Tag Archives: i try to solve a mystery

I Try to Solve an Agatha Christie Mystery | Towards Zero (Superintendent Battle)

Posted on by
Reply
The detective with her book-inspired makeup look
Much needed detective fuel:
British-themed tea in an Agatha Christie mug!

Okay, I admit it, I’m completely lost. I decided to try solving this mystery because the BBC adaptation was coming to Canada via Britbox this month, and I wanted to try my hand at it before watching the show. I also haven’t written a blog post in a while, and figured that going head-to-head with the Queen of Crime was the perfect way to kick off my blogging year.

Now here I am, 87% in and right before the chapter with the big reveal, and I’m absolutely at a loss. So I’m afraid my 2025 series of Agatha Christie challenges will very much likely kick off with a loss, but on the bright side, I’ve really been enjoying this book, and highly recommend it to any fan of Christie or mysteries in general.

First, it has the elements I love most in Christie’s mysteries: it features a fairly small cast of characters, all of whom have complex relationships with each other, and enough drama amongst them to fuel whatever the motive for murder will turn out to be. At its heart is tennis player Neville Strange, his ex-wife Audrey, and his current, younger wife Kay. From the start, it seems clear that Neville isn’t fully happy with the divorce; he speaks highly of Audrey’s character, expresses guilt over causing her heartbreak, and seems impatient whenever Kay complains about something. The love triangle comes to a head when Neville decides that he and Kay will visit his elderly relative Lady Tressilian (Anjelica Huston in the adaptation!), at the same time as Audrey visits her every year. Instant drama!

Added to the mix are two other men who turn the love triangle into a much more complex polygon: Thomas Royde, a childhood friend of Audrey’s who has been secretly in love with her for years, and Ted Latimer, a dashing young man who is friendly and rather flirty with Kay. Then there’s Mary Aldin, companion and distant cousin to Lady Tressilian, and of course, Lady Tressilian herself, a formidable woman (Anjelica Huston!) who stays in her bed full-time and uses a rope bell to call her maid.

One evening, a visitor, Mr Treves, tells the story about a child he knows who got away with murder (literal, cold-blooded murder) many years ago. That child would now be an adult, and Mr. Treves said they had such a distinctive physical feature that he would surely recognize them even now. Mr. Treves later returns to his hotel, finds a sign saying the lift is broken, and so climbs the stairs to his top floor room. He dies of a heart attack from the climb.

Fast forward a few days (?), and Lady Tressilian is also found dead in her bed, struck in the head with an unknown blunt object. All the evidence points to one of the characters, but of course, the case is never that simple.

I had a vague suspicion of one of the characters from the beginning, honestly for no good reason other than they made the most sense to me for the big reveal. But then they later did something that made me realize they’re actually likely innocent. And then came a flurry of new clues and mini-reveals that seem to make everything clearer to Superintendent Battle, but honestly only made me even more confused than ever. I don’t think that re-reading past chapters, or even my notes and highlights will make anything any clearer for me, mostly because I already did that and I’m still confused, LOL! So, without further ado, I’m going to lock in my answer, and see how I do!

Was I right?

Ahahahaha! No, absolutely not, not even close. I named my choice of murderer below, and a bunch of other suspects I’d discarded as suspects for various reasons. Then I make a joke about how, at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was this one character I never suspected, and of course, that’s who it turned out to be. And of course, their motive makes total sense; I just didn’t see it at all.

So, well played, Dame Agatha Christie. The Queen of Crime has fooled me again. My ego would like to give myself partial credit for at least guessing the motive; I’d just assigned it to the wrong person. But, ultimately, no, I did not figure out whodunnit. So 2025 begins with Agatha Christie 1, Literary Treats 0, and a fun little mystery to kick off spring.

*** SPOILERS BELOW ***

My Verdict

Continue reading →

I Try to Solve a Dorothy L Sayers Mystery | The Nine Tailors

Posted on by
1
Hoping Sherlock Holmes tea will help me solve this case!

Ahh… I tried solving this for my blog, but gave up halfway through.

The Nine Tailors is beautifully written. The “tailors” in the title refers not to suit-makers, but rather to the nine bells in a small village church. The story begins with Lord Peter and his trusty valet Bunter getting stranded at a small village on New Year’s Eve, and taken in by the local priest. The church has planned an overnight performance of its bells to ring in the New Year, one of the bellringers has called in sick, and Lord Peter gets a chance to join in the bellringing himself. As the hours pass, he also gets to know more about the people in the village, and all the little bits of local gossip.

Fast forward a few months, and Lord Peter receives a call from the parish: a body has just been discovered in another person’s grave. Could he come over and help them figure out who it is, and how it got there? Lord Peter of course agrees immediately, and I was equally intrigued.

I also have a soft spot for my copy: I found it in a thrift shop, and there’s a lovely handwritten line pencilled in cursive, “from my mother, 2010”, plus an embossed snowflake name, “Natalie Neill.” So I like thinking about Natalie Neill, and her mother, and how they may have shared a love for old British mysteries and maybe even Dorothy Sayers in particular.

But as a mystery for me to solve, it was a bit too dense for me to really sink my teeth into. Who was the dead body in the churchyard? How did they die? Why were they tied up, and why were their hands taken? Parallel to this, and somewhat linked, is the mystery around a jewelry theft at a wealthy woman’s home years ago. How were the jewels actually stolen? Were the right persons charged with the crime? Where did the jewels go? Added to the mix is a whole cast of characters who may or may not be involved, a stranger who visited during New Years and also may or may not be involved, and a potentially coded message whose key may lie amongst the parish bells.

Lord Peter Wimsey does his best to solve the case, in his methodical way, but it seems each new answer only gives rise to more questions. There are also too many characters for me to keep straight, and as much as I tried to stay interested in the whole history behind the jewel theft, I just ended up making my head hurt. Probably around the halfway point, I decided to stop trying to figure things out, and just enjoy the ride.

My enjoyment of the story did increase after that, because then I could just enjoy how wonderfully Sayers crafts the atmosphere for her story. I loved imagining myself in this small village, and hearing the beautiful church bells for myself. Sayers describes the bells’ songs beautifully; I honestly had no idea how much music and harmony were involved in bellringing.

It turns out that letting go of the need to solve the mystery did in fact actually lead me to solving a key component of the case. I managed to guess the cause of death, and I honestly think I was only able to do so because I’d stopped worrying so much about tracking all the little details involved.

The rest of the big reveals were a surprise to me. I thought the story of how the victim ended up dead made sense, and I thought Sayers did such a great job at humanizing the people involved, so that the reveal evoked more of an emotional response beyond just an “aha!” moment. I actually felt for those involved in the death, and for how things turned out in the end.

Overall, a beautifully told story, and like I said, the mother-daughter connection gave me a soft spot for my copy. As a mystery, it wasn’t among my successes, nor, quite frankly, was it all that much fun to try. Possibly others will have more luck / enjoy the attempt more, but for me, I recommend simply sitting back with this, and letting yourself enjoy seeing the story unfold.

I Try to Solve an Agatha Christie Mystery | Murder is Easy (Superindentent Battle)

Posted on by
1

There’s a BBC adaptation of Murder Is Easy coming to BritBox in March that looks pretty good, so I wanted to try my hand at solving the case myself before checking it out. The ebook was fortuitously available at the library, and its cover just as fortuitously matched with my recently-purchased ube keso Selecta ice cream. 

The set-up is fantastic: retired detective Luke Fitzwilliam meets fluffy elderly lady Miss Pinkerton on a train to London. Miss Pinkerton is from a sleepy little village, and she’s headed to Scotland Yard because she’s convinced one of her neighbours is a murderer. And not just any murderer, but one who has already killed several people, and seems to be on course to kill their next victim. 

Luke gives Miss Pinkerton a kindly smile, wishes her luck, and thinks nothing more of it, until he reads in the paper that shortly after their encounter, she is killed in a hit and run. He also learns of a death in her village: Dr Humbleby, the very person she’d identified as the murderer’s next victim. His curiosity piqued, Luke heads to the village himself, posing as the visiting cousin of a young woman his friend knows, and sets out to find the identity of the killer.

It’s a fantastic setup, and the puzzle aspect of the story is pretty well-constructed. Luke is a methodical investigator, and we meet each suspect and learn about each victim in turn. Yet for some reason, the story isn’t quite gripping me like Christie’s books usually do. I’ve enjoyed some Christie stand-alones, so it can’t just be the absence of my beloved Marple or Poirot. Possibly, it’s just my mood, and if I were to re-read this again another time, I may enjoy it more. As it is, I do really want to watch the BBC adaptation (Miss Pinkerton is played by the Dowager Countess’s best frenemy in Downtown Abbey!), so I’ve kept going on to figure out whodunnit.

There’s also a romantic subplot, which should come as no surprise to any long-time Christie fan the minute we meet Luke’s host Bridget. She is young, more arresting than beautiful, clever enough to see through Luke’s cover story almost immediately, and engaged to her wealthy and much older employer for purely pragmatic reasons. In a mystery by another writer, she would’ve been my immediate prime suspect, but I’d already made the mistake of forgetting Christie’s romantic streak in The Moving Finger, so I’m going to guess she’s innocent.

Since Bridget is not on my suspect list, there’s honestly only one person I think it can be. A case could be made for a secondary suspect, and more than likely, the murderer turns out to be one of the many other suspects I don’t think did it. But I feel pretty strongly about my first choice, so I’m going to lock it in at the 81% mark, and see how I do.

As an aside, I’m almost done with the book, and Superintendent Battle still has not appeared? Perhaps he’ll show up in the final chapter for the big reveal? And perhaps we’ll learn that Miss Pinkerton did manage to share her suspicions with him after all before she died. Perhaps the case would have been solved even without Luke’s involvement, but with a couple or so extra victims, because Battle had to deal with more pressing matters before getting to this one.

Did I Solve It?

Yes I did. I figured out whodunnit, and I kinda figured out the motive, even though I saw it all sideways. (I figured out the driving force behind the killings, but I got the emotions behind it all wrong.)

This isn’t quite as exciting for me as other Christies I’ve read. It was fine, and I’m not used to Christie’s books being just “fine.”

I do appreciate Christie’s commentary here about the importance of paying attention to women’s instincts. Other than Miss Pinkerton, there were two other women characters who had an inkling whodunnit, but because they lacked proof beyond a vague feeling, they kept quiet and doubted themselves. For at least one of the women, Luke’s certainty about a particular aspect of the killings made her decide her suspicions were totally off the mark. But as it turns out, as methodical as Luke’s investigative methods are, and as logical as his reasoning may be, he ultimately is a bit of a bumbler.

So, to learn from Dame Agatha: trust your gut, ladies. You do know things you don’t even realize you know.

***SPOILERS BELOW***

Continue reading →