This months ‘Maidens of Murder’ book club choice is ‘The Seven Dials Mystery’. This was not a title that I was aware of but, as regular readers of the blog will know, I am always happy to give a Christie novel a go. It also seems fitting that I finished it on Agatha Christie’s birthday, which is a fitting tribute to the ‘Queen of Crime’s’ memory.<\/p>\n
I found this novel an absolute joy to read. It really reminded me of the novels of PG Wodehouse, as there was a humour and charm to this novel that resonated with me from the first page.<\/p>\n
This is not a novel that involves Poirot or Miss Marple, but instead Superintendent Battle (who appears in five of Christie’s novels). However, for me, other than his part in the big reveal that we\u00a0 all associate with Christie’s work, he is not the star of the story. This novel in fact has a wonderfully strong female lead in ‘Bundle’. A young (and fairly wealthy) lady who sees herself as a little bit of an amateur sleuth and ends up embroiled in the ‘Seven Dials Mystery’ when two young men from her social circle wind up dead.<\/p>\n
It is a beautifully crafted novel, as you would expect, but does read in a slightly different style to the Marples and Poirots I am used to. This made it even more appealing to me as it demonstrated that Christie is a consistently skilled writer but can make small adjustments to her style to keep the stories fresh.<\/p>\n
I absolutely can not wait to see what next month’s offering is as so far each title has reignited my love of Agatha Christie’s work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This months ‘Maidens of Murder’ book club choice is ‘The Seven Dials Mystery’. This was not a title that I was aware of but, as regular readers of the blog will know, I am always happy to give a Christie novel a go. It also seems fitting that I finished it on Agatha Christie’s birthday, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[216,187,181,305,330],"class_list":["post-721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-a-year-in-books-2018","tag-agatha-christie","tag-crime-fiction","tag-maidens-of-murder","tag-the-seven-dials-mystery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8jrc7-bD","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}