The Hound of Death and Other Stories - Christie

[allthingshorror]

Odhams Press (October 1933)

Dermonay

CONTENTS:

The Hound of Death
The Red Signal
The Fourth Man
The Gypsy
The Lamp
Wireless
The Witness for the Prosecution
The Mystery of the Blue Jar
The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael
The Call of Wings
The Last Seance
SOS


Lifted the scan from some site - seemingly getting a copy of this book with a DJ is quite some task.

I've always had a thing for Christie, and as early as ten years old I'd dip in and out of my mums Fontana paperbacks: The Mirror Crack'd, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and A Caribbean Mystery (the Fontana cover is unforgettable and has stayed with me ever since!) all whetted my appetite and I suppose horror was the next logical step from those paperbacks.

Picked up the hardcover for the princely sum of 50p, and it's an entertaining read - most of her stories deal with events that there are no earthly explanation for, or, premonition, sixth sense, fate - it's all in here - and while it may not be the scariest of books and Christie is pretty hit and miss - the stand out tales have got to be The Hound of Death, Wireless(the pay off you can see coming a mile away - but it's a brilliant read!) and the story that this collection is most famous for The Witness For the Prosecution.

[allthingshorror]

Here's the scan to Caribbean for anyone whose interested.

Even now, it's still a stunning image!

[Craig Herbertson]

I dipped in a little to Christie as my brother was a big fan. The fontano covers were absolutely superb. the stories were good train fodder but I laboured ineptly under the inability to ever construe the killer

[pulphack]

i've read christie on and off since an encounter with Murder On The Orient Express (with one of those great fontana covers) when i was about eight. wonderfully clear style and a focused approach to what is essential to her storytelling that sometimes leads critics to label her as two-dimensional. i've never been able to guess half of the murderers right either, but bugger it the journey is more than half the fun!

very Vault worthy is her collection The Mysterious Mr Quin, originally published in 1930. the stories centre around a Mr Satterwaite, a man who just seems to look at life from the margins. then he encounters Quin and finds himsefl in the middle of a series of mysteries that are sometimes criminal, sometimes about the vagaries of human nature. in each, his observations and the intervention in some manner of Quin bring about resolution.

nothing ghostly about them as such, there is a wonderful ambivalence about who or what Quin is - a spirit? Satterwaite's alter-ego and expression of id? - which is left hanging by the climax to the final story. it's all in the writing and what she leaves unsaid, which puts her in some unlikely, almost Jamesian arenas.

Poirot and Miss Marple will always be superb - and some of the non-series mysteries are amongst the best of their type as intricate puzzles - but she had more to her than that. the Mary Westmacott novels are oddly philosophical and metaphysical, and Mr Quin is an enigmatic hero, almost a puppet master to that nice Mr Satterwaite.

worth a look, frankly.

[andydecker]

Poirot and Miss Marple will always be superb

You know, I always used to dislike her. Out of sheer ignorance, I have to confess. Back when I seriousley got interested in crime fiction hard boiled american crime fiction was the topic of the day, followed by spy fiction. Christie´s kind of writing was not on the agenda. It was the stuff of parodies. Colonel Mustard with the knife in the library, you know. I knew her only from the movies, some of which I liked - the Ustinov ones - and mostly I hated.

A few years back after seeing one of the Ustinov´s again on late nite tv I stumbled on a audio edition of the movie - Evil under the Sun - , and I thought it very interesting. It was so different than the movie. Not only in the usual things which gets changed for good dramatic reasons, but in a lot of other things. Next came the Poirot series with Suchet, which I love, now own complete and have watched countless times and Christie´s novels.

Even if I find a lot of her plots unconvincing, she still is a good and interesting read, especially if one considers the time in which she wrote them. And frankly she has shown a lot more staying power than the hard-boiled P.I. of those mean streets, which time has left behind. Not bad for a little british lady

[Craig Herbertson]

My brother is the Christie man having read and collected her since time began - he always said that the ones to utterly avoid were the ones with two investigators - I searched the internet but can't find their names mentioned - two young people who are painfully irritating and solve everything. Shit that's going to annoy me.

I liked best ten little N.....(Indians) (Is it still okay to say Indian or has it become indigenous native human of the land bounded by sand and covered with deciduous varieties of brush and shrub?) It was a great book - often copied in film and novel - with the slow attrition of the inhabitants of an island by some nameless nemesis.

[carolinec]

Jan 8, 2010 11:21:33 GMT Craig Herbertson said:

I liked best ten little N.....(Indians) (Is it still okay to say Indian or has it become indigenous native human of the land bounded by sand and covered with deciduous varieties of brush and shrub?) It was a great book - often copied in film and novel - with the slow attrition of the inhabitants of an island by some nameless nemesis.

I've seen this on stage a few times - brilliantly creepy. In one particular performance I saw, the killer (I won't say who that is, in case anyone doesn't know and doesn't want SPOILERS!!) was played by Hayward Morse, who I later found out is the son of the late, great Barry Morse. He was superb in the role - incredibly scary, and played the crazed killer to perfection. As good an actor as his dad!

Anyway, yes, I think dear old Agatha is much better that she's sometimes given credit for. She's been overshadowed by her more well-known works. I'd love to get my hands on a copy of The Hound of Death! ;D

[Craig Herbertson]

Hound of Death - my brother - who'll you'll meet in Brighton C, has a first edition of that - its probably worth his house

[pulphack]

Ah, that'll be Tommy and Tuppence who meet in The Secret Adversary, one of dame ag's first half-dozen books. it's not very good, really - she had a crack at thrillers but they weren't really suited to her skills - and she kept coming back to them. N Or M, a WWII mystery, isn't too bad, but to be honest they were very twee and fey. some commentators make them to be an idealised version of Christie and firts hubby Archie, playing out what the marriage should have been. not sure about that myself, as they appeared frequently after she remarried to Max Mallowan (a very happy and long marriage, that one).

however, she did like to return to them, and there was a pretty awful TV series called Partners In Crime that used their stories. even Francesca Annis couldn't save it...

[Craig Herbertson]

Tommy and Tuppence? Sounds bad enough to be them. I had a feeling there were a few tales concerning these heroes

[Craig Herbertson]

I'm playing chess online with my brother and he confirms at least four of them