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“THE ROOMMATE”
A dark comic tale about two female roommates who find themselves on an exciting exploration to transform their lives completely, even if it requires a turn into dangerous territory…. an “Odd Couple” story that shifts towards “Breaking Bad”! TICKET PRICE: $33 PER PERSON (Center Row Seating) Stop by the PINE BUSH AREA LIBRARY at 223 Maple Avenue, Pine Bush, to purchase tickets or call 744-4265, Ext. 2 for more info on this discounted offer.
Rave Reviews by Jean E. Eustance
Agatha Christie is a popular subject for biographies. Who can resist an English author with more than 80 books to her credit? Also, the woman who invented Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple had a mystery of her very own, the eleven days when she disappeared in 1926.
The newest biography, published in 2018, is by Laura Thompson. Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life is upstairs in the adult part of the Pine Bush Area Public Library, in the biography section.
It is a long book, turning over all the stones in the mystery writer’s life, and also looking at the books she wrote. It does go into detail, perhaps a bit too much, in the 485 pages of text.
She was born Agatha Miller in 1890, in Devon, in England. She grew up and married Archie Christie. Her mother had warned her against him. Agatha began to write mystery stories under her married name. Eventually “A new Agatha Christie” came to mean a new murder mystery. Her publishers depended each year upon “A Christie for Christmas.” In later years, how she must have hated to have to retain the last name of her ex-husband.
Her first book was The Mysterious Affair at Styles, starring her creation, Hercule Poirot. Agatha and Archie bought an ugly house outside of London, near a golf course, and named their house “Styles” after the name of the house in the book. She went on and become famous as an author with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
Agatha had been very close, emotionally, to her mother, Clara Miller. When Clara became ill, and died, it just about wiped Agatha out. She went to her mother’s house in Devon, to clear out a lifetime of stuff—treasures and junk, and it was torture to get things sorted and thrown, or given away. Ashfield was the house where she had been happy, and now the center of her life—her mother—was gone, gone, gone.
Into this maelstrom stepped her worthless husband, Archie Christie. He had been neglecting her and their daughter so that he could go play golf in Sunningdale, near London. He strode into her family home, and instead of helping, he announced that he wanted to marry his golf partner, Miss Nancy Neele. The world fell away from underneath Agatha’s feet, and yet Archie could not figure out what the fuss was all about. He thought she should just give him the divorce he wanted.
What followed was the central mystery of Agatha Christie’s life. She disappeared for eleven days, and was later discovered living quietly in the Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, in Yorkshire. Her husband had been under suspicion of committing murder, and crowds of people had helped search the downs near Newland’s Corner, in Surrey, where her car had been found. She must have walked or gotten a ride to the train station several miles away. She must have gone to London, and from there to Yorkshire.
No one thought of this near Sunningdale, where Archie and Agatha lived. Down there, it was definitely “The Mysterious Affair near Styles.”
Laura Thompson wrote, “From the first, Deputy Chief Constable Kenward was convinced that Agatha was dead and that her body lay near the site of her car…From quite early on, the newspapers knew what was in Kenward’s mind. They sensed that he was itching to cuff the hands of that arrogant Colonel Christie…it was the possibility of wife-murder that kept the story bubbling so fiercely.”
I have read four biographies of Agatha Christie, and each one has a different “take” on why and how she disappeared. Laura Thompson says that Agatha sent a letter to her brother-in-law, Campbell Christie. The letter said that she was going to a spa in Yorkshire. Thompson believes that Agatha thought Campbell would tell his brother, and that Archie would come to her in Yorkshire. She wanted to get her husband back from the clutches of Nancy Neele, and thought that this would do it. It didn’t quite work out. There was a lot of misdirection and false clues and it was as if They Do It With Mirrors.
Agatha was found alive and reasonably well in Harrogate. She had registered at the hotel under the name Teresa Neele, using the same last name as her husband’s mistress. Archie whisked Agatha to her sister’s house near Chester, and from there the family issued the bulletin that Agatha Christie was suffering from amnesia. The press was incensed. They felt that they had been made a fool of by a woman who wanted free publicity for the mysteries she wrote, by creating a real-life mystery. Agatha was mentally fragile, and did not take kindly to newspaper reporters ever after.
Two years later, Archie got the divorce he had wanted so badly and he married Nancy Neele. Agatha was struggling to write, and having a hard time finishing The Mystery of the Blue Train. She went on a vacation: she was going to the West Indies, when friends told her she must go to Baghdad, and she did. You could say she did what one of her books said, They Came to Baghdad.
She visited the excavations of the ancient city of Ur, where Mr. and Mrs. Wooley were digging up the past. Mrs. Wooley was a thorny woman who ended up being a main character in Murder in Mesopotamia. (Never rile a mystery writer. You might end up as the corpse!)
Mr. and Mrs. Wooley invited her to return to Ur, the next year, and she did. Then she met the man who had been missing from the excavation site during the first year: Max Mallowan. He helped her get home, on the Orient Express, when her daughter was seriously ill.
Later Agatha wrote Murder on the Orient Express, because this would be the ultimate “closed circle” mystery. The killer had to be one of the people on the Calais coach—there was no getting on or off a train stuck in a snow bank. It couldn’t possibly be—all of them? Could it?
David Suchet, the actor who portrayed Hercule Poirot on public TV for 25 years, said that Max Mallowan was “the love of her life.” The way he tells it, they enjoyed each other and were wonderfully in love for years and years and years. I am going to agree with David Suchet.
I will not agree with Laura Thompson who says that the marriage was really about companionship, and not about true love. Laura Thompson goes into too much detail, digging in where I certainly do not want to look.
Agatha Christie died at age 86 in 1976, because Death Comes as an End. Laura Thompson should have ended her book directly After the Funeral. I did not need to know that Max Mallowan went on to marry another woman after Agatha’s death. That just felt wrong. That felt like it was a Crooked House.
Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life is a huge book, and I found it easier to dodge around in it, reading this part and that, than to slog all the way through it from page 1 to page 485. It was such a huge book, you might be glad to draw down the Curtain.
PLEASE JOIN US FOR AN 8-WEEK LECTURE SERIES PRESENTED BY
JOSEPH BRITTO, ADJUNCT LECTURER SUNY/ORANGE AND PROFESSOR
EMERITUS SUNY/NEW PALTZ.
Starting May 28th 6:30 pm in the Community Center.
PLEASE REGISTER BY CALLING 744-4265, EXT. 2
ANNUAL FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY EASTER BAKE SALE APRIL 20TH
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The Pine Bush Area Public Library
Community Center
ART ON THE LIBRARY WALLS
Exhibiting Artist: Joan Garrison
Paintings by Joan
68 Railroad Avenue
Montgomery, NY 12549
845 457-4205
I started out at Hoboken New Jersey High School with art classes. I ventured in pastels, charcoal drawings and advertising posters. I took oil classes in 1954 – 1956, which was my favorite medium to paint in. Later on, went into acrylic classes for about 5 years doing mainly landscapes of all kinds in Pine Bush, New York. Then took pen and ink, pencil drawings and charcoal classes in Middletown, New York and went back to oil on canvas in Newburgh, New York painting all kinds from flowers, balloons,, seascapes, birds, etc. and my favorite, landscapes. Painting is very relaxing and rewarding with a personal feeling of accomplishment.
RAVE REVIEWS by Jean E. Eustance
The Black Ascot is the newest Ian Rutledge murder mystery by Charles Todd. We have it in the Pine Bush Area Public Library on the new book shelf, upstairs in the adult’s section.
The first few pages are set in 1910, at the Ascot Racecourse in England. Royal Ascot is when the socially-important horse races are held there, not far from Windsor Castle. (Royal Ascot is still held nowadays.) The 1910 Royal Ascot was called the Black Ascot because everyone was supposed to be in mourning for the late King Edward VII, and everyone was to wear black.
This sets the stage for what happens later. The rest of the book begins in January 1921, and Inspector Ian Rutledge from Scotland Yard is told to look over the cold case file of why a wealthy woman was killed in a motorcar, some miles away from the racetrack in 1910. Her suspected murderer may have slipped back into England, recently.
The Ian Rutledge series of mysteries are interesting in that their hero is written with a twist. He was a detective at Scotland Yard, and then he went to serve on the Western Front in World War I. He came home, and rejoined the Yard, but brought back a secret that only a few know. Rutledge suffers from shell shock or battle fatigue. (Nowadays it is called post-traumatic stress disorder.)
He had to order the execution of a man in his unit, when Hamish refused to lead the men “over the top” in another useless attempt to retake a few yards of No Man’s Land. Rutledge had tried to reason with him, but in the end had to have him executed for refusing to obey an order. Hamish is dead, but it is Ian Rutledge who has never recovered. He can hear Hamish talking to him, in his head. He thinks that Hamish is sitting behind him when he drives his car, and he cringes every time two fat Chief Inspectors from Scotland Yard take up the entire back seat. He is afraid to look in the rearview mirror because he thinks he will see Hamish’s anguished face.
Most detectives in novels have a sidekick or assistant. One must talk to someone. One must not talk to one’s self alone. It just isn’t done. Ian Rutledge does not have an assistant or sidekick to share his troubles. He has Hamish, in his head, all the time. Sometimes it is sad, sometimes it is wry, and sometimes it is very funny.
On the cases that Rutledge covers, Hamish tends to have insights which Rutledge doesn’t have. He also says the most embarrassing “asides,” usually something like “Don’t trust that woman!” Hamish sometimes yells “Ware!” meaning “Beware!” when someone is aiming a gun at Rutledge. The detective has learned to duck when Hamish yells “Ware!”
All the books in the series are intricately detailed, and the detective goes around and talks to all sorts of folk, all of whom come across as real people. If the books were “food,” I would say that they were dense and chewy. This is not light-weight froth, and the reader must be prepared to settle down and read strongly. The books feel real, despite the premise that our hero is hearing a voice in his head.
Charles Todd is the pen name of a mother-son partnership. They have written 21 books about Ian Rutledge, and 10 about his friend Bess Crawford. Bess occasionally appears in a book about Rutledge.
Pine Bush Area Library has a few of the more recent Ian Rutledge books and about 5 of the Bess Crawford books. Come in and see what we have and settle in for a good read.
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