Murder-Go-Round: Thirteen at Dinner / The A.B.C. Murders / Funerals Are Fatal
by Agatha Christie
Hercule Poirot (Collections and Selections — Omnibus 8, 12, 29)
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A collection of three mysteries, Thirteen at Dinner, A.B.C. Murders, and Funerals are Fatal. Hercule Poirot is once again the detective.Tags
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Well, okay, this is my first group review of the new year. It's not really necessary to review anything by Agatha Christie at this late date, is it? So I'm not going to *review* review the three books I've just finished. I'm going to give a general impression of them.
In reading Christie's Poirot novels, one is transported to a time and a place where saying "one" wasn't looked upon as affected or uppish, it was simply using correct grammar. One is also reminded that Dame Ags was a beastly, beastly snob, an anti-Semite, a chauvinist, a racist, and one helluva good storyteller. Even though she really only told one story. Well, two, but the second one only once (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd wouldn't have worked twice from the same author). show more So happens that I like that story enough to read it multiple times.
I found a volume in our wine cellar called Murder-Go-Round, a three-in-one omnibus edition of Thirteen at Dinner, The A.B.C. Murders, and Funerals are Fatal. The first two were written when Dame A. wasn't yet sick unto death of Herc, so we still had Capt. Hastings narrating the books. He'd disappeared by the 1950s, when the fatal funeral was penned. (And may I say, go Aggie! Good call!) So while auntie's away and I've been pretending to be a walrus, lolling and grunting and scratching and napping, I've taken a few moments to pass these marvies before my eyes. Somehow, I've managed never to read a single one of them! Now having rectified my oversight, let me pass the remark: Oy.
This is NOT literature, this is NOT groundbreaking technical tour-de-force writing, this is plain ol' TV for the pre-television era. Same sort of thing as TV gives us now: Familiar faces with different names, doing the same things again and again, while we smile and nod (off) and pay very little real attention while being entertained. But it's Channel 4 TV, not BBC or Canal-Plus. Pseudo-high-brow, or middle-brow with pretensions...kind of the stuff one imagines Hyacinth Bucket reads between candlelight suppers. As such it's really a lot of fun, and David Suchet, the actor condemned forever and always to be the Face and the Moustaches of Poirot, would sound perfectly at home delivering any of the lines in the books.
Oh my oh my, have the plots dated! Someone discovers a painting, a Vermeer if you please, and it will fetch the princely sum of two thousand pounds! Someone commits a murder to resolve a minor social issue, by today's standards. Period pieces, one and all. Are they to be considered historical mysteries then? They're about as much related to today's world...but nay, they were written at the time when these problems were real and vital issues. So how to categorize them?
Fun. That is about the size of it. They're fun. And don't miss out just because you think the fun is fusty and needs a bit of tarting up! Just go along with Dame Agatha, there's a good little soldier, and see what fun you can have following little old ladies, short Belgian fops, and glamourous film staaahs about.
G'wan. show less
In reading Christie's Poirot novels, one is transported to a time and a place where saying "one" wasn't looked upon as affected or uppish, it was simply using correct grammar. One is also reminded that Dame Ags was a beastly, beastly snob, an anti-Semite, a chauvinist, a racist, and one helluva good storyteller. Even though she really only told one story. Well, two, but the second one only once (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd wouldn't have worked twice from the same author). show more So happens that I like that story enough to read it multiple times.
I found a volume in our wine cellar called Murder-Go-Round, a three-in-one omnibus edition of Thirteen at Dinner, The A.B.C. Murders, and Funerals are Fatal. The first two were written when Dame A. wasn't yet sick unto death of Herc, so we still had Capt. Hastings narrating the books. He'd disappeared by the 1950s, when the fatal funeral was penned. (And may I say, go Aggie! Good call!) So while auntie's away and I've been pretending to be a walrus, lolling and grunting and scratching and napping, I've taken a few moments to pass these marvies before my eyes. Somehow, I've managed never to read a single one of them! Now having rectified my oversight, let me pass the remark: Oy.
This is NOT literature, this is NOT groundbreaking technical tour-de-force writing, this is plain ol' TV for the pre-television era. Same sort of thing as TV gives us now: Familiar faces with different names, doing the same things again and again, while we smile and nod (off) and pay very little real attention while being entertained. But it's Channel 4 TV, not BBC or Canal-Plus. Pseudo-high-brow, or middle-brow with pretensions...kind of the stuff one imagines Hyacinth Bucket reads between candlelight suppers. As such it's really a lot of fun, and David Suchet, the actor condemned forever and always to be the Face and the Moustaches of Poirot, would sound perfectly at home delivering any of the lines in the books.
Oh my oh my, have the plots dated! Someone discovers a painting, a Vermeer if you please, and it will fetch the princely sum of two thousand pounds! Someone commits a murder to resolve a minor social issue, by today's standards. Period pieces, one and all. Are they to be considered historical mysteries then? They're about as much related to today's world...but nay, they were written at the time when these problems were real and vital issues. So how to categorize them?
Fun. That is about the size of it. They're fun. And don't miss out just because you think the fun is fusty and needs a bit of tarting up! Just go along with Dame Agatha, there's a good little soldier, and see what fun you can have following little old ladies, short Belgian fops, and glamourous film staaahs about.
G'wan. show less
collection of three full-length novels in one volume.
13 At Dinner
The A.B.C. Murders
Funerals Are Fatal
The A.B.C. Murders
Funerals Are Fatal
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2,147+ Works 439,808 Members
One of the most successful and beloved writer of mystery stories, Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie was born in 1890 in Torquay, County Devon, England. She wrote her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920, launching a literary career that spanned decades. In her lifetime, she authored 79 crime novels and a short story collection, 19 show more plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language with another billion in 44 foreign languages. Some of her most famous titles include Murder on the Orient Express, Mystery of the Blue Train, And Then There Were None, 13 at Dinner and The Sittaford Mystery. Noted for clever and surprising twists of plot, many of Christie's mysteries feature two unconventional fictional detectives named Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. Poirot, in particular, plays the hero of many of her works, including the classic, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), and Curtain (1975), one of her last works in which the famed detective dies. Over the years, her travels took her to the Middle East where she met noted English archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan. They married in 1930. Christie accompanied Mallowan on annual expeditions to Iraq and Syria, which served as material for Murder in Mesopotamia (1930), Death on the Nile (1937), and Appointment with Death (1938). Christie's credits also include the plays, The Mousetrap and Witness for the Prosecution (1953; film 1957). Christie received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for 1954-1955 for Witness. She was also named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1971. Christie died in 1976. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Murder-Go-Round: Thirteen at Dinner / The A.B.C. Murders / Funerals Are Fatal
- Original publication date
- 1933 (Thirteen at Dinner) (Thirteen at Dinner); 1936 (The A.B.C. Murders) (The A.B.C. Murders); 1953 (Funerals are Fatal) (Funerals are Fatal); 1972
- People/Characters
- Hercule Poirot; Arthur Hastings
- First words
- Thirteen at Dinner
The memory of the public is short.
The A.B.C. Murders
It was in June of 1935 that I came home from my ranch in South America for a stay of about six months.
Funerals Are Fatal
Old Lanscombe moved totteringly from room to room, pulling up the blinds. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Thirteen at Dinner
P.S. Do you think they will put me in Madame Tussaud's?
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The A.B.C. Murders
So, Hastings - we went hunting once more, did we not? Vive le sport.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Funerals Are Fatal
They were silent - and Poirot thought of murderers he had known...
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