The Mystery of Mrs Christie

 The Mystery of Mrs. Christie is still somewhat a mystery.  Though Marie Benedict has taken all the historical material and newspaper clippings of the time, and created a fascinating interpretation of the occurrence, there are still questions left unanswered in the end.

I have read Agatha Christie's writings about her life and biographies about her.  I have watched films about her disappearance and there is always a question at the end of what the real reason was for her disappearance.  Benedict has not found any new answer, but she has written an interesting interpretation of the situation that is slightly different.  Even knowing the story this was an entertaining interpretation.

Bringing us into Agatha Miller's life at the age of marriage, she is living with her mother and attending all the dances and coming out parties with her friends.  Marriage is the ultimate goal for girls in her social class.  At a one such visit for a party, she meets Archie Christie, a young pilot on leave from army who she finds intriguing. Their romance is conducted through the war years and though her mother does not endorse her relationship they marry.  

The reader gets an inside look at the everyday intimacy of Agatha and Archie's marital life. A rocky relationship that suffers through the ideas of how a marriage should work at that time.  Agatha's mother believes that to keep her marriage working Agatha should focus solely on Archie's happiness to the exclusion of other relationships.  She tries very hard to make him happy.  But possibly his own personal demons and the results of his war experience turn Archie into a different person than the man she thought she married.  

Again Marie Benedict has brought us a personal inside view of the woman she has focused her novel on.  Such a great way to dive inside the situations and personal lives of all these great icons of history.

Dear Miss Kopp

 Amy Stewart has taken on a difficult challenge and pulled it off with aplomb.  Writing a novel all in letters seems like a complicated way to write a plot.  In this novel the correspondence is mainly between the three Kopp sisters as each of them go off in different directions during World War One.  

This is the first time each of the three sisters are living apart and have all left their family farmhouse.   Constance is following true to form and has found work as a corrections officer for army.  She is sent on assignments mainly to route out Germans here in NJ and NY who may be working for Germany and against the United States.  Of course she does find trouble and her letters are between her and her superior officer explaining the case she is working on.  They are detailed letters that set out all the details of the exploits she encounters as she brings and an end corruption and justice prevails.

Constance also writes to Norma and Fleurette sharing information about her life and the life of their brother and his family.  Norma is off in France and trying to make her carrier pigeon program work for the War effort.  She writes short letters home, but her roommate is there to elaborate about the exciting innovations and award winning successes that Norma is having.  Between Norma and her roommate, Anna they also send letters telling of an encounter with a German spy who has been stealing medicine for the local field hospital to send to German soldiers in another area.  

Of course Fleurette is traveling around the United States, performing with a troupe of dancing girls to entertain the troops before they go off to battle in Europe.  She is using her talents to help the war effort.  She gets into some minor scrapes along the way.  She writes home with news, but the important information she has to share she does with her friend Helen.  Those letters detail the daily life of girls who really traveled around the country entertaining the troops.

Each of the Kopp sisters, though sharing letters that seem to be made up of their daily exploits are really also historic recounting of the life women were really living during the war.  They may not be exact details of the what the Kopp sisters were doing but they are actually what was happening to women during this time period.  So that adds to the interesting aspects of this novel. Again you are learning as you are reading and enjoying this complicated writing style of reading a novel written completely as letters.

The Red House Mystery

 A classic that has been sitting on my bookshelf for years.  I finally read it.  

It is a short fun closed room mystery.  The murder happens in a room that is allegedly locked and a young man happens along just as the door is being opened to find a murdered man lying on the floor.  It all happens at a English country house, where there is a limited pool of suspects and the young man decides to play the part of Sherlock Holmes and entreats his friend to play his Watson.  Together you follow them as they interview different people and walk the grounds of the estate to discover who the perpetrator is. 

The most interesting part of this book is that it is written by A.A. Milne, who later writes the Winnie the Pooh stories.  This was his first career, though not long lived. It turns out that Milne wanted to be a mystery writer and thought he would be good at it.  This book shows that he was clever and though I was really sure I knew who did it and how the crime was done, it was still satisfying to read all the way to the end to see how it would be explained at the end.  So maybe with a few more mysteries under his pen Milne could have been a great mystery author.  But as luck would have it, he started writing about Christopher Robin his young son and his stuffed bear, Winnie the Pooh and the friends in the Hundred Acre Wood and the rest is history, as they say.  So The Red House Mystery is the only book of this genre he ever wrote.

Florence Adler Swims Forever

 Rachel Beanland talks about her Grandmother's sister practicing to swim the English Channel in Atlantic City which was the impedance for writing this book.  This book seems to hit very close to home and is one of those times when I wish my mother was here to discuss and remind me of our family stories.

My mother and her siblings grew up in Atlantic City in the 1930s to 40s.  She lived there with her mother and a number of aunts and other relatives.  As a child we would travel south to visit an aunt who had stayed in Atlantic City and actually lived in an apartment building next door to the famous Knife and Fork restaurant.  We would walk along the Boardwalk, visiting Mr Peanut, Nathans and James Salt Water Taffy stores as regular stops.  Of course there was also the Steel Pier and other attractions that are also apart of the memories.  

This book spends its time following the characters to all these wonderful memories and to the beach.  It shows the history of segregation, of hotels that did not like the Jews and the separation of the the classes, wealthy and not separated by neighborhoods and towns.  The medical practices and ignorance of childbirth and also the religious and personal practices that may have led to family strife .  The frustration that feeling you should not talk about subjects within a family created divides and unhappiness that could have been avoided.

But the most fun part was finding out that young people in Atlantic City spoke ARP.  It was always fascinating to me when my mother and sister spoke ARP, a secret language like Pig Latin, between themselves so that the kids would not understand what they were talking about.  I did not realize that maybe it was an Atlantic City thing!  

A wonderful story that will really make you think and rethink the secrets you keep from your family.

The Thursday Murder Club

 Richard Osman has delivered an interesting new mystery novel.  The Thursday Murder Club is interesting because it is written from different perspectives and each of those characters speak in a different voice.  Osman has captured the essence of each character and their different personality and style very well.

The Thursday Murder Club is made up of four elderly members of the assisted living facility at Cooper's Chase.  This is a well equipped retirement community for those over 65 years of age, with many amenities including a restaurant with an extensive list of fine wines and good food.  Here the four main characters of our story carry on meetings for their Murder Club in the jigsaw room on Thursday nights.  Looking through old cold cases they try to solve unsolved murders for the fun of it, until someone is truly murdered who is connected to Cooper's Chase.  Now they make friends with the local police and in a bumbling manner get themselves involved in solving this real murder mystery.  

This book gets off to a very slow start and there are myriad of characters that were a little difficult to keep track of.  The book is well written and I did enjoy some of the prose, which I will offer my favorite quote here about the seasons, but very much also a double entrendre about aging and life.  "Summer is still keeping a lid on autumn , but it won't be long. How many more autumns for Elizabeth?  how many more years of slipping on a comfortable pair of boots and walking through the leaves? One day spring will come without her. The daffodils will always come up by the lake, but you won't always be there to see them."

Elizabeth, the leader of the Murder Club is on her way to confront the person she thinks is the killer.  As she joins her fellow club partners, Ron, Joyce and Ibrahim, thinking they have figured the puzzle out, Osman writes, " Elizabeth feels affinity with the late summer.  The leaves clinging gamely on,  the last hurrah of the heat, the odd trick still up its sleeve."  

So with one last trick and twist the mystery of Cooper's Chase is solved.  

Becoming

 Becoming is the book Michelle Obama published after she and Barak left the White House.  int he books he goes back to her childhood and sets the stage for her future as the first lady of the United States.  She talks about growing up in Chicago with her parents and her brother.  She had a large extended family who were close and spent family holidays and special occasions together.  

She was very bright and attended college and Law School. She talks about her mentors and her breaking into the field of law in Chicago.  She meets Barak at a law firm she is working at when he comes for a summer internship. as he is finishing law school.  They are colleagues first, then friends which leads to a romance.  She is very supportive of his initial political bids.  They start a family and Barak becomes more and more determined and successful in his political life.  

Michelle is very open about the life she lives, her pride in Barak and  her disappointments and  adjustments to living with him and their growing family.  There are a few incidents that she details in the book that I thought were quite intimate and I was surprised she shared.  But on the other hand she also shared so many of her accomplishments while in the White House, many I had not known about before I was amazed.  She was a powerful woman in her own right.  She was a fabulous first lady.  

The contrast from Michelle Obama as first lady to the next first lady are really starkly clear as you read this book.  I actually listened to this book and it was an added pleasure to listen to Michelle's voice reading her story.  It is interesting to listen to her accent and voice pattern as she is reading.