The Sittaford Mystery (1931)
(in America as Murder at Hazelmoor)
Blurb:
My review:
One of Christie's least-known books—and surprisingly good. The traditional setting of a snow-bound English village is very well-done, and shows Christie's ability to handle place and weather. The detection is performed by the young amateur detectives Emily Trefusis (engaged to the innocent but good-for-nothing young man arrested for his uncle's murder, who doesn't deserve her in the slightest) and the journalist Charles Enderby, a pair much more successfully handled than the garishly "Bright Young Things" Tommy and Tuppence; the amateur detection is similar to that of Christie's later Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (1934), G.D.H. & M. Cole's The Murder at Crome House (1927), and Cyril Hare's Suicide Excepted (1939), although the enquiries into train time-tables recall the unspeakable Freeman Wills Crofts. The characterisation boasts such gems as the domineering spinster Miss Percehouse, the invalid Captain Wyatt (who shoots real or imaginary cats, and is most likely based on Christie's brother Monty), and the powerful Mrs. Gardener, the victim's sister, whose life is revealed to be an illusion: a deft if very un-Christieish piece of pessimism. The supernatural, a rare element in Christie's work and one which she always handles well, comes in the form of the opening séance, leading to some good atmospheric pieces. The plotting is excellent, with a good spread of suspicion and equally good misdirection, although the fact that everyone in the village is (in)directly related to the victim is rather improbable; and even the escaped convict (clearly intended as a reference to Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles) is well-done. What holds this book back from a place in the first rank is the insufficiency of motive.