1931, apa MURDER AT HAZELMOOR; Miss Emily Trefussis, Charles Enderby, reporter, and Inspector Narracott, the little town of Sittaford, near Dartmoor Prison. Cranky (but wealthy) Captain Trevelyan is murdered during a snowstorm and while many suspects have motive, they didn't have the opportunity... Four stars.During a snowstorm Major Barnaby becomes worried about his best friend, Captain Trevelyan, who has just recently relocated to a small cottage about six miles away. They're both quite elderly now, but were, and are, still very physically active, and Barnaby feels able to manage the walk to Trevelyan's. It's a walk he usually does easily, twice weekly, and he sets off even though there's a big storm starting. When he finally arrives he finds a terrible situation, Trevelyan is dead and the room ransacked. He immediately goes to the police station to report it (no phones working during the storm). The center of the novel is Miss Emily Trefussis, the take-charge fiancee of Trevelyan's nephew - and heir - James. He has a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and has done so again, but this time with huge repercussions - he's been arrested for the murder! Determined to prove him innocent, she teams up with a nice, malleable young reporter and together they suss out the real story, or, rather, she (mostly) does. Very similar in tempo, technique, and tone to MURDER AT THE VICARAGE, 1930, SITTAFORD is one of those incredibly complex time-table mysteries so favored by readers in the 1920s and early 1930s. There are not very deeply explored characterizations, plot twist upon plot twist hanging upon teeny, tiny clues (very fair play, though, I must admit), and a fairly slow pace mixed with an extremely old-fashioned sensibility. This was a fairly basic sort of story for Christie, and not quite as much fun as her next (PERIL AT END HOUSE, 1932) which is, except for a couple of terribly melodramatic touches, far darker and richer. But this is an extremely good novel for its type - smoothly written, with all the bits and pieces carefully laid in, and with its very short chapters it's very easy to read even though the pacing is rather slow and the plot does take quite a while to develop. Christie was coming into the top of her form here, about to move away from the sweetly frantic thrillers of her 1920s books and starting to break more and more of the then-popular stereotypes of the period. Yes, her MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD, 1926, was a flash of brilliance, but was, essentially, almost identical to VICARAGE in tone, setting, characters, and plot although ACKROYD does have that one sensational revelation that ends the novel and which made the Christie name something to be reckoned with. It was extremely shocking for the mid-1920s, something that SITTAFORD, even with its similarities to both the better-known ACKROYD and VICARAGE, isn't, alas, by 1931. With convoluted plotting, fair cluing, slow pacing, light characterizations, gentle/genteel setting and a nice touch of humour, SITTAFORD MYSTERY has pretty much everything that "a Christie novel" came to be known for, but doesn't show the true complexity of her talent as is displayed in her middle-period books. IMO she was about to enter into her best writing period, (roughly mid-1930s through the early 1950s) and Sittaford, while entertaining, pales in comparison with many of the novels and stories written then. Of course, I may be biased (grin) as her next novel (PERIL AT END HOUSE, 1932) - and thus the next in my sequential rereading of her work - is simply brilliant on all fronts and is, not surprisingly, one of my very favorite Christie Mysteries. I can't wait to get to my reread of it! Don't be turned off by my preferences as expressed here, though - BOTTOM LINE: SITTAFORD is a comfortable, enjoyable story even if it *is* still "that sort of thing" that was so popular in the late 1920s. It's head and shoulders above tons of similar books written at the time by other authors and, indeed, is far better than many written today, if truth be told. Well-crafted, not spectacular, it's good reading for a comfortable afternoon.
The Sittaford Mystery, like The Murder at the Vicarage seems to reflect Christie looking for, if a not a new pattern for writing her books, at least the introduction of a new variation within the mix. Once again, as in several earlier books, the most proactive of the characters is a young woman although the point of view is not hers. The mystery itself is less ornately planned than many of the earlier Christies and is a rare example of a believeable “aha” moment of detection. All the information the reader needs to at least suspect the real murderer has been laid before them and they are given every chance to make the same deduction(s) as the detectives. This book shares something else with its immediate predecessor and that is a sharp move away from the pattern in the earlier books of showing spirited and intelligent young women being drawn to strong men. In earlier books Christie even writes of this tendency as if it was an evolutionary compulsion. However in this and the previous book she shows bright intelligent young women drawn to quieter less stereotypically manly men. Throughout this book it is clear that Emily Trefusis is brighter than her fiance as well as having a stronger moral backbone. Yet at the end it is not presented as a tragedy that she does not leave her fiance for the clearly more intelligent and ambitious Enderby. Yes, Emily clearly loves James Pearson but the reader is left to wonder if part of that love is the fact that he is a maleable and fertile field for the expression of her own intelligence and ambition.
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This is the third Agatha Christie novel I read. What I love about it and what makes it special to me is that when I started reading it I wasn’t in a good place as a reader, and it just made love reading again so I guess it came in the right place at the right time. It actually caught my attention very early on; I was hooked in the first chapter, which is too early for me because I usually start appreciating a book after at least 2 chapters. It really flew by quickly. I guess this is the Agatha Christie effect. This book isn’t essential or great or a must read, but it’s undoubtedly enjoyable and good for passing a few hours. It’s a solid mystery, but I didn’t like some parts; I hated the fact that it had a lot of side plots, it just was a little too much for me. The plot had many twists; I felt a bit lost and confused but not so much. The last chapters felt very disjointed. Other than that I really appreciated it, I read it quickly and had so much fun.Spoiler alert: What really bothered me was the lack of involvement of Inspector Narracott the main detective, he actually did very little to solve the mystery, he attempted to investigate but Emily delivered him the murderer on a tray. It just felt odd. I hated Emily to be frank; she seemed manipulative to me and I couldn’t stand her, oh and the love triangle? I didn’t even realize there was one lol.I was a little bit annoyed when I found out who the killer is even though I suspected him, I really didn’t want him to be the one. It was a bit stretched to be believable.When I finished it I had some unanswered questions, but it was my fault really, I guess I didn’t concentrate at some point, because when I rechecked I found the answers pretty obvious. PS. Can we just take a second to appreciate the fact that Agatha Christie mentioned Pride and Prejudice (My all time favorite book)? - My favorite character: None, they all felt the same to me.- My favorite moment: I enjoyed the whole novel.- My favorite quote: “I suppose that one can, if one has the determination, always get something out of life.”
—Nour El Houda
At a house party during a game of table rapping (similar to using an Ouija board), a murder is announced. Only the victim is living in a village over 6 miles away and the roads are impassable due to a winter storm. Unless you believe messages from beyond, it is dollars to donuts that one of the attendees knew of the murder beforehand, but which one and why? Since this title was mentioned in another book I am reading and I am already woefully behind in the reading quota I set for myself for 2014, I thought I would give this book a whirl. I knew I could knock it off it an afternoon. The Sittaford Mystery is a Christie one-off, no Miss Marple or Poirot to solve the mystery. Instead, we have a perky heroine, an ambitious journalist and a local inspector who do the sleuthing. Red herrings abound and frankly, the story is a bit preposterous, but it was fun to read.
—Ruthiella
This was what I needed to get out of my reading slump, a well written Agatha Christie mystery. She never totally disappoints and I'm mentally better off after I read one of her novels, even if I wouldn't put it on my favorites list. Thankfully this one is in the running for my top 10 list of her books.The book starts off with a party held in a stately manor in the middle of nowhere. There is several feet of snow covering the ground and more is one it's way. The strange mixture of party goers decide to play at table turning and when the murder of the man who owns the house is announced, the story is off to a roaring start.I won't go into the plot too much but once again Agatha has come up with another brilliant heroine in Emily Trefusis, the fiance of the man being held for the murder. With the help of Charles Enderby, a newspaper reporter, she sets out on quest to prove that her beloved is not the cold blooded murderer. Emily is a force of nature who gets what she wants, when she wants it. She follows in the tradition of headstrong, caring heroines that Agatha is brilliant at writing. Through sheer willpower and a keen mind, Emily solves the case, and a few other mysteries along the way.
—Ryan G
