Christie, Agatha - By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968)
Disappointing. Starts well with Tuppence meeting a mad old woman at a nursing home ("Is it your poor child?"). Said old woman vanishes; and various other old women have also been poisoned - a fact we only learn more than halfway through. In fact, the book is very boring. Nothing happens for long stretches - no detection (Tuppence finds an old house by a mixture of intuition and coincidence, pokes about, listens to fairly irrelevant gossip, and gets nutted on the bonce), no crime (so pointless), and no story. The solution is very muddled and poorly explained, involving as it does criminal gangs, abortion, child murder, witchcraft and lunacy. Tuppence doesn't solve the mysery, but finds the murderer and the truth entirely by accident. 2/5.
Nick Fuller
Comments (1)
Jon said
at 9:05 am on Jan 27, 2010
Blurb: Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, once the Young Adventurers, later functioning as Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives, finally active in the Second War tracking down that notorious spy N or M, are now living in peaceful retirement—they lead a happy life…
What more can they want?
Well—?
They go to visit an elderly relative, Tommy’s Aunt Ada who is established in Sunny Ridge, well-run Home for Elderly Ladies—on the surface it appears to be a model of its kind. But is it?
Aunt Ada dies peacefully in her bed, but another old lady leaves very suddenly in the care of somewhat mysterious relatives.
Tuppence has her misgivings—Tommy starts by pooh-poohing them. But Tuppence makes up her mind that she will discover what has really happened to old Mrs. Lancaster.
The hunt involves an oil painting of a house by a canal, a peaceful village where nothing ever happens (?), a character whom Tuppence christens ‘the friendly witch’, a hunt through old tombstones in a churchyard, and, when Tommy returns from a hush-hush conference, he finds that Tuppence has failed to return from her quest.
Brilliantly sustained mystery is always to be found in a novel by Agatha Christie, but her latest story contains an extra element, and might equally well have been entitled By the Chilling of Your Spine.
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