12 short stories, 12 days of reading fun with MR and Lillelara. I don’t have high hopes for many of the stories but we will see:

#1 – Evil in Small Places by Lucy Foley:

I still have PTSD from The Hunting Party and will not voluntarily seek out another of her novels, but Foley is part of this collection so I read the story. Not the worst of Foley’s writing, but not good either. I mean, right at the beginning of the story we get old Marple making a general assertion about evil being more prevalent in villages. In my experience of Marple, this is not something she would say. She may have said something a bit more nuanced about “usually…” and add something about human behaviour, but I don’t think she would have made a an assertion that is so general and almost reads like a fake statistic.

So, this set off alarm bells with me right from the start. The next thing was that I had a hunch very early on where the story was going to go, and sadly, I was right.

The conclusion of the story was the worst for me.

For one thing I was disappointed by the way Foley just pulled out additional clues that had not previously been shared with the reader. In a Marple story, I would have expected to be shown all of the clues plus some red herrings so I can guess/sleuth along.  I hate it when the sleuth seems to have additional information that was not mentioned in the story. It makes me feel grumpy and cheated, a little like Poirot in the Suchet adaptation / episode where Hastings takes him to see a murder mystery in the theatre and Poirot loses a bet with Hastings because the murderer turned out to be not who he had predicted.

The second disappointment was the way that the murderer is revealed. Old Marple is far too cautious and calculating a character to do something as silly as Foley suggests here.

In this respect, Foley stuck to her own style of plotting, and it just does not work for me.

I don’t have high hopes for many of the stories but we will see. Here are my comments on the stories in reverse order:

# 2 -The Second Murder at the Vicarage by Val McDermid:

My comments on this story again echo Lillelara’s. I really enjoyed the story. I loved the tone of voice of the narrator. The story was told from the point of view of the vicar of St. Mary Mead, just as the original The Murder at the Vicarage. I do remember us having a discussion about being disappointed that there aren’t more stories in the Marple series that feature or even have re-appearances of Leonard and Griselda Clement, and I loved that McDermid has undertaken to remedy this. More even, she managed to get the tome and characters of the villagers right for me, as we again meet Leonard, Griselda, Dennis, Inspector Slack, Mrs Price Ridley, Miss Hartnell, Mary, the housemaid, and her beau Bill Archer. 

I even was intrigued by the weird attempt to mix in elements of Murder is Easy. However, the solution to the story/mystery just did nothing for me. We don’t get to know the culprits, and there was nothing for me to build a connection to them … or even a dislike. Just nothingness. And that was disappointing, because up to the solution I really felt like we were back in St. Mary Mead, which to me is quite an achievement.

# 3 – Miss MarpleTakes Manhattan by Alyssa Cole:

This story was plain awful. Yes, there were characters by the names of Jane Marple and Raymond West and Joan, that I should have recognised, but Cole’s descriptions and characterisations made it clear that they were not the same characters that Christie wrote about.

Cole also committed the ultimate sin of starting this story with a description of the clothes that her Marple character wears when visiting New York City with her nephew Raymond. We are also meant to believe that Miss Marple is supposed to enjoy the thrills of the city and flashy, even gaudy, displays of fame – whether in the guise of art or merchandise or people. That very much is not the Marple I know. The Marple I know also has far fewer prejudices than Cole’s creation – for example, I cannot recall or even imagine that the real Miss Marple would condemn all good-looking young men to be up to no good … and actually say this out loud. Christie’s Miss Marple has more sense than that. She also has more tact than to entertain perfect strangers whe doesn’t even like with stories about having to change Raymond’s nappies when he was a baby… It’s just … No.

This story really was the pits.

It was painful to read.

I cannot remember the last time that I really wanted to DNF a short story, but thisreally made me want to just jump ship and call “Next!!!”. Unfortunately, I didn’t. I read to the end. I may have grabbed a glass of wine, tho.

As for the plot, … that was just stupid.

NEXT!!!

# 4 – The Unravelling by Natalie Haynes:

I just posted my thoughts on Lillelara’s post, so I’ll just quickly replicate them here: I kinda liked this one. I liked how Haynes used Miss Marple’s habit of finding an analogy in her village life to a tricky problem. So, I liked that she made Marple connect the unraveling to Penelope and added a Homeric twist to the story.

It’s not too far fetched from Christie borrowing references from Shakespeare.

However, it is not a great Marple story. If anything I was reminded of Sayers’ The Nine Tailors, which has similar elements. But then, the whole scene of a wife not recognising a husband is totally Christie (remember Murder in Mesopotamia…?), so that did make me smile as I thought it could have been a very subtle but effective nod to Christie. I much preferred Haynes approach to trying to shoehorn in a lot familiar details and characters and come across as an author who tries too hard.

Yeah, I actually liked this one. It made me smile.

# 5 – Miss Marple’s Christmas by Ruth Ware

Being a fan of Christie and Sayers, I found this story hugely disappointing. The writing itself is not bad, and the premise is not bad either. However, I have three major issues with Ware’s story:

  1. It is not original. Thankfully, Ware herself acknowledges this within the story as otherwise I’d delight in calling her out on plagiarism. The main story is based on a story by Sayers featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. I recognised this as soon as the scnee was set. And while Ware acknowledges her source, it is also really disappointing that she didn’t even attempt to add a different twist to the story.
    There is also an element of the story that is based on Chistie’s own Poirot story The Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan. This is a part that Ware doesn’t acknowledge. Christie often re-worked her short stories, so having a Poirot premise appear in another Christie-esque story is not a big deal for me. However, this leads me to my second issue:
  2. The story doesn’t fit the Miss Marple character: Both Wimsey and Poirot were puzzle solvers of crime. Marple always struck me more of a psychologist, with the solutions to her mysteries being less driven by logic, and more based on the personalities and inclinations of the characters involved. As such, the premise of the jewel theft doesn’t really feel like a Marple story for me. But, who knows, milage may vary here.
  3. The solution and culprits were predictable. I had the culprits picked by the time they were introduced, and the crime figured out as soon as the scene was set, and I am not convinced that this was entirely down to me knowing both the Poirot and the Wimsey story.

So, while this story was a lot better than I expected having read Ware’s work, it was disappointing overall.

# 6 – The Open Mind by Naomi Alderman

I liked, but not loved, Alderman’s novel The Power, but I would not have pegged Alderman as an author that might take on a Christie story. This is simply because Alderman’s work, at least judging based on The Power, seems very political and agenda-driven. Similar to my interest in whether Val McDermid could pull off a non-gory story, I was interested in whether Alderman could work within the confines of the “Marple-verse”. That is not to say that I do not think that Marple stories are bland and entirely void of talking about social issues – far from it – but Christie added those discussion points with tact, not by ramming her opinion down her reader’s throat. 

Unfortunately, Alderman either decided to apply her own style and opinions to the brief of writing her Marple story, or she was not able as a writer to create something that differed from her usual style. 

In either case, I immensely (IMMENSELY!!!) disliked The Open Mind. 

The politicising of a Marple story was not my only issue. I also felt that setting the story in a university and in 1970 just didn’t work. The time period, I felt, was too late for Marple. I know that At Bertram’s Hotel, published in 1965, is set in the early 60’s (about 1963/4 I guess because of the reference to Beatlemania), but this is about as late as I would have gone with a Marple story, because Marple seems to be losing her touch by 1965. (Sleeping Murder was published later but written 30+ years earlier.)

The setting at a university dinner, snide remarks about privilege and snobbery and racism aside, did not work for me. I could see a Wimsey (though not in 1970) or a Rumpole (I’m sure there actually is a Rumpole story in a similar setting) attending a university dinner, but just not Marple. Miss Marple usually turns up in a setting because it is either in her own village, or a friend’s village, or some holiday with a friend or her nephew. Why would Marple just be invited to a formal university dinner? I did not get that. And what was her connection to Sir Aaron? 

So, both of these issues raised my skepticism about the story very early on. Add to that the shoe-horning of Alderman’s opinions into the story and the utterly ridiculous solution to the story, and you have a really grumpy reader at this end. 

The Open Mind was very disappointing, and I would go so far as to say that it was as much of a mess as Cole’s Miss Marple Takes Manhattan.

# 7 – The Jade Empress by Jean Kwok

I don’t have a lot to say about this story other than that I liked it, even tho it was weird, some elements did not make complete sense, and to be honest it was kinda inoffensive after the last couple of clangers we have read.

For some reason, this story features Miss Marple on a cruise to Hong Kong. We have an openly racist English couple, that serves no purpose other than to provide Miss Marple with the opportunity to show them up and let us know that Marple is not a racist … I’m not sure why we would assume that she is. I’m also not sure why we would not know that she isn’t racist from Marple’s own actions in the story. But I digress, all I want to point out, as Lillelara has also already said, the racist couple was gratuitous.

Despite this, I liked how Kwok actually included elements of other Marple stories (and perhaps a couple of Poirot ones).

I really don’t know why the story had to be set on a cruise ship near Hong Kong, but maybe that was to show that people are the same everywhere.
I thought this was one of the better stories.

Only 5 more stories to go! Yay!

# 8 – A Deadly Wedding Day by Dreda Say Mitchell

…Or as I would call it, A Caribbean Mystery, Part 2. I actually liked this. I liked it despite the author including a few soap box moments. I liked it because I actually liked the characters. They seemed quite complex, even for a short story.

For some reason, this story also features a theme of bigamy, which made me wonder whether the authors of this collection were a) colluding or b) not able to come up with something else as a solution. It’s becoming somewhat repetitive. What is also becoming repetitive is the recurring theme of … let me just call it “Sparkling Cyanide”. 

Still, I liked the story.

# 9 – Murder at the Villa Rosa by Elly Griffiths

LoL. Since we joked about Miss Marple being shipped around the world in this collection like a piece of lost luggage, here is another story that places Miss Marple outside of her home country. This time Raymond has shipped her to Italy. Granted, it is a beautiful part of Italy, but Miss Marple’s tweed attire would make even this trip hell on earth, especially as we learn that Felix, one of her fellow guests at the Villa Rosa, is suspected of suffering from heat stroke at one point.

In any case, other than the impracticality of a wearing a tweed outfit in Sorrento, I have absolutely no complaints about this story. I really enjoyed it. I loved the underlying challenge of killing off a figure like Holmes or Poirot, I liked the solution, and I loved the narration from Felix’s point of view. I don’t know why I pictured him as Benoit Blanc of Knives Out and Glass Onion when Felix obviously is nothing like Benoit, but maybe I just liked picturing Felix as Daniel Craig. Who knows? In any case, I liked this one so much that I actually want to seek out more by Griffiths.

# 10 – The Murdering Sort by Karen M. McManus

Just when I thought this collection of stories had mellowed me … or broken me, depending on how you look at it, … this story comes along. All I can say is…

This was ridiculously bad.

I mean, I am not great with YA anyway, but:

  1. This was not a Marple story.
  2. Transporting Marple to the USA made me cringe.
  3. Transporting Marple to a YA story set amongst a well-to-do preppy set made me cringe a bit more.
  4. Marple being sidelined as a curiosity in favour of her great-niece (?) made it worse.
  5. The story was predictable. Ugh.
  6. The solution was laughable.
  7. I had the culprit pegged as soon as they were mentioned.
  8. The weird experiment conducted by the victim on his family, was very much along the same lines as one in a Wimsey story. This made me laugh, but it also just added to the disappointment. Btw, McManus did not execute her version of the experiment well at all. I thought it was a ludicrous plot point. 
  9. I pretty much hated the voice of the main character, and especially that of her friend. 
  10. To complete my list of the Ten Things I Hate About The Murdering Sort, the conclusion of the story was just stupid: Why would anyone with any sense effectively trespass and enter a strangers house when there is a murderer about? And the phone call? WTF, as soon as realisation set in, she should have run! This is the sort of nonsense that gives Christie pastiches a really bad name (in my book anyway). 

Yeah, this story was not good at all.

# 11 – The Mystery of the Acid Soil by Kate Mosse

As Lillelara has already stated, there is only one thing to say about Mosse’s story:

Is it disappointing that the best story in the collection so far was written by one of the few authors who do not write crime fiction for a living? Yes. Yes, it is. But as I mentioned before, Mosse loves researching her books, and this has paid off big time, even if this is “just a short story”.

Amazing. I loved this.

One more story to go. I have never read anything by Leigh Bardugo, but somehow I do not have high hopes. I hope I am wrong.

# 12 – The Disappearance by Leigh Bardugo

Bloody hell! This story makes me want to consider whether book burnings are so bad after all. WTF was this??? It kinda makes The Open Mind, Miss Marple Takes Manhattan, and The Murdering Sort look like valid literary efforts.

This story is just wrong.

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