Christie, Agatha - The Sittaford Mystery / Murder at Hazelmoor (1931)

Review by Nick Fuller

4/5

One of Christie's least-known books — and surprisingly good. The traditional setting of a snow-bound English village is very well-done, and shows Christie's ability to handle place and weather. The detection is performed by the young amateur detectives Emily Trefusis (engaged to the innocent but good-for-nothing young man arrested for his uncle's murder, who doesn't deserve her in the slightest) and the journalist Charles Enderby, a pair much more successfully handled than the garishly "Bright Young Things" Tommy and Tuppence; the amateur detection is similar to that of Christie's later [Why Didn't They Ask Evans?] (1934), G.D.H. & M. Cole's The Murder at Crome House (1927), and Cyril Hare's Suicide Excepted (1939), although the enquiries into train time-tables recall the unspeakable Freeman Wills Crofts. The characterisation boasts such gems as the domineering spinster Miss Percehouse, the invalid Captain Wyatt (who shoots real or imaginary cats, and is most likely based on Christie's brother Monty), and the powerful Mrs. Gardener, the victim's sister, whose life is revealed to be an illusion: a deft if very un-Christieish piece of pessimism. The supernatural, a rare element in Christie's work and one which she always handles well, comes in the form of the opening séance, leading to some good atmospheric pieces. The plotting is excellent, with a good spread of suspicion and equally good misdirection, although the fact that everyone in the village is (in)directly related to the victim is rather improbable; and even the escaped convict (clearly intended as a reference to Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles) is well-done. What holds this book back from a place in the first rank is the insufficiency of motive.

Plot coherent but thin, decisive clues revealed early and narrative artificially extended from then on. Last clue is totally unfair, its meaning is not clear and the deductions made from it are illogical (anyway, it is superfluous and merely a device to disguise the fact that the story has gone for too long). Some aspects uncanilly close to Rhode, Crofts: "humdrum" detective in the beggining of the book, "humdrum" method of detection throughout (successive and exhaustive interrogations of all witnesses), train timetables, unbreakable alibi. Village setting, underplayed spiritualist and supernatural elements approached in similar way to Rhode's The House on Tollard Ridge (below). All of this with typical early 30's Christie liveliness, high spirits and adept storytelling. Paul Halter's murder method in Le Roi du Désordre is a variation of this in an impossible crime context. Minor but interesting and entertaining Christie.

Henrique Valle