1973, POSTERN OF FATE (Last novel Christie ever wrote).

I have now read 57 novels and I think I have about 10 to go, and also some short story collections. This completes my reading for Agatha Christie Reading Challenge for 2013. Perhaps not Christie's best.Ĭheck the review on Christie in a Year and the one at BooksPlease. For example she knows that Canon Pennyfather had mistaken the day he should be flying to Lucerne, and when he returns to Bertram's Hotel, she instantly knows he is not the person she saw descending the stairs at 3 am. On the other hand she does recognise evil when she sees it and she demonstrates an understanding of the foibles of the elderly. I don't think Miss Marple comes out of thebook particularly well - Christie portrays her as an old busybody who eavesdrops on people's conversations when she can. Nor is there the romantic element that TV gave us for public consumption. The police inspector who carries out the investigation into Bertram's shady dealings and the disappearance of Canon Pennyfather is an avuncular old chap who has seen it all, but he is not the same as the bouncing lad of the television production. The story also illustrates Agatha Christie's conviction of the prevalence of organised crime rings that underpinned facades of normality.

In fact the Bertram's Hotel she remembers is much older than that, a memory from her childhood. Miss Marple realises that it is a mistake to try to step back to pre-war days. The main import of the novel is that nothing at Bertram's Hotel in 1955 is as its seems: all is a facade, from the appearance of the hotel, to the people who visit it, to the people who run it. I hadn't realised how much the story had been modified for television, with characters left out, and others inserted. I have seen the TV versions of the novel several times and in fact did wonder whether it was worth my while reading the book, it being next in my list for the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge. Included substantial changes from the novel. This time featuring Geraldine McEwan as the elderly sleuth, and BBC RadioĤ dramatised the story in 2004 and it was adapted again for TV in 2007,

The story was adapted for TV starring Joan Hickson in 1987. Have been inspired by Brown’s Hotel in London, a favourite haunt ofĪgatha Christie, but could also have been based on the Mayfair Hotel, Guest sets off a violent chain of events.īertram’s, the fictional hotel featured in the story, is thought to Mead, this time she’s holidaying in London, when a certain eccentric One of Miss Marple’s few outings from St Mary

Bertram's hotel