I have 74 Agatha Christies!

[EccentricaGallumbits]

Hurrah!

Just bought a box of 30 from ebay for a tenner - 24 of which I haven't read yet.

So which is he best?

I was incredibly lucky to meet Joan Hickson many years ago, the BBC filmed part of The Moving Finger in the kitchen of my parents farmhouse. I wont say which scenes in case some people havent read the books. She was a lovely lady who told me what a super dog i had!!!

David Suchet is the closest physical representation of Hercule Poirot that I have seen. The only real difference is that he does not have the emerald green eyes as far as I can tell and he is taller than 5 foot 4 inches. Otherwise he looks almost exactly as Christie describes Poirot.
Joan Hickson was believed by Christie to be perfect for the role of Miss Marple (though I'm pretty sure Christie had died before this was actually achieved) after Christie had seen Hickson in a play. She does look very ideal for the part, combining the right amount of fluffiness and sharpness. The worst one was Margaret Rutherford.

bullet, do you write a synopsis as you read or have you read them all loads of times?

Read the vast majority of them loads of times. Only one that I have definitely only read once was Curtain, which I hated for obvious reasons and about four or five I've only read a couple of times.

I am really jealous of the collection. I have read 60 or so but only have a paltry 6 or so. Fortunately they are ALWAYS in the library. They had 'Man in a Brown Suit' and I got that last, amazed they had something I hadn't read.
Top ebay bargain

I like the Margaret Rutherford miss Marples, though she bears no resemblance [sp] to the Miss Marple in the book ( Joan Hickson is perfect), I think the stories hold up and her Miss Marple is a very good character in herself.

The new Marples with Julia Mckenzie are dreadful, I fee she is good but the muck around with the stories too much and ruin them. iw ish they'd realise we don't care that we know who id it and all the twist and red herrings, we just want it to look like we imagine it when we read the books, we don't need new twist or additional characters to 'improve' it.

Five Little Pigs

Elephants can Remember

I like ones that deal with times long ago, so then, I'll have to add "Nemesis".

Of the nursery rhyme ones I'd say "Mrs McGinty's Dead" is the best.

I like Miss Marple as she talks about "evil" on a regular basis and her murderers really are evil.

Oh, which is the book where a character says "it's cold in the hall" and someone replies "nonesense, it's 58 degrees" (Farenheit!) ?!...which gives you some idea of how cold houses were in the early part of the 20th century.

Dammit Miggsie, just read your post and that quote is going to annoy me until I remember. I can "see" them saying it, convinced the "nonsense" would be Tuppence, but really that's because she's the sort of character who would say "nonsense". At any rate I'm thinking of a female and a youngish one.
I'll wrack my brains and come back when I've either remembered or have had a hunch confirmed by checking in one of my books.

Sleepiong Murder is my favourite

and Nemesis, and Lord Edgeware Dies

Ok, I checked where I thought it was in Partners in Crime and it wasn't and nor was it "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding" at the start or the bit in "A Murder is Announced."
So I am going to take the logical path and read through all the Christie stories I have because I've either read it or something very similar. I'll start tomorrow.
Is there anything else you can remember, eg any descriptions of clothes worn or drinks consumed or something like that?

They never explain why she's called Bundle from Eleanor either, apart from name given when she was a baby.
Bundle's good, the character of Frankie in Why Didn't They Ask Evans? reminds me quite strongly of her, as does Prudence Beresford (Tuppence).

That sounds like Mrs McGinty's Dead or Ordeal by Innocence StewieGriffinsMom. I know the one you mean, she keeps getting the cooking messed up and, I'm sorry, but is nothing like Bundle.

Yes. Mrs McGinty's Dead. Mrs and Major Summerhayes.

One more Poirot to add to your list, bullet - Taken at the Flood. Gordon Cloade marries a young widow, Rosaleen & then dies in an air raid before he can make a will to provide for his relatives, who have all been depending on him. But there are rumours that Rosaleen's first husband is not dead after all....

I have just downloaded the book about Agatha Christie's notebooks on Kindle - it has a couple of previously unpublished Poirot stories - one the original version of the last Labours of Hercules story, which apparently the Strand Magazine refused to publish and the other 'The incident of the dog's ball' which bears the same kind of relationship to 'Dumb Witness' as 'The Plymouth Express' does to 'the Mystery of the Blue Train'

I thought I remembered the 58 Fahrenheit bit in the Hollow, but it's not quite the same - John Christow tells off his daughter for sniffing and says it's 'heat sneeze'
HIs son says "It's not hot, the thermometer in the hall is 55"

That sounds likely to be that one then RustyBear.
Thanks for pointing out Taken at the Flood. I should have included it between The Labours of Hercules and Mrs McGinty's Dead, so was obviously going crosseyed at that point. I didn't really like the story, all the talk about high levels of taxation and how Rosaleen had to pay 19 shillings out of every pound in taxation and then one of the female characters says something along the lines of how dreadful taxation is nowadays just summed up the whole utter bleakness of a large part of the story.

No, Bundle came across as more organised and resourceful. She's similar I suppose in that they've both got a devil may care attitude in many ways, but Bundle would cope, whereas Mrs Summerhayes seems to be more muddling along. I can hear Bundle in some of the words though, for example when she says "dunning" near the start. For some odd reason I'd picture Mrs Summerhayes as being more like Flora in The Murder of Roger Acroyd, even though Flora was a lot more spoiled than she was.

Just realised I never wrote down the Tommy and Tuppence ones.

"The Secret Adversary". Published in either 1920 or 1922 (sorry, forgot which one) this introduces us to Tommy and Tuppence. Opening scene is 1915 and the sinking of the Lusitania, then skips to the "present". Tommy and Tuppence are very young, combined ages of 45 and we learn in Partners in Crime that Tommy is older. Good story, very much an adventure as well as a detective story.

"Partners in Crime" a collection of short stories published about 1929 and which send up many of the popular fictional detectives of the early twentieth century and late nineteenth century. Usually by Tommy emulating them. Lighthearted reading and The Gentleman dressed in Newspaper bears similarities with The Affair at the Victory Ball.

"N OR M" A wartime Tommy and Tuppence. Reasonable, they're investigating a Nazi spy, though Tuppence is doing so undercover as has been ordered by their bosses not to get involved.

"By the Pricking of my Thumbs". Good, rather chilling and one of those cases where the roots of it are buried in the past.

"Postern of Fate". Probably the last story that Christie wrote, but no indication she intended it to be the last Tommy and Tuppence story. Quite poor to be honest.

I should have said of course that Tuppence is also very much like Bundle Brent. The logical conclusion would be that Tommy would be equivalent to Bill Eversleigh, but whilst Bill describes himself as "not such an ass as you think me" (think I'm paraphrasing a bit there), Tommy comes across from the start as being a bit more together, though still prone to acting recklessly at times.

My fave Miss Marple is The 4.05 from Paddington. Nemesis is also quite good as is A Caribbean Mystery.

Fave Poirot is Murder on the Orient Express.

I really love the four books that make up the 1950s collection - They Came from Baghdad, Destination Unknown, Ordeal by Innocence and The Pale Horse.

Love Agatha Christie. Have spent the last year trying to read them all - a combination of bought and borrowed. Still not finished.

I really liked, The Murder of Roger Acroyd, Destination Unknown and They Came to Baghdad.

Oh and the TV version of Sad Cypress was good too.