this version, perhaps they were supposed to be British sisters after all, because Carrie Louise certainly was British.  I kind of liked having Mildred as a younger woman, so that she could be about the same age as Gina (who was her adopted sister Pippa's daughter in the novel), and have a crush on Stephen Restarick.  And Johnny Restarick was a bit more fun as a character than his son Alex would have been (in the novel, Johnny was long dead), although it eliminated still more romantic tension as Stephen and Alex were both in love with Gina.

Ryan, why don't you just read them in order?  That way you can observe Christie's development as a writer and her characters' developments.  Or you could read each series in order (Poirot, Marple, Tommy & Tuppence), and then all the miscellaneous ones afterwards.  At any rate, you must read the Tommy and Tuppence ones in order, because while Poirot and Miss Marple don't really seem to change much, the Beresfords trace their life histories in these novels.

[becke_davis]

That's a good suggestion, Ryan. When I was sorting out my Agatha Christie bookcase, I finally decided it made the most sense to put them in chronological order. It is very interesting to watch Christie's writing change as she matures. And I agree -- Tuppence and Tommy must be read in order.

As to the movie, my husband had trouble keeping track of the characters and how they related to each other. I didn't, but then, I'd read the book. Although, it's true that it took me about 15 minutes to get them organized in my mind.

It was fun to see Joan Collins, as well as other familiar faces. Ian Ogilvy, who played Johnny Restarick, was a favorite of mine as "The Saint" some years back, and I adored  Penelope Wilton in The Norman Conquests.

 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/marple/withmirrors.html

[Ryan_G]

I promise

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becke_davis wrote:
What a fabulous idea! If you come across any great quotes, please share them with us!

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[Ryan_G]

I wasn't going to read them in order but both of you have convinced me to do it that way.  So I think this is the order then.  Does this look right to everyone else?

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Secret Adversary

Murder on the Links

Poirot Investigates (short stories)

Poirot's Early Cases (short stories)

The Man in the Brown Suit

The Secret of Chimneys

The Murder of Roger Akroyd Ackroyd

The Big Four

The Mystery of the Blue Train

Black Coffee (play novelisation by Charles Osborne)

Partners in Crime (short stories)

The Seven Dials Mystery

The Murder at the Vicarage

The Mysterious Mr Quin (short stories)

The Sittaford Mystery

Peril at End House

The Thirteen Problems (short stories)

Lord Edgware Dies

The Hound of Death and other Stories (short stories) not published in the USA

Murder on the Orient Express

The Listerdale Mystery and other stories (short stories) not published in the USA

Why didn't they ask Evans?

Parker Pyne Investigates (short stories)

Three Act Tragedy

Death in the Clouds

The ABC Murders

Murder in Mesopotamia

Cards on the Table

Murder in the Mews (four novellas)

Dumb Witness

Death on the Nile

Appointment with Death

Hercule Poirot's Christmas

Murder is Easy

And Then There Were None

The Regatta Mystery and other stories (short stories) not published in the UK

One, Two Buckle My Shoe

Sad Cypress

Evil Under the Sun

N or M?

The Body in the Library

Five Little Pigs

The Moving Finger

Towards Zero

Death Comes as the End

Sleeping Murder

Sparkling Cyanide

The Hollow

The Labours of Hercules (short stories)

Taken at the Flood

Crooked House

A Murder is Announced

They Came to Baghdad

Mrs McGinty's Dead

They Do It With Mirrors

After the Funeral

A Pocket Full of Rye

Destination Unknown

Spider’s Web (play novelisation by Charles Osborne)

Hickory Dickory Dock

Dead Man's Folly

4.50 from Paddington

Ordeal by Innocence

Cat Among the Pigeons

The Unexpected Guest (play novelisation by Charles Osborne)

The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (short stories) not published in the USA

Double Sin and Other Stories (short stories) not published in the UK

The Pale Horse

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

The Clocks

A Caribbean Mystery

At Bertram’s Hotel

Third Girl

Endless Night

By the Pricking of my Thumbs

Hallowe'en Party

Passenger to Frankfurt

The Golden Ball and Other Stories (short stories) not published in the UK

Nemesis

Elephants Can Remember

Postern of Fate

Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

Miss Marple's Final Cases (short stories) not published in the USA

Problem at Pollensa Bay (short stories) not published in the USA

While the Light Lasts

The Harlequin Tea Set

[becke_davis]

Skip the Charles Osborne books, which are faux Christie's. Here is a list I found online -- don't know how accurate it is:

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A593723

[dulcinea3]

Do you know if you'll be reading the ones only published in the U.S. or vice versa?  I don't know what While the Light Lasts is - is that another name for Sleeping Murder, since I don't think that one was on the list?

The Osbourne books are based on her plays, so you might want to read her plays instead.  I don't know how widely available they are - I have a volume that I think has all of them (I think there are eight), but I got it decades ago.  I imagine that the Osbourne adaptations are situated in that list in about the order the plays would have been written in relation to her novels and short story collections.

I don't have the order of the books memorized!  I think I have them in chronological order on my bookshelf, so if I print out your list I could compare them to that.  Of course, mine are all U.S., so some of the names are different.

But Mysterious Affair at Styles is definitely the first, so you can't go wrong if you start reading that one!

[Ryan_G]

Thanks guys, hopefully I will be able to get it figured out.

[Ryan_G]

I want to read all of them, but I guess I'm going to have settle for the ones published in the U.S. as I don't want to order books that may take a while to get here.

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dulcinea3 wrote:

Do you know if you'll be reading the ones only published in the U.S. or vice versa?  I don't know what While the Light Lasts is - is that another name for Sleeping Murder, since I don't think that one was on the list?

The Osbourne books are based on her plays, so you might want to read her plays instead.  I don't know how widely available they are - I have a volume that I think has all of them (I think there are eight), but I got it decades ago.  I imagine that the Osbourne adaptations are situated in that list in about the order the plays would have been written in relation to her novels and short story collections.

I don't have the order of the books memorized!  I think I have them in chronological order on my bookshelf, so if I print out your list I could compare them to that.  Of course, mine are all U.S., so some of the names are different.

But Mysterious Affair at Styles is definitely the first, so you can't go wrong if you start reading that one!

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[dulcinea3]

I started to compare the order of your list with the books on my shelves, but this will take a while!  I got through about a third, but some of mine are not in the same order.  I found that about five pairs that I had in the opposite order were both from the same year (I got into the habit of writing the original year inside the back cover so I could organize them), so I just reversed mine, but the years I have for one pair seem to indicate that my order is correct, so I have to research that one, as well as a few groups that seem just all over the place.  I'm doing this as much for me as for you, as I like organizing projects!

Pretty much everything has been published in both countries, but there are often differences in titles, so I'll try to help you with that, too, in case it helps identify them.  I don't know if, with globalization and that sort of thing, most of the ones available today have reverted back to the original British titles, or if you will still find them with American titles.  If you look for used ones, you may well find the U.S. titles.  The short story collections sometimes were grouped differently, which is the main reason for the ones that say they were only published in one country, but the stories, for the most part, are still available in both countries.  I was confused by Poirot's Early Cases on your list, because I don't have that, but I see that it was a U.K. collection published in 1974, consisting of stories that had all already appeared in various U.S. collections.  I also see that While the Light Lasts is a U.K. short story collection; looks like pretty much the same stories as The Harlequin Tea Set, except that the U.S. collection leaves out the Poirot Christmas pudding story that was in another U.S. collection, and adds the title story.

[becke_davis]

Thanks for putting so much effort into this, Dulcinea! I bought While the Light Lasts thinking it was a new collection, but it was as you said -- a rehashing of other collections. I'm still glad I bought it, though, because I like to have the different editions.

[Ryan_G]

Thank you for the work you are doing on this.  I already own The Mysterious Affair at Styles so I'm going to be starting it tonight.  Hopefully this project of mine won't be too hard and i will finally get around to reading every book Agatha Christie wrote.  I can't wait.

By the way I just got done watching Sunday's movie and I must say I liked the movie quite a bit.  However I must say I liked the acting in the last movie a tad better as well as the set design and costumes.  I felt the previous movie was filmed better.

[Ryan_G]

so should I read the novels first then go back and read the short story collections?  Or is it better to read the list in order regardless.

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dulcinea3 wrote:

I started to compare the order of your list with the books on my shelves, but this will take a while!  I got through about a third, but some of mine are not in the same order.  I found that about five pairs that I had in the opposite order were both from the same year (I got into the habit of writing the original year inside the back cover so I could organize them), so I just reversed mine, but the years I have for one pair seem to indicate that my order is correct, so I have to research that one, as well as a few groups that seem just all over the place.  I'm doing this as much for me as for you, as I like organizing projects!

Pretty much everything has been published in both countries, but there are often differences in titles, so I'll try to help you with that, too, in case it helps identify them.  I don't know if, with globalization and that sort of thing, most of the ones available today have reverted back to the original British titles, or if you will still find them with American titles.  If you look for used ones, you may well find the U.S. titles.  The short story collections sometimes were grouped differently, which is the main reason for the ones that say they were only published in one country, but the stories, for the most part, are still available in both countries.  I was confused by Poirot's Early Cases on your list, because I don't have that, but I see that it was a U.K. collection published in 1974, consisting of stories that had all already appeared in various U.S. collections.  I also see that While the Light Lasts is a U.K. short story collection; looks like pretty much the same stories as The Harlequin Tea Set, except that the U.S. collection leaves out the Poirot Christmas pudding story that was in another U.S. collection, and adds the title story.

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[dulcinea3]

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Ryan_G wrote:
so should I read the novels first then go back and read the short story collections?  Or is it better to read the list in order regardless.

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Well, I don't really know.  It looks to me like, for the most part, the list you have has the story collections in the order they were released, among the novels (although that one Poirot's Early Cases, or whatever, is definitely listed much earlier than it was published, although many of the stories were probably from back then).  As you get further through the list, I suppose it gets more likely that some of the stories could have been written much earlier.  The ones that were published posthumously could be from all different times, mostly ones that had only been published in magazines and not in earlier collections.  The stories could be a nice break now and then from the novels, too!  The ones featuring Miss Marple, Poirot, and Tommy and Tuppence should probably be read in order, especially Partners in Crime, because that will fall chronologically between the Tommy and Tuppence novels as to their ages and position in life.

I guess, after all, I would recommend that you read them in the order in your list, except for Poirot's Early Cases, which wasn't published until 1974 and you can skip anyway, because all the stories are in other collections.

[dulcinea3]

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Ryan_G wrote:

Thank you for the work you are doing on this.  I already own The Mysterious Affair at Styles so I'm going to be starting it tonight.  Hopefully this project of mine won't be too hard and i will finally get around to reading every book Agatha Christie wrote.  I can't wait.

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If you read really fast, I can confirm that The Secret Adversary (the first Tommy & Tuppence book) is definitely the second!

Of course, if you really want to read every book she wrote, you would also have to read her plays, her earlier memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live, and her autobiography, as well as the romance-type novels she wrote under the name Mary Westmacott!

I see that there are more plays than I thought, so I suppose I haven't read all of those.  I have read the memoir and autobiograpy, and I actually have two or three of the Westmacott books, although I've never gotten around to reading them.

My goodness, I see that she also wrote some books of poetry!  I've definitely never read those!

List of Agatha Christie works

I'm sure you will have a lot of fun - this is a really ambitious project!

[Ryan_G]

Hmmm...I never thought of the plays, nonfiction, and other works but if I'm going to do this project I must do it all.  I will tackle those after the novels/short story collections.

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dulcinea3 wrote:

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Ryan_G wrote:

Thank you for the work you are doing on this.  I already own The Mysterious Affair at Styles so I'm going to be starting it tonight.  Hopefully this project of mine won't be too hard and i will finally get around to reading every book Agatha Christie wrote.  I can't wait.

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If you read really fast, I can confirm that The Secret Adversary (the first Tommy & Tuppence book) is definitely the second!

Of course, if you really want to read every book she wrote, you would also have to read her plays, her earlier memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live, and her autobiography, as well as the romance-type novels she wrote under the name Mary Westmacott!

I see that there are more plays than I thought, so I suppose I haven't read all of those.  I have read the memoir and autobiograpy, and I actually have two or three of the Westmacott books, although I've never gotten around to reading them.

My goodness, I see that she also wrote some books of poetry!  I've definitely never read those!

List of Agatha Christie works

I'm sure you will have a lot of fun - this is a really ambitious project!

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[becke_davis]

Well, just make sure you have fun with this exciting project, and don't let it overwhelm you.

A few of her books were written in the late 1930s and published after her death (at her instructions), so that's going to throw off the chronology a bit, too. 

[Ryan_G]

Oh, I will.  I'm starting on the first book tonight.  I'm really looking forward to the whole project.

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becke_davis wrote:

Well, just make sure you have fun with this exciting project, and don't let it overwhelm you.

A few of her books were written in the late 1930s and published after her death (at her instructions), so that's going to throw off the chronology a bit, too. 

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[becke_davis]

I'm very excited for you! I'm tempted to reread a bunch of Christie's myself, but my TBR pile won't let me.

[dulcinea3]

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becke_davis wrote:

Well, just make sure you have fun with this exciting project, and don't let it overwhelm you.

A few of her books were written in the late 1930s and published after her death (at her instructions), so that's going to throw off the chronology a bit, too. 

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Well, if you mean Curtain and Sleeping Murder, those were written earlier, as you say, but they were meant to be the last Poirot and Marple novels, chronologically within their (fictional) lives.  So I suppose the style of writing might reflect her earlier work, but the subject matter fits in at the end.  Interestingly, as far as I know, Postern of Fate, the last Tommy and Tuppence novel, was not written earlier.  I believe it was the last novel that she actually wrote.

[becke_davis]

Yes, I was wondering how those stories would fit chronologically -- by the date they were written or the date they were published. I wonder if others will be inspired to do this?