“The Thirteen Problems” by Agatha Christie

I should probably slow down and savor these books a bit, but that’s a difficult thing to do. They’re just so, as they say, page-turney!

This one is a book of short stories, which only serves to increase the level of page-turney-ness. (What? That could be a word.) When the solution to a mystery is only a few short pages away, it’s really hard to put the book down. And then, once you’ve reached one satisfying conclusion, it’s so easy to just flip to the next page and start a whole new story. It’s right there. 

Surprisingly, I actually guessed the solution to several of these, so there goes my conviction that Christie always manages to surprise me. Of course, it’s entirely possible that I already read this book at some point in the past, and the solutions lodged themselves in my subconscious. That would be both a rational conclusion to draw, and one that preserves my amazement at Christie’s genius. (Because she was a genius. Don’t you agree?) But also—whereas in my memory I had guessed “most” of the solutions, in flipping back through the book I see that it was really only four of the thirteen…

Just one observation, neither here nor there; I don’t really understand the order that Harper Collins published these editions in. This book was published second chronologically (which is, of course, why I read it second) but it’s the second to last book in the boxed sets. There is another (Sleeping Murder) which was published second-to-last chronologically, but it appears fourth in the boxed sets. I believe this one and the last one may be the only Marple short stories, which explains their juxtaposition. Maybe I will understand the odd placement of Sleeping Murder later.