'Peril at End House' by Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot is vacationing on the Cornish coast when he meets Nick Buckley. Nick is the young and reckless mistress of End House, an imposing structure perched on the rocky cliffs of St. Loo.

Poirot quickly takes a particular interest in the young woman. Recently, she has narrowly escaped a series of life-threatening accidents. Something tells the Belgian sleuth that these so-called accidents are more than just mere coincidences or a spate of bad luck. Something like a bullet! It seems all too clear to him that someone is trying to do away with poor Nick, but who? And, what is the motive? In his quest for answers, Poirot must delve into the dark history of End House. The deeper he gets into his investigation, the more certain he is that the killer will soon strike again. And, this time, Nick may not escape with her life.

MY THOUGHTS:

We're back with Poirot at his most egotistical, never missing a chance to sing his own praises.

The story is narrated by his sidekick, Captain Hastings. The pair of them are staying at the Majestic Hotel in the Cornish seaside town of St. Loo. Poirot is adamant that he wants to retire from private investigation, yet even as he speaks, a furtive bullet is fired at a pretty girl who strolls past their verandah. She informs them it's the fourth time she's experienced a near miss within a short period of time. The young lady is Miss Nick Buckley, the owner of the ramshackle End House, which stands alone on a promontory overlooking the sea. Her plight is enough to entice Poirot to re-think his decision. 

Who could possibly want to kill this charming and bubbly young woman, whose property is worth nothing substantial? Poirot is certain that whatever the motive, it must be deeply hidden or else the crook wouldn't take such brazen risks in broad daylight. 

There are Australian characters in this book; a middle aged husband and wife duo named Bert and Milly Croft, who rent a small lodge on Nick's property. The bunging on of their Aussie colloquialisms is cringeworthy. Bert refers to Poirot as a 'bonza detective,' and says, 'I think neighbours should be matey, don't you?' And he always summons his invalid wife with a 'Cooee.' Even Poirot muses that they might be just a shade too typical for their culture. So the question becomes whether Agatha Christie is making them so overdrawn for a reason. I certainly hoped so, because that's easier to swallow than so many other international authors who overdo our Aussie persona accidentally.

Poirot often refers to Hastings' 'slightly mediocre mind,' which irritates but never outright offends his best friend, since they know each other too well. At one stage, Poirot chastises himself, asking, 'What good is it to be Hercule Poirot, with grey cells of a finer quality than other people's, if you don't manage to do what ordinary people cannot?' And Hastings simply reflects, with an inner eye roll, 'Poirot's self-abasement is astonishingly like other people's conceit.' 

There's another amusing incident in which Hastings lists Poirot's OCD qualities, such as toast that has to be made from square loaves, eggs matching in size and his objection to golf as a shapeless and haphazard game. 

My biggest problem with this mystery is that I sadly figured out the villain around the halfway point! Yep, for once I guessed the criminal and their motive before the brilliant Hercule Poirot twigged. Maybe Dame Agatha was too heavy-handed with her clues this time. Or perhaps I need to have an even longer break between reading her books. It's hard to say. It took the wind out of my sails when I noticed a glaring red flag. I prefer it by far when I don't guess, or at least not so easily, because unlike Poirot, my grey matter is not such fine calibre, so I look forward to the satisfaction of being surprised. Because I wasn't this time, and also because of the annoying Croft couple and Poirot being irritatingly smug, this one is not a three star read for me.

Dame Agatha has the occasional misses. To me, this is one of them.  

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'Longbourn' by Jo Baker

Having just finished writing a fan fiction of my own, I thought I'd like to read more fan fiction by others. 

MY THOUGHTS:

The titular setting is the legendary home in Pride and Prejudice where two radically different lifestyles orbit along together. The mismatched Bennet parents and their five daughters are, of course, well known by generations of readers. Jo Baker now decides to reveal the tale of their servants, who deal with the unmentionable but vital aspects of keeping life functioning smoothly. These five know full well that their security depends upon the caprice of their employers.   

Baker's author blurb informs us that her own forebears had been employed in service, so she knows full well that instead of attending the Netherfield ball she would have stayed home with the washing up. My ancestry is equally humble, so I found this story to be revealing and significant from the get go. 

Our main character is a young housemaid named Sarah, who works under Mrs and Mr Hill, the housekeeper, and butler. There is also Polly, a pert adolescent maid who is learning on the job. One day the Bennets hire a new young footman named James, who Sarah suspects of concealing some secret. It turns out James has far more to hide than he's even aware of himself.

Meanwhile, Sarah's fascination is stirred by a freed slave turned servant named Ptolemy, who works on Mr Bingley's estate. She's attracted to Tol's sprightliness and the wider world he represents, yet something about the mysterious and evasive behavior of James also intrigues her. I love how this romance, in all it's everyday, sometimes sordid routine, plays out against that more famous plot that we all know so well. 

The Bennets, their neighbors and all other familiar characters are totally true to canon, yet we're offered deeper, richer ways of understanding them, since we now see them as their underlings do. For example, it takes an insightful helper like Sarah to sense that Elizabeth's new married life isn't totally angst free, as she adjusts to the expectations of being mistress of such an intimidating address as Pemberley. 

After forming my own thoughts, I turned to other reviews, expecting a bit of flak, for Jane Austen's most devoted fans tend to deify her and consider her work untouchable. Yet I was stunned nonetheless by the sheer volume of cutting and unkind reviews of one and two stars on Goodreads. Holy moly! I guess Jo Baker must've known she was prodding a sacred cow. What amazed me most was the vitriolic content of some of these reviews, because these reactive people might've been reading a totally different book to me!

Some called it humorless compared to the great Jane Austen, yet to me it brimmed with wry observations that kept me grinning. How ironic that the same people who complain of no humour evidently take Pride and Prejudice extremely seriously. 

Others call Sarah a whinger, yet I considered her to be wise, astute, and far more gracious than some of those big-nobs deserved. I suspect some of the disgruntled readers resent Sarah's insights into sides of their favourite characters they refuse to acknowledge. Apparently suggesting that Darcy comes across as a granite block in the eyes of the working class, or that Lizzy is somewhat preoccupied and insensitive to her servant's priorities is a crime to some. And heaven forbid that anyone should feel sympathy for Collins (that easy-to-please young man) or Lydia (merely a child seduced by a master manipulator). 

Come on peeps, Pride and Prejudice is a novel, not a sacred text! Please don't be so blinkered about the sanctity of your favourite characters that you resist an opportunity to see how they may come across to others! I suspect those who do so might be the sort of readers who also resist real life revelations about themselves. This book is a refreshing invitation to expand our outlooks, and it's sad to see that so many diehard Janeites refuse to take it as such.

Some reviewers object to the TMI (too much information) factor in passages such as this. 

'The young ladies might behave like they were smooth and sealed as alabaster statues underneath their clothes, but then they would drop their soiled shifts on the bedchamber floor to be whisked away and cleansed, and would thus reveal themselves to be the frail, leaking, forked bodily creatures they really were. Perhaps that was why they spoke instructions at her over an embroidery hoop or over the top of a book: she had scrubbed away their sweat, their stains, their monthly blood; she knew they weren't as rarified as angels and so they just couldn't look her in the eye.' 

I get that this sort of straight talk isn't everyone's jam. Since this particular description occurs on the second page of the story, it's an early invitation for the squeamish to instantly abandon the book rather than read the whole thing and then slam it. I think stark realism like this is handy for revealing the disingenuous quality of the nineteenth century when facts of life were routinely swept beneath the carpet.

One particular plot twist (which I can't spoil here) inevitably causes some readers' hackles to rise. They insist, 'It's because Jane Austen herself didn't write it in.' Hmm, perhaps she simply didn't know about it. Even I object to the type of fan fiction that contradicts and changes canon, but Longbourn doesn't do this. The skeleton in the closet which I'm skirting around is consistent with Austen's unfolding of events. Baker never once destroys the Pride and Prejudice canvas, but merely offers us a broader vista from which to view it. 

So after my rant about the ranters, my final verdict is that I loved this story for its boldness and its beautiful imagery. As far as Pride and Prejudice spin-offs go, it's a winner in my opinion. Now, some reckless soul should write a novel depicting Wickham as the put-upon and misunderstood young man he presented himself as being. Not because I admire him, which I certainly don't, but because it would be interesting to watch the fur and feathers fly. 

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