Three Act Tragedy, by Agatha Christie

 The Book

    Actor Sir Charles Cartwright has given up the stage which made him famous for the simple life in a seaside village of Loomouth. He is learning sailing for Miss Hermione "Egg" Lytton Gore, the daughter of widowed Lady Mary Lytton Gore. And having settled into his well built, modern cottage of "Crow's Nest" he is throwing a small evening party. He has a mix of friends from local to far away there, including Egg and her mother, Egg's longtime friend, Oliver Manders, the local vicar, Mr. Babbington and his wife, Mrs. Babbington, the Dacres--Lady and Colonel Dacres,; his childhood friend Dr. Bartholomew Strange; from his professional life, his former secretary/housekeeper Miss Milray, amateur detective, Mr. Satterthwaite, the playwright, Anthony Astor (pen name) AKA Miss Wills, the actress Angela Sutcliffe; and, because why not, Hercule Poirot! 

    While at dinner, Mr. Babbington takes a drink of cocktail and then suddenly abruptly dies, bringing a sad end to party. Cartwright tells everyone he suspects Babbington was murdered, but as there is no poison in his cocktail glasss, and the vicar was elderly, the jury passes the judgement that this was an unusal, but natural death. Cartwright, believing his crush Egg has deep feelings for Manders abruptly decides to leave Crow's Nest and go to Monte Carlo, leaving his house guest Satterthwaite behind. 

    A few months later, Satterthwaite receives a missive from Egg because Dr. Strange invited to to a dinner and now at the dinner he died in precisely the same manner as Babbington. She implores Satterthwaite to convince Cartwright to return and solve the crime. Cartwright reluctantly agrees. While Cartwright and Satterthwaite are making arrangements to ride The Blue Train back towards England, they run into Hercule Poirot. Satterthwait spills the beans to Poirot, who is bored in his retirement and then decides a few hours later to come along as well. 

 Now Poirot sets himself on a huge tasks of not only solving the murder, but also of making sure that Egg falls in love with the right man. In this task he enlists Satterthwaite, who is very surprised by the outcome. 

My Thoughts

    It seems that two series long detectives are one to many in an Agatha Christie novel. I love Mr. Satterthwaite from the Harley Quinn series, and nobody really tops Papa Poirot. But it was jarring to have both of them in the same novel. This is a fiendishly difficult puzzle to sort out, and the villain is truely one of Christie's most callous. However, the book is well written and easy to read. The pages fairly flew by in my hand, not threatening me with deep sleep as some of her other books have done. (I'm looking at you The Secret of Chimney.) This is a solid outing, with only a few nods to being stuck in it's time. And interesting to because this is set in the interwar years after The Great Depression. For once, there is no mention of those difficulties in here and I can only wonder if 1933 we started to see the world come out of it's slump. There is a pang of sadness reading these books, knowing as I do that if the characters were real what they have in front of them, and the world they are enjoying now is about to disappear. 

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

 This book was sent from the Algonquin Public library and entered their lending library in Sept of 20108 according to the stickers. The book has been read by gentle readers and it was easy to hold this 250 page book open. I believe this is the longest book yet, as it is the highest page count with the exception of the 300+ pages of the large print Murder on the Links, which I read back in the beginning of summer. It has a few, internal to their library pencil markings in the front cover, something to do with months and year, but it is unreadable to me. And there is a very sneaky RFID tag inside of it, so cleverly disguised as the back cover. Well done Algonquin.  The book is listed at $14.99

This Book                           $14.99

This Summer                    $761.82

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