70's Fontana Agatha Christie

[als]

Ok, so I'm not a massive fan of the venerable Ms. Christie, but I was so struck by these covers when I found them in my local Salvation Army shop, I had to get them.

I've got a modest collection of them now, here are a few of my favourites.

[dem bones]

we've a load more of 'em HERE, als, roped in with a bunch of bunch of early Gothic horror novels for reasons which now escape me. i think mine have all come from the same market stall, and, yes, it's the Fontana editions with the striking Tom Adams covers that got me interested, though i've since seen some tasty looking old hardback editions in the library.

[franklinmarsh]

Nov 25, 2011 15:33:14 GMT als said:

Just started rereading The Pale Horse with that striking horror-orientated cover, after finishing Stephen King's The Gunslinger. It could be the Beeb's Crimbo Christie this year. Intriguingly linked with Dennis Wheatley via some reviews I looked at. We're off to a flying start with a King's Road coffee bar, boasting banana and bacon sandwiches along with your Espresso, a cat fight in said establishment, some 'youths in Edwardian dress' referred to by a copper as Teddy boys, references to the off-beat generation as well as the beat generation, beatniks and sputniks, a Catholic priest coshed to death...it can't keep this up surely?

[dem bones]

Mar 7, 2019 13:11:54 GMT franklinmarsh said:

Nov 25, 2011 15:33:14 GMT als said:

Just started rereading The Pale Horse with that striking horror-orientated cover, after finishing Stephen King's The Gunslinger. It could be the Beeb's Crimbo Christie this year. Intriguingly linked with Dennis Wheatley via some reviews I looked at. We're off to a flying start with a King's Road coffee bar, boasting banana and bacon sandwiches along with your Espresso, a cat fight in said establishment, some 'youths in Edwardian dress' referred to by a copper as Teddy boys, references to the off-beat generation as well as the beat generation, beatniks and sputniks, a Catholic priest coshed to death...it can't keep this up surely?

Salvaged from the Christie free-for-all thread. Remember liking this one but never did finish the poxy "review"

Agatha Christie - The Pale Horse (Fontana, 1977: originally Collins, 1961)

Tom Adams

Blurb:

The Pale Horse was a converted Tudor inn tucked away in an English village, inhabited by the local witch, a learned female occultist and an inane medium draped in saris and beads.

Mark Easterbrook might have dismissed them as three harmless fools – if he had not suspected that the house was the headquarters of a gang that specialised in the removal of rich, unwanted relatives ...

''Wholesale murder by black magic ... highly ingenious, wholly enjoyable.'' Evening Standard
''The set-up is brilliantly ingenious .. . one of Miss Christie's best books for some time.'' Daily Telegraph
"A really stunning conclusion, the finishing touch of the master hand." Scotsman

Whatever the Evening Standard critic had to say, what's the betting the witchy trio are merely self-deluded and the "black magic" angle a red herring, but the opening chapter, set in and around swinging Chelsea circa 1960 is fun. Mark Easterbrook, author and deep thinker, witnesses a fight in a coffee bar, two modish girls scrapping over a boyfriend. Shortly afterwards, he learns via The Times' obituary column that Thomasina 'Tommy' Tuckerton, 20, the participant who came off slightly the worse, is dead. Mark happens to mention the curious incident to his friend, Ariadne Oliver, the famous mystery author who is, as ever, struggling over a new novel. "Oh, Chelsea! everything happens there, I believe. Beatniks and sputniks and squares and the beat generation. I don't write about them because I'm afraid of getting the terms wrong. It's safer, I think, to stick to what you know." Ariadne wonders whether it is possible to kill someone by remote control, "black magic .... voodoo or juju," though "wax figures are right out." Mark isn't convinced, but that is before their excursion to Much Deeping for the village fete, where Mrs. Oliver has agreed to perform book-signing duties .....

Tom Adams (Fontana, 1964 edition)

Meanwhile, after a relatively sedate opening, The Pale Horse is building up a head of steam.

Late one night Father Gorman of St. Dunstans dutifully pays a home visit to a lapsed parishioner, Mrs. Davis, to hear her deathbed confession. Perturbed at what she tells him, Gorman notes down a list of names on a scrap of paper which he slips into his shoe. On leaving the premises, the Priest stops for a coffee at Tony's Place, whose clientèle include "boys of the Teddy Boy type." When, in the early hours, his corpse is discovered in the street, suspicion falls on the coshboys until an eyewitness exonerates them.

Shortly before leaving for the South coast with Mrs. Oliver, Mark Easterbrook learns of Father Gorman's list from his friend Corrigan the police surgeon, who notes that several of those mentioned are recently dead. Mark is clearly an easy man to confide in, as next Polly, a scatty beatnik girl he meets in a restaurant, lets slip that she knows of a group, the Pale Horse, who commit murder to order. When Mark visits her at her place of work, she comes over terrified and ushers him from the premises.

The church fete at Much Deeping is an unqualified success in that Ariadne Oliver flogs enough books to keep her sweet. At the subsequent party, Mark is informed by a fabulously rich and possibly slippery invalid named Venables that former inn The Pale Horse has recently been renovated and is now home to local witch, Thyrza Grey, and her partners in mumbo jumbo, Sybil Stamfordis, the bogus medium, and Bella Webb, black sorcerer, cook and general factotum. The Pale Horse - there's that name again! What can it all mean? Mark resolves to pay Thyrza a visit before returning to civilisation ....

[andydecker]

A great edition.

I came rather late to Christie and discovered to my surprise I liked a lot of her. I only sampled the classic Poirots, but watched most of the tv-adaptions. I am a die-hard fan of Suchet's Poirot and have it complete on DVD.

A Pale Horse was retooled into a Marple (2004). Quite interesting was the french adaption Les petits meurtres d'Agatha Christie which got rid of the classic characters and wrote a new story while retaining the plot.

[jamesdoig]

Mar 8, 2019 21:43:13 GMT andydecker said:

A great edition.

I came rather late to Christie and discovered to my surprise I liked a lot of her. I only sampled the classic Poirots, but watched most of the tv-adaptions. I am a die-hard fan of Suchet's Poirot and have it complete on DVD.

A Pale Horse was retooled into a Marple (2004). Quite interesting was the french adaption Les petits meurtres d'Agatha Christie which got rid of the classic characters and wrote a new story while retaining the plot.

My collecting disease probably started collecting those Fontana Christie paperbacks as a kid - I thought she was great back then, and you could pick them up in book exchanges for a few cents each. I like the Suchet series too - he was terrific. There was quite a bizarre 2018 BBC version of the ABC murders with John Malkovich as Poirot that was very dark - I thought at the time it was making some sort of comment on Brexit, but who knows.

[andydecker]

Mar 9, 2019 21:26:10 GMT jamesdoig said:

My collecting disease probably started collecting those Fontana Christie paperbacks as a kid - I thought she was great back then, and you could pick them up in book exchanges for a few cents each. I like the Suchet series too - he was terrific. There was quite a bizarre 2018 BBC version of the ABC murders with John Malkovich as Poirot that was very dark - I thought at the time it was making some sort of comment on Brexit, but who knows.

I am quite interested in this new Poirot. I kind of wondered that the BBC made a new one that early after the last Suchet.

But after the trainwreck with Action!Poirot in the form of Brannagh I guess it only can be better. I bought And then there were none and liked it a lot. I was really impressed with the adaption of And then. The plot became a template for so many movies and stories that it was surprising that they found some new twists. And they kept the downbeat ending which itself is remarkable.

[franklinmarsh]

Good calls, gents. Sarah Phelps has been doing an admirable job of taking the cosy Agatha stories and splattering blood and foul language all over the Beeb's Christmas schedules. Loved the 'proper' ending for And Then There Were None , and episode one of The ABC Murders was almost like an art horror film. Hopefully she'll play up the Occult bits of The Pale Horse, It's hilariously twee in parts, but we're gradually descending a darker staircase as intrepid Mark Easterbrook investigates the 'death list' and the three eccentric ladies (witches?) who inhabit ex-pub The Pale Horse.

[franklinmarsh]

Yipes. Dame Agatha's expertise at subverting the traditional murder mystery is beginning to infiltrate the narrative (Possible Spoilers). Just supposing these three potty old girls were a kind of Supernatural Murder Inc., able to bump people off by remote control, suggestion, invoking a subconscious death wish, like the old medicine men who could invoke fear within the tribe, telling someone they were about to die, and so it would take place? Who'd believe it in this (1961) day and age, particularly amongst sophisticated urban types? And there's nothing actually illegal about it, if you can't prove they were involved? Suppose they were running this like a macabre business, with a dodgy ex-lawyer inhabiting a turf accountant's office in Birmingham, where folks who need someone got rid of quickly can go and 'bet' that their relative is going to expire? Any hint of the occult and it would get laughed out of court. One of Mark Easterbrook's associates, the practical young lady known as Ginger, is all for helping him out, and finding out exactly how these witches assassinate their targets. But to do so, Mark is going to have to become one of their clients, and Ginge is going into the firing line...ulp!

[franklinmarsh]

After unbearable tension, a whacky boffo spooky 'seance' and poor Ginger beginning to suffer, it's full steam ahead for the rug-pulling reveal and the slightly disappointing Scooby-Doo finale. Most enjoyable. I was also a bit miffed that they didn't use 'the box' a bit more - some sort of stereogramme shaped apparatus that you bung a piece (hair, nails)or some property of the target into, that assists in sending the death rays (shurely life waves) towards the proposed victim. Reading up about this before, apparently these were real things - a bit of a craze in the 1950s, and one sent Evelyn Waugh nearly off his rocker, although booze and (presumably prescription) drugs didn't help - he fictionalised these events into The Ordeal Of Gilbert Pinfold.

[jamesdoig]

Tom Adams died on 17 Dec, the guy who did those great Fontana covers.

[andydecker]

Thanks for telling, James. This is sad.

All re-issues of Christie are so bland and have no imagination whatsoever. Boring, cheap covers.

Fontana had art.