Saturday, March 30, 2013

The Emperor's Snuff Box by John Dickson Carr

Beautiful Eve Neill has fought a bitter divorce battle with her ex husband Ned Atwood, Eve is now free and living in a villa in France. Ned, the insolent, handsome devil is out of her life. She can now focus her attention on Toby Lawes, Toby is the stiff shirt son of Sir Maurice Lawes who with his family live in the villa opposite to Eve's. Senior Lawes has an interest in collecting precious antique objects, and maintains them in a room on the first floor.

All is going well, Toby has proposed marriage to Eve and Toby's family i.e. his father, mother, sister and Uncle have started accepting her as part of the family. Nobody is interested in Eve's past, and she is slowly recovering from the shadows of Ned Atwood.

But Alas, word has reached Ned that her ex plans to remarry.  Ned, who still has a spare key to Eve's villa trespasses and confronts his ex wife in the middle of the night. Eve is dumbstruck, just when her life was getting back on track, her husband has come back to derail it.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Parker Pyne Investigates by Agatha Christie

Are you unhappy? then contact Parker Pyne. This is what the advertisement reads in the Times and if you believe Christie people actually do contact Pyne, Pyne deals especially with matters of the heart. Unfaithful wife/husband, boredom, murder, Pyne will relinquish your worries and make you happy again. The book comprises of a series of short stories in which Pyne deals with his client's troubles, for which the portly fellow charges a fee. Parker employs a writer, a seductress and a lounge lizard among other staff. Pyne who worked in the records department is now retired and runs his detective agency.

Parker Pyne also travels the world and like his more famous counterpart "Hercule Poirot" gets involved in one case after another, although the former is much more mundane then the colorful Poirot. There are a total of 12 stories in this anthology  but I'm not going to review all the 12 stories and do more of a generic review. One reason behind doing this is that all the stories are quite alike and have nothing so special as to warrant a review for each.

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