Hallowe'en Party; Passenger to Frankfurt; The Thirteen Problems
1 journaler for this copy...
The Thirteen Problems - short stories
1. The Tuesday Night Club
2. The Idol House of Astarte
3. Ingots of Gold
4. The Blood-Stained Pavement
5. Motive v. Opportunity
6. The Thumb Mark of St. Peter
7. The Blue Geranium
8. The Companion
9. The Four Suspects
10. A Christmas Tragedy
11. The Herb of Death
12. The Affair at the Bungalow
13. Death by Drowning
Passenger to Frankfurt
Christie-with-a difference; no body-in-the-library mystery, but a fantasy that could possibly be today. Christie's theme is the atmosphere of crime, violence and negativeness that has become an undercurrent of our existence, and to whose reality every newspaper every day gives testimony, could be other than an accident. A generation is developing, or has already developed, which is all too ready to accept or join in such violent goings-on; and there are many among them who have a passionate belief that youth is in itself a virtue which entitles its possessors to rule the earth they must inherit, now.
Could any organization, from under cover, subtly direct such diverse and seemingly unrelated events as plane-jackings, kidnappings, student-riots and drug-smuggling with the aim of ultimately controlling them and creating a New Order out of the chaos to which they could give rise?
Starting with an accidental meeting with a strange woman at Frankfurt Airport, Stafford Nye finds himself caught up in events which make friend and foe hard to distinguish, and in which exalted rank is no guarantee of loyalty.
1. The Tuesday Night Club
2. The Idol House of Astarte
3. Ingots of Gold
4. The Blood-Stained Pavement
5. Motive v. Opportunity
6. The Thumb Mark of St. Peter
7. The Blue Geranium
8. The Companion
9. The Four Suspects
10. A Christmas Tragedy
11. The Herb of Death
12. The Affair at the Bungalow
13. Death by Drowning
Passenger to Frankfurt
Christie-with-a difference; no body-in-the-library mystery, but a fantasy that could possibly be today. Christie's theme is the atmosphere of crime, violence and negativeness that has become an undercurrent of our existence, and to whose reality every newspaper every day gives testimony, could be other than an accident. A generation is developing, or has already developed, which is all too ready to accept or join in such violent goings-on; and there are many among them who have a passionate belief that youth is in itself a virtue which entitles its possessors to rule the earth they must inherit, now.
Could any organization, from under cover, subtly direct such diverse and seemingly unrelated events as plane-jackings, kidnappings, student-riots and drug-smuggling with the aim of ultimately controlling them and creating a New Order out of the chaos to which they could give rise?
Starting with an accidental meeting with a strange woman at Frankfurt Airport, Stafford Nye finds himself caught up in events which make friend and foe hard to distinguish, and in which exalted rank is no guarantee of loyalty.
Journal Entry 2 by 
catsalive
at Rooty Hill, New South Wales Australia on Thursday, September 1, 2011
catsalive at Rooty Hill, New South Wales Australia on Thursday, September 1, 2011
Hallowe'en Party
A children's party (even a Hallowe'en party, with its overtones of mild spookiness) seems an unlikely setting for a murder. Just as Woodleigh Common, almost the archetype of the Quiet English Village, seems an unlikely place for anything quite so brutal as this particluar murder. Yet, murder it was - and nothing else. Children, however peculiar, do not drown themselves, either deliberately or accidentally, by plunging their heads into galvanized buckets nearly full of water. The victim had not been particularly well-liked by either contemporaries or adults. But such knowledge is little help to Hercule Poirot. One does not kill just because one does not like. More to the point was the fact that the deceased had claime, loudly and publicly, to have been the witness of a murder. Whose murder? And when? These are the questions that Poirot sets out to answer; and their answering shows that the death-in-a-bucket is neither the first nor last link in a chain of dark deeds in this peaceful village.
A children's party (even a Hallowe'en party, with its overtones of mild spookiness) seems an unlikely setting for a murder. Just as Woodleigh Common, almost the archetype of the Quiet English Village, seems an unlikely place for anything quite so brutal as this particluar murder. Yet, murder it was - and nothing else. Children, however peculiar, do not drown themselves, either deliberately or accidentally, by plunging their heads into galvanized buckets nearly full of water. The victim had not been particularly well-liked by either contemporaries or adults. But such knowledge is little help to Hercule Poirot. One does not kill just because one does not like. More to the point was the fact that the deceased had claime, loudly and publicly, to have been the witness of a murder. Whose murder? And when? These are the questions that Poirot sets out to answer; and their answering shows that the death-in-a-bucket is neither the first nor last link in a chain of dark deeds in this peaceful village.
