I love a Christmas Christie!
This is not a Poirot or a Marple, but it’s a fun detective novel anyways. Published in 1939, this is actually the first edition dust jacket design.
The novel starts with a chance encounter on a train, a warning of a village filled with “accidental” deaths that could be murders, and the sudden death of the informant. A supremely Agatha Christie beginning.
Luke Fitzwilliam, the retired detective and hero, goes to the picturesque but also slightly ghoulish village of Wychwood under Ashe to try to get to the bottom of all these deaths. Are they all really accidents? What of the village’s suspect characters themselves? Is there really a serial killer on the loose in this sleepy community?
A little bit of Christie-esque supernatural horror and “madness”, a love affair with a witty local girl, and a neatly executed yet “close call” final denouncement, there’s a lot of Christie mastery here. You get the sense she’s in her groove with this one.
The 2023 BBC adaptation of the story written by Siân Ejiwunmi-Le Berre is a delight!
One word: sparkling.
Leave a Comment