APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH is a perfect example of Agatha Christie's work; exotic locale, cast of interesting and varied characters, and, of course, MURDER. There are other Christie books that are more exciting or more clever than this, but she is in top form here. Characterizations have a bit more psychological depth here than in her other books; the monstrous mother and the near-psychotic daughter, in particular, stand out as memorable creations.

Read the book and the play; Christie adapted the novel for the stage herself, and made two changes: she removed Poirot, and changed the identity of the murderer. Typical of Christie, both versions of the story work equally well.

This was my first Agatha Christie book, and I got it only after I realised that Hercule Poirot was the hero! Poirot has been the subject of a series of well acted TV programmes, each of which portrays one book. The actor who plays Poirot is superb and inspired me to read the books, hence my choice to buy "Appointment With Death". My previous preference for Mystery books has been P.D.James, who is also excellent (Her book "A Taste For Death" kept me hooked from start to finish!)

The book added to the TV version/image of Poirot but Agatha Christie's writing really makes you feel as though you were there. As I was reading about their trip to Jerusalem, I found myself feeling the heat and the pent up frustrations of the characters. I also came to intensely dislike the murder victim and I am sorry to report that I thought the mother should have been murdered years before!!

The end had a good twist, and the epilogue is also great. I recommend this as a good buy, especially for a new Agatha fan.

Appointment With Death, is probably my personal favourite from all the Poirot mysteries. The atmosphere to the story is claustrophobic and stifling, and the setting of Jerusalem and the red city of Petra is just perfect for a murder mystery. (As are all her books set in the middle east)

I first read this book four years ago, and even when i came to re-read it, the vile character of Mrs Boynton was still very much fresh and real in my mind. She is, in my opinion, one of the most memorable characters ever written. (By Agatha Christie or anyone else.)

As with all the best Poirot stories ("Cat Among the Pigeons", for example) the detective does not really appear until later on in the book. This way we get more aquainted the characters, and when Poirot takes centre stage, it is more dramatic. Rather like him beeing the dark stranger who sweeps in, solves the puzzle, catches the killer, and them leaves once more. Much more mysterious and enigmatic.

Sarah King is great, wonderful company to lead us into the first 100 pages, until the death.

Th puzzle is simple, yet one of Agatha Christie's best. It is tightly constructed, with, as ever, brilliantly accurate psychology. The solution is very unexpected. It may not have an astounding solution like And Then there were None, or Murder On the Orient Express, but it does have one that is very realistic, and that you COULD guess, but never will.

One of my very favourite Poirot novels, for the strength of its plot, the brilliance of it's psychology, and its solution.

I started reading this book after I've finished reading "Crooked House." The fact is that I did not get as satisfaction as "Crooked House" from the latter book, but it was somewhat OK, I would have to say. I would recommend reading all the "essential" books from Miss Christie's official web site. All the selections from the list are awesome and intriguing in many ways. I have no choice but to give this book a three star. I am Christie fan and I have the right to be critical. : - P

Murder at Hazelmoor (British title: The Sittaford Mystery) opens on a wintry afternoon at the large mansion known as Sittaford House. The entertainment for the day is a seance which suggests that Captain Trevelyan, owner of the house, may be dead. The Captain has leased his home to a Mrs. Willett and her daughter Violet. These South African women had been so insistent on spending a typical British winter in the home that they convinced Trevelyan to move into a smaller home in nearby Exhampton. Major Burnaby, a friend of Trevelyan's, is present at the seance. Although he does not believe in spiritualism, he decides to check up on his friend and finds that Trevelyan has been murdered.

From this intriguing beginning the story moves to Trevelyan's sister, two nephews, and niece, all of whom had motive and opportunity to commit the crime. Also, a convict has escaped from a nearby prison and is added to the list of suspects along with the mysterious Willetts.

Christie weaves the murder beautifully into the novel's second plot which is the unexplained presence of the Willetts in Sittaford. This book, notable for its outstanding description of the stark and isolated setting, also introduces a gimmick that Christie will use again in her novella "Three Blind Mice."

"The Secret of Chimneys" has a plot worthy of a comic opera. Disguises, dewy romance, and comic relief. This is very early Christie (1925), and I think she let her girlish enthusiasm run away with her. I noted Ms. Christie, who developed a weight problem as a young woman, worships at the altar of skinniness. There are constant references to her heroines as being "gloriously slim." I couldn't help but smile.

A mysterious manuscript and a bundle of letters are the focus of frantic attention by the British Foreign Ministry and the tiny Balkan country of Herzoslovokia. The stately English home, Chimneys, is the focus of where the agents, the intrigue, and the paperwork are supposed to arrive. A weekend party is hastily arranged, and we meet the characters: the loopy Lord, madcap daughter called "Bundles" (shudder), a beautiful woman, mysterious handsome stranger, young English oaf, Balkan prince and his entourage including an Igor-like manservant of frightening loyalty, stuffy politicos of English and Balkan stripe, a perfect butler, an odious American, an equally odious financier, and the stalwart Scotland Yard types. The prince is done away with in a mysterious manner. How anything could be "mysterious" at Chimneys amazes me because there was such a large cast, I would think no one had enough privacy to paint their fingernails, let alone murder someone. Much hiding behind doors, in bushes, and behind curtains ensues. The murderer is unveiled and a magnificently improbable finale marks the fall of the curtain.

This is definitely one of Dame Agatha's lesser efforts. Her anti-semitism is particularly grating when she tries to put a humorous aspect upon it. The mystery is intricate, but by the time it is explained, I really didn't care that much. I would recommend giving "Chimneys" a pass.

This book is full of plot twists involving a foreign kingdom, lost jewelry, and a famous French jewel thief. I admit that I could not follow all of the various plot twists, but I could not put this book down. The book also has caricatures of the English Lord, The Government Minister, the Rich Widow, the Rich American, and the Faithful Servant. Underlying the plot is a sense of humor about society. The author mocks all of the characters. You will never be able to guess how this one ends.

Chimneys is the palatial home of the Marquis of Caterham and his charming daughter Eileen, better known as Bundle. His good friend, George Lomax, a high-ranking official in the Foreign Office, arranges a hunting party to be held at Chimneys. The party is actually a cover for diplomatic intrigue. Before the party is too far along, Christie serves up murder, blackmail, romance, mysterious strangers, and a case of mistaken identity. There is also a bit of political information about a fictitious country called Herzoslovakia. This book is often confusing, definitely improbable, but always fun.

I think that anyone who starts with this as their first Agatha Christie will not get a true picture of her work nor will they really see the depth of her genius. However, it is very enjoyable for confirmed Christie lovers.

This book is notable for the introduction of Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard, a man who will appear in several other Christie books including one of her very best, "Towards Zero."

If the five stories chosen for the audiobook are the best of the thirteen stories in the unabridged book, then I fear the reader is in for a dull time of it. At least readers like myself, who want a little more meat than short stories deliever. The stories are pretty typical of what you expect from Christie - rather civilized criminals who are found out by one minor slip.

I only read this because I'm trying to read the Miss Marple series in order. My advice to others, persue this book if you like mystery short stories, otherwise don't worry about checking it off your list.

The short stories herein are the first 5 of the Marple collection _The Thirteen Problems_. See my reviews if you're interested in the whole collection, which was divided into 3 separate unabridged recordings narrated by Joan Hickson. Where stories have appeared elsewhere under different names, the title used in this recording (which is the original title) is listed first.

"The Tuesday Night Club" (December, 1927) Raymond West, the writer, is visiting his aunt Jane Marple at her home in St. Mary Mead, and is playing host to a few friends when he opens the subject of unsolved mysteries. The company, representing several professions and outlooks on life, offers different opinions on who is best equipped to solve such problems, and they decide to put the issue to a practical test. Every Tuesday, one member will tell the story of a problem to which he or she knows the answer, and the others will try to solve it.

Unsurprisingly, Sir Henry Clithering, lately retired from Scotland Yard, is asked to tell his story first, and he selects a case that wasn't solved when it first arose; the solution has just come into his hands, and an arrest will soon be made. Middle-aged Mr. and Mrs. Jones, together with her companion Miss Clark, all shared a meal featuring tinned lobster just after Mr. Jones' return from a business trip; they were ill afterwards, and Mrs. Jones (who had the money) died of it. Local gossip prompted an official autopsy that found Mrs. Jones had died of arsenical poison, but no one seemed to have had an opportunity to poison her without poisoning everyone at the meal.

"The Idol House of Astarte", a.k.a. "The 'Supernatural' Murder" (1928) Dr. Pender, an elderly clergyman, tells a story of a tragic death at a house party in his youth. Richard Hayden liked the fancy that Silent Grove near his home was once a sacred grove, and had a kind of folly built to encourage the fancy. Diana Maberly, one of the beauties of the season who was flirting with Richard, his cousin Elliot, and a few others as well, took the fancy to heart, and asked for a costume party. But things went tragically awry.

"Ingots of Gold", a.k.a. "Miss Marple and the Golden Galleon" (1928) Raymond West doesn't know the answer to his problem, but Sir Henry does, and Miss Marple deduces it. He made the acquaintance of an authority on Elizabethan times, who was preparing a treasure-hunting expedition to salvage gold from the wreck of an Armada galleon off Cornwall. But the police were interested in quite another problem: how someone managed to make a lot of gold bullion vanish from the strongroom of the _Otranto_ - if it was ever aboard at all.

"The Bloodstained Pavement" (1928) Joyce Lampiere, like many another painter, stayed in a Cornish village to paint self-consciously picturesque scenery: in this case, the Polharwith Arms (give or take waiting for a boring couple and their flamboyantly dressed companion to get out of the way). A fisherman watching her sketch tells her the story of the near-destruction of the village by the Spanish, and she's annoyed that some of it got into her sketch - bloodstains on the pavement outside the hotel. But she looks up to find that she only painted what she'd really seen, although the fisherman didn't see it...

"Motive versus Opportunity" (1928) Locked-room. Mr. Petherick, Miss Marple's lawyer. After the death of his little granddaughter, Simon Clode made his grown nephew and nieces his heirs. Unfortunately, he got interested in spiritualism, and proposed to make a will leaving his estate to his favorite medium, Mrs. Spragg, against Mr. Petherick's advice (who marked her down as an old fraud). But when the time came to probate the will, Mr. Petherick's safe contained only blank sheets of paper, and nobody seemed to have both motive and opportunity to pull the switch.

"The Thumb Mark of St. Peter", a.k.a. "Ask and You Shall Receive" (1928) Miss Marple herself presents a problem that none of the others can work out. Her niece Mabel made an unfortuate marriage to a man with insanity in his family. After one particularly ugly quarrel, her husband became ill in the night and died suddenly. Not overly grief-stricken, Mabel didn't send for her aunt until she realized that she was suspected of poisoning her husband...

Want to know more about Agatha Christie's famous "disappearance" many years ago? "Unfinished Portrait" is very autobiographical and explains her breakdown.

The other two novels are almost as interesting. The other trilogy of Mary Westmacott novels is excellent. "Giant's Bread" is superb.

This is a collection of three novels by Agatha Christie under her pen name Mary Westmacott. The novels are well-written and easily accessible. They stories involve families with problems; daughter and mother conflict; child who needs to grow up; and daughter who is not loved by parents. All three books trace the main character through a long period of time. The books are somewhat sad. Things do not go well for these people. In the end the main character learns and grows and finds a solution to the problem. The daughter and mother resolve their conflict. The child who does not grow up learns to grow up the hard way and the daughter who is not loved learns to accept the love of her husband.

These books get to the heart of the conflicts between people and that is valuable. They are high quality and do not resemble the murder mystery format that the author was famous for. These books are not high-brow and they are not targeted towards snooty intellectuals. I recommend them to anyone who wants to see how a good author creates characters and resolves conflicts between characters.

This book is a must read for any serious Hercule Poirot fan. Aside from "Lord Edgware Dies," I would rate this book as one of Agatha Christie's better works. A MUST READ!!

Do you want to read a good book with twists and turns to the resolution? Do you want to pick up a book and not put it down until you are finished? Death in the Air by Agatha Cristie is the perfect match for you. It is a classic mystery published in 1977.
I thought Death in the Air was an average book. At the beginning of the book she introduces too many characters at one time. I also did not like that every so often throughout the book she used French words. For example, "...I do not wash out- what a term, mon Dieu!" (Pg. 55) I enjoyed that every character had a different personality and the murderer ended up to be someone you would have never suspected. After reading this book, I would conclude that it was very well written, and I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys mysteries.

Poirot is flying for the frist time. Trying to sleep like
the lady in row one. Only unlike Poirot she dose not wake up.
So stats Death in the Air.

A biography of Agatha Christie's female lead, Jane Marple. Fairly well written, as far as it goes, which is, naturally, no further than Christie went. Hart does not invent anything, barely speculates on the information we don't have given in the canon of half a dozen novels and a dozen or more short stories. Rather than a biography, even one of a fictional character, this is more of a systematisation (is that the word i want?) of the given information. As such, it is interesting to learn how unsystematic Christie was; Miss Marple changed over the years, and i had never previously realised just how much, how inconsistent some of the stories are. If i want information about Miss Marple ~ or St. Mary Mead ~ this is the book to turn to (other than reading blindly in the canon); if i'm looking for interesting speculations or character development on Christie's invention, this is not it.

I'm a huge Agatha Christie fan and a psychology major, so I was given this book as a gift by someone who though I would enjoy it. Wrong! By the time I was done reading it the cover was torn and the binding broken from being hurled against the wall in frustration. First of all, I get it. Second of all, it's this kind of [stuff] that give psychology a bad name. This guy has nothing better to do that rethink one of the greatest mystery novels of all time?..

Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? was for me a disapointment. Offering an alternative solution to Agatha Christie's classic The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd, the book suggests that an entirely different person is responsible for the murder. I prefer the author's original murderer. After all, she wrote the book. No one else. I can only think that Agatha Christie would have been shocked to find someone else write a book about her book saying that the killer was not the person Agatha wrote as the killer. But maybe I'm wrong. I can see the book as an excellent source for a psychoanalyst and those interested in this field of research. Oddly, I was not surprised by the ending. From the very moment in the prologue, when the suggestion was made that the killer Agatha Christie wrote as the killer was not the killer, I knew where it was headed. And I was right. Normally I am not. But I could see where this was going. As a Agatha Christie fan I didn't really care for it. But as someone interested in psycology, it was very well written. One thing to note is that it gives away the solutions of several of Agatha Christie's works. So, be aware of that before reading.

First, a warning, Bayard's book contains long discussions of the methods used by Christie to hide the answer in many of her books. As such, it is best suited for Christie readers who have already read those works, or who do not mind having surprises revealed.

Otherwise, Bayard provides a good analysis of how Christie fools her readers, pulling back the curtain to reveal the magician's secrets. His taxonimy of the tricks is useful, although incomplete. This makes it a good guide for an aspiring mystery writer looking to see how Christie worked her magic.

Bayard's psychoanalysis of the crime is a bit more speculative. One can nit-pick his facts and conclusions, but the exercise is itself useful. Appling critical analysis to Christie's solution seems no less absurd than Tey's re-analysis of Richard III in Daughter of Time, the endless books on Jack the Ripper's identity, or decades of English literature classes convinced that the author is the last person to understand the significance of his own works.

In sum, worth reading for those who enjoy learning about the tricks of the mystery writing trade.

Compared to the rest of her books, Christie did not even try to make this one a stumper. After reading many of her books, a person is easily able to guess the whodunnit in this novel. The character's have distinct personalities and Miss Marple's detective word once again proves useful, but in the end, there is no suspense

This is one of Christie's delightful books which later came on TV as the popular 'Why didn't they ask Evans?' It features the amateur detectives Bobby and Frankie, the latter known to the world as the most unlikely Lady Francis Derwent. She's the daughter of an earl, and this rather fortunate circumstance gets the lady an entry into houses where the more plebian Bobby can enter only as a chaffeur.

'Why didn't they ask Evans?' A handsome stranger with a photo of a hauntingly beautiful girl in his pocket, falls off a cliffside and dies with these rather mysterious words even as Bobby stands guard over him while his friend goes for help. The woman who turns up as the original of that photo, a heavily made-up, rather coarse woman, makes Bobby wonder at the cruelty of age that can destroy such beauty, till he realises that this is a different woman and that the photo has been changed. Things begin happening soon after that. An attempt on Bobby's life makes the gutsy, thirsting for-excitement Frankie suspicious and together they decide to get to the bottom of this mystery. By staging a mock-accident themselves, Frankie tries to get "a line on" the main culprit only to find herself succumbing to the charm of this young man who soon becomes more of a friend than enemy. When Bobby suddenly comes upon the original of the photograph in the grounds of an asylum, things start getting real warm. Written with the usual Christie elan, The Boomerang Clue has twists and turns on almost every page and keeps you hooked till the perplexing riddle is solved, which is probably not saying very much, since most Christies are unutdownable anyway. A very satisfying read, with more than one murder, and an ambience that threatens many more. Despite the crime and the suspense, the plucky humour of Frankie, though often at Bobby's expense, keeps the novel from getting too dark.