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Agatha Christie – The Murder at the Vicarage| Review

Title: The Murder at the Vicarage

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 192

Rating: 4/5

I was automatically a little bit biased in favour towards this one because it’s a Miss Marple book and I’ve always preferred Marple over Poirot. In fact, I think it’s the only Marple book that I’d never read, although I couldn’t swear to that, and indeed I thought I’d already read them all. Because of that, it was like going back to meet up with an old friend.

But on top of that, it’s just a cracking little murder mystery with a lot to offer the reader. In particular, I loved the vicarage as the setting, and I loved Jane Marple being a badass and poking her nose into places where she risked it being chopped off. It’s what she’s best at, and it was delightfully entertaining here.

So would I recommend it? Yeah, for sure, even if you just happen to spot a copy of it going spare in a second hand shop. If you want to, feel free to track it down, ‘cause it’s worth it.

Learn more about The Murder at the Vicarage.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The White Company | Review

Title: The White Company

Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 338

Rating: 3/5

This is some more of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s historic fiction, but unfortunately I didn’t quite find it as gripping as his Brigadier Gerard stories. I liked the accuracy and the research that he’d put in clearly comes across, but the plot itself wasn’t quite as gripping, perhaps because Sir Nigel Loring is less gripping than Gerard was. And both are pretty much standard old school colonialist types fighting for queen and country, which I can’t exactly relate to.

As you might expect from the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the plotting and the pacing was pretty good. Some of the dialogue was questionable because he spent a lot of time trying to imitate dialects etc, but overall it was readable enough. If anything, it was more the setting and the characters that held me back from loving it, although I did appreciate it for what it is.

There’s always something kind of fascinating about reading historical fiction that itself is historical, and I’ve always thought it was kind of cool that as well as writing the Holmes books, Conan Doyle also wrote The Lost World (a cracking read) and some historical fiction. Let’s just not talk about when he started to believe in fairies and stuff.

So this isn’t really something for the general reader, and it’s probably best avoided if you only know of Conan Doyle because of Holmes. If you’re a long-term fan and want to delve deeper into his work though, or if you’re particularly interested in historical fiction, it might be worth checking out.

For my part, I’m glad I read it, but I’m also glad that I read it as a bedtime book and so I didn’t have to spend huge chunks of time with it. I could dip in and out at will, often reading chapters instead of entire stories, so there was plenty there to enjoy – just over time.

Learn more about The White Company.