Wednesday, November 3, 2021

Book Review - Agatha Christie's The Sittaford Mystery

The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie
Published by: Harpercollins Pub Ltd
Publication Date: 1931
Format: Paperback, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Captain Trevelyan's life is about to come to an end because of money. A love of money is what led him to lease his house to Mrs. Willett and her daughter Violet and what led someone to sneak into his home in Exhampton and bludgeon him to death. Though there is something very odd about his death. Mrs. Willett, Violet, and four other people knew he died right when it happened, despite being in Sittaford and not Exhampton. Of course they couldn't believe it was true. Until later that is. It happened like this. Mrs. Willett, in an effort to get to know her new neighbors, invited over four of them for a party; Major Burnaby, Mr. Rycroft, Mr. Garfield, and Mr. Duke. Mr. Garfield suggested they play a game of table-turning. As the clock struck twenty-five minutes after the five o'clock hour a spirit announced that Captain Trevelyan had been murdered. His dear friend Major Burnaby, fearing for his friend's life, threw caution to the wind and trudged out into the blizzard ravaging Dartmoor. Six miles and two and a half hours later Captain Trevelyan is found dead by Major Burnaby, Doctor Warren, and the local constabulary. No one at the seance is obviously a suspect. Or are they? Time and circumstance would make you think not, but when money is involved sometimes the impossible is possible. Captain Trevelyan's heirs are the most likely suspects, especially his nephew James, who happened to be in Exhampton hoping to ask his uncle for a loan when the murder happened. James's fiancee Emily Trefusis knows that he is innocent, despite his subsequent arrest. Therefore she takes it upon herself to investigate Captain Trevelyan's murder with the help of a journalist who has taken a shine to her and is hoping that this case could be his big break. Will they find out who the murderer really is when everyone is acting suspicious and has secrets of their own they are trying to keep hidden? Much like the melting snow revealing the ground, the truth will be revealed not because of good old fashioned police work, but because of love.

I don't know if you're like me, but every once in a while I am desperate for a book with a good seance. Perhaps that is why I gravitate towards the Gothic genre, because if there's one thing you can be sure of it's a tad of table-turning. So this story starts for me back in 2019 when two events coincided perfectly. One was a friend of mine happened to mention they had just finished an Agatha Christie novel that had a seance. Two was my dearest friend in the world coming for a visit, and her visits include trips to numerous bookstores. I had obviously gotten the title of the book off the first friend and then when out with the second friend I found The Sittaford Mystery at Half Price Books. Last fall when I was packing up my books to move there were several I kept out because I wanted something good and Gothic to read for Halloween and The Sittaford Mystery happened to be one of them. Now, I'm not going to say that this book disappointed me, I enjoyed the murder and said seance very much. I enjoyed the killer cunningly prophesying the death by manipulation of said seance. I enjoyed a lot of it. The problem is this isn't a Halloween read, this is a Christmas read. The snowbound suspects is a dead giveaway. And yes, I know it's weird, but I also think that murder mysteries are Christmas reads... I don't know if it's being locked up with one's relatives or what, but yes, they are. So my advice is read this book in front of a roaring fire on a cold December day instead of a week before Halloween. And for those of you saying I should have been reading Christie's Hallowe'en Party, yeah, yeah, I could have, but I still remember who the killer is and I try to wait until I've forgotten to read them again. And as for The Hound of the Baskervilles references... it's not that I didn't catch them... I mean I kind of did... it's just that that story is so deliciously Gothic and this one is so decidedly not on the same level, that I didn't really think about it. This is a solid murder mystery, the Gothic trappings are nothing more than that, trappings. Just another red herring for us readers to ignore while trying to figure out whodunit!

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