The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie

Miss Marple again. I don't think I'm going to post anything else from my Agatha Christie readings. I don't really have that much to say, I think. This book was especially interesting, however, in how little Miss Marple was featured. She comes in more than halfway through and solves the crime almost completely off-stage (if you will).

The story begins with a scourge of dirty, accusing, false letters being sent around a small village. We don't get to read too many of them, because Christie is nothing if not decorous about nastiness. Of course, suicide and murder follow. A newcomer, recovering from an accident, gets tangled up in it and does a bit of bumbling/sleuthing. Village oddballs abound, as they always do. A love story is shoehorned in as well.

Why did I start reading it at all? Because I found that I couldn't read about smallpox on the train without getting sick.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

I only started reading Agatha Christie this spring because the Hong Kong airport had a special 3 for $10 (or the equivalent in HK$). I figured I could handle a mystery story on the neverending flight, which I began with my brain already mushy. And thus it began. I think The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is now the 10th Christie novel I've read (although only the second Poirot--I did Miss Marple).
So it turns out that The Murder is considered one of Christie's masterpieces. I'm hesitant to share too much of the plot (it is a mystery after all), but I am interested in the way it presages some of the Marple elements--gossipy spinsters who are smarter than the professionals, small towns are all the same, etc. Poirot is a bit annoying (not as lovably weird as I remember from The Mysterious Affair at Styles), but everyone else is delightfully stuffy. Christie seems to enjoy her female characters and making them kind of tough...but they are usually killers....