What are your favourite and least favourite Agatha Christie books?

[AlpacaTheBags]

I've yet to read all of her books but I'm starting to reread those that I do own.

I don't have a definite favourite yet but And Then There Were None, Nemesis, Why Didn't They Ask Evans, Halloween Party and Peril At End House are up there.

My least favourites are probably The Hollow and Elephants Can Remember. I can't even remember why I disliked them but I remember feeling very annoyed and disappointed when I read them. Hopefully I'll enjoy them more second time round.

Heresy, I know, but I actually like the first Tommy and Tuppence book a lot! Less so the later ones.

I really liked
Dumb witness
A murder is announced
Crooked house

I hated The concubine

My favourite is 4.50 from Paddington - partly because it's the first Agatha Christie I ever read, and partly because I think it embodies many classic Agatha Christie themes (and although a Miss Marple story she is not in it that much).

I like the Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express and And then there were none because they were (when I first read then) such a twist in terms of the plot/whodunnit.

In terms of ones I don't like most stuff that's not Miss Maple or Poirot. N or M comes to mind as one that was particularly tedious.

And the there were none. So clever.

I have a soft spot for Murder In Mespot (as my dad always called it) and I have his very old paperback version. In hindsight, the husband thing is a bit far fetched but I do still love it. I think the first ones I read as a child/early teenager have stayed with me as my nostalgic favourites even if they don't always stand up to much scrutiny!

Heresy here too as I love N or M (Tommy and tuppence)

Love cards on the table (but I like playing bridge), orient express and also liked body in the library.

Oh yes, Cards on the Table, fantastic! I don’t play bridge at all but still love it. Does knowing bridge really guide you towards the solution?

My least favourite are the ones which are too sad to be a comfort read, even though they're good: Pocket Full of Rye and The Mirror Cracked leap to mind.

I loathed Murder in Mesopotamia. So so far fetched - even by Christie's standards. As well as all the Poirot / Marple classics - evil under the sun, ABC murders, 4.50 from paddington, a murder is announced etc I have a soft spot for 'Murder on the Links' and 'death in the clouds ' (both Poirot) simply because these were amongst the first I read.

I've been reading my way through her entire collection (a friend bequeathed them to me and they are wonderful) and there are so many which I love:

The Mysterious Affair at Styles us probably my overall favourite - it totally blew me away when I first read it as a young teenager. The Thirteen Problems is my favourite Miss Marple as she's just fantastic in every story. Murder in Mesopotamia, ridiculous but fabulous. After the Funeral is also ridiculous for similar reasons but I really enjoy it. Also, any where the Sargeant/inspector etc etc Battle rocks up - always great.

I'm not a fan of the spy ones especially and actively dislike the more supernatural type like The Mysterious Mr Quin.

But I can happily read any and all of them - her books are such a comfort and yet always surprise. Love them!

I was wondering about that the other day. It’s one of my favourite old reliables, and has been for yonks, but I still have to take Hercule’s word for it about the scoring.

I love reading, I read a book every other week. Despite this and despite absolutely loving the AG tv adaptations, I struggle with her actual novels. I have read a couple and didn't feel very engaged or feel that the characters were really coming off the page. I am going to continue with trying them though so any suggestions for the next time I decide to read one will be gratefully received!

I love Crooked House, Towards Zero and Ordeal By Innocence. I think they're psychologically fascinating.

The ABC Murders and And Then There Were None are probably my favourites. Masterful plotting. Also love 4.50 to Paddington, Body in the Library, and A Murder is Announced.

The Pale Horse, Sleeping Murder and Nemesis are genuinely very creepy and scary.

I recently read Dead Man's Folly which is the stupidest book ever. Like I have to rant about how frustratingly stupid it is.

S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

You fake your own death and adopt a new identity after going AWOL during the war. Do you?
a) Start afresh in a new area and avoid anyone who knew you in your previous life.
b) Move back into your old house, in the village you grew up in, move your own mum in with you pretending you're just a random stranger who bought her house and hit it off so well you invited her to continue living there with you, and just sort of cross your fingers that not one person out of an entire village of people you grew up with, who you now see every single day, recognises you.

Your wife's distant cousin who she met once when she was 14 is making a brief visit to England, but you murdered your wife on your wedding day and your mistress has been impersonating her ever since. What do you do to avoid him recognising her as an imposter?
a) Just pretend your wife is sick or been called away to avoid them meeting.
b) Get your wife to wear loads of makeup and a big hat, and assume he won't think it's suspicious that a glam wealthy 30-something society wife looks different from how she did as a gawky impoverished teenager.
c) Fake your wife's murder, launch a huge criminal investigation, then murder several witnesses, just to keep them from meeting.

You've faked your own murder. What do you do?
a) Get outta town asap.
b) Put on a headscarf and spend days roaming around your village and even your own house pretending to be a foreign backpacking student, for literally no reason, safe in the knowledge that even your nearest and dearest won't recognise you due to the cunning disguise of wearing a headscarf.

You are a legendary detective, called because someone is convinced there'll be a murder. A young girl loudly announces to you, in front of a huge crowd, that her grandad said he found a dead woman's body in the woods which then vanished. Do you:
a) Make sure the girl is safe from anyone who might have overheard, then talk to the granddad.
b) Completely ignore her and then forget the entire conversation 5 minutes later, and don't even remember that she told you about a murder even after she herself is murdered almost immediately after your conversation.

Agatha uses a substitute as a plot point several times.

This is a plot point of A Murder is Announced, and it's reasonable there (an impoverished woman impersonates her heiress sister after the sister died of natural causes, a friend who was the only person who knew both sisters is told about the impersonation, but then the friend gets elderly and her mind starts to go, meaning she becomes a threat...) The book is also quite heart-breaking, in its portrayal of old age and poverty. The woman who decided to impersonate her sister had good intentions, she wanted to rescue the friend from spending her elderly years in extreme poverty and hunger.

A reoccurring plot point is that someone knows a secret about someone else, they make one odd comment, and the person whose secret it is decides to kill them when if they'd just ignored it, no one would have paid any attention to the fact a random scatty elderly person sometimes calls their friend by the name of her dead sister.

It's the whole Rodion Raskolnikov, Tell-Tale Heart thing: the guilty conscience. In reality no one blinks if someone uses the wrong name or says something that's bit wrong or odd, they certainly don't think "Hmm that person just called Jane, Sarah, that means they're really Sarah and must have murdered Jane and stole her identity!" But it's richer psychologically to see people hoisted by their own petard.

It's a shame that the ending to Murder in Mesopotamia was so ridiculous as the characters were excellent. Some slightly 'yeesh' moment with the descriptions of Iraqi people. Although I have been told that this racism is intentional on Agatha's part to mock those attitudes, that doesn't especially come across.

I recommend the extensive archives of the lovely ‘All About Agatha’ podcast which goes through each novel and short story in intensely geeky detail. Tragically, one of the hosts, Catherine Brobeck, died suddenly last November.

Too hard to pick an absolute favourite! Maybe And Then There Were None, but also love Five Little pigs, Sad Cypress, Cards on the Table, Towards Zero. Not keen on the spy capers and I’ve never managed to finish The Seven Dials mystery, just too tedious.
I loved listening to All About Agatha, and was so shocked when Catherine died.

Heresy, I know, but I actually like the first Tommy and Tuppence book a lot!

I like Secret Adversary too. I like the way Agatha uses the real life situation at the end of the First World War as the starting point, when so many young men and women were leaving the services/their war work and trying to make their way in civilian life. A really interesting and little done setting. A tv adaptation could have done a lot with it; I was so disappointed when the most recent Tommy and Tuppence series abandoned it entirely.

I'm reading N or M now, and I've just realised that something about the child Betty that I've always thought was just part of Agatha's general description of a toddler, was actually a plot point.

I think some of the books are better read at different stages of one's life; the standalone adventures with intrepid young women heroines, such as The Man in the Brown Suit and They Came to Baghdad are possibly best to read first as a young teenager.

My favourite is The ABC Murders.

Really like sone of the short stories (although maybe that's because of the tv versions?)

Third Floor Flat
Problem at Sea
Murder in the Mews
The Clapham Cook

being ones in especially liked.

Tend to be lukewarm on some of the later ones (often moaning about housing estates) etc where she probably felt a bit out of her time. To me Agatha Christie atmosphere is large country houses and families, steam trains etc.

The ones set in the 1960s are a little odd. She makes a point of saying how all the girls wear weird clothes and don't brush their hair and take pills and exclusively hang around in "coffee shops" in Chelsea (when they aren't selfishly getting themselves murdered in genteel villages).

The Hollow is my absolute fave! My heart is so in sync with the girl who just wants to be taken away from the strife of working life and have tea brought up in the morning…

Entirely agree with you about not being keen on the later books - I want breakfasts being laid out on the sideboards at country house weekends, gas lamps, underhousemaids and 1930's slang!

I'm surprised to hear that people don't like the Tommy and Tuppence books! They're some of my favourites! We're currently listening to N or M on audio book.

I like quite a lot of them but off the top of my head - Nemesis, At Bertram's Hotel, The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

Don't like Death in the Clouds - far too obvious and the edition I have actually has the killer on the cover!

Not a fan of the 'woo' Parker Payne/Harlequin books - just too odd.

Not a fan of Crooked House.

My absolute favourite is The Moving Finger. The characters are unusually well developed and the transformation of Megan is lovely! I also really rate Crooked House, The Hollow, Cards on the Table and Death on the Nile. Endless Night is superb.

Having said all that, I still rate her autobiography above her novels. Her life was so interesting and she describes it in fascinating detail.

Thank you to the pp who mentioned that podcast, I have many happy hours of listening ahead.

I didn't like a lot of the Miss Marple books when I was younger - I thought there was too much taking of tea and people wandering round villages with nothing much happening (other than people being murdered of course).

Now I really like them precisely because of the time people spend taking tea and wandering round villages with not much happening. Actually the murder sometimes just gets in the way of the village life descriptions.