Give me books, fruit, french wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors. --John Keats

Saturday, December 2, 2023

“A Pocket Full of Rye” by Agatha Christie

Are you tired of Miss Marple yet? Unfortunately I gotta say sorry not sorry. At this point, reading these books falls somewhere between compulsion and addiction. I love puzzling over the plots (even though I invariably fail to uncover the solution and I eventually need to have it explained to me).

Here's a series of murders that seems to follow the old familiar nursery rhyme. There are blackbirds baked in a pie, an unscrupulous businessman named Rex (get it--like a king?) and his young wife who dies while eating bread with honey. There's even a maid in the garden hanging out the clothes. But who wanted them all dead, and why? Well, the why is usually pretty easy; it's mostly either love or money. But which one here?

Did I guess whodunnit? No, I did not. I mulled over various possibilities but I mostly settled on one lovely person who actually turned out to be completely innocent. Why do I always suspect the nice normal people? Does that say something about me?

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