Announcing Crime Fiction Alphabet for 2012

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction - a Community Meme.

This meme was run first on this blog in 2009-2010 and was re-run in 2011.

Here are the rules

By Friday of each week participants try to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.

Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book's title, the first letter of an author's first name, or the first letter of the author's surname, or even maybe a crime fiction "topic". But above all, it has to be crime fiction.
So you see you have lots of choice.
You could write a review, or a bio of an author, so long as it fits the rules somehow.
(It is ok too to skip a week.)
You probably won't have to do a lot of extra reading in order to participate, but I warn you that your TBR  may grow as a result of the suggestions other participants make.

Your assistance in advertising this community meme in the next few weeks, and pointing people to this page, would be very much appreciated.

Each Friday I will post a Mr Linky so that participants can add their post title and URL.
If you'd like to sign up (this is optional) then use the Mr Linky at the bottom of this post.

Check the Crime Fiction Alphabet page for summaries of previous years.

Here is this year's schedule: showing

• the date that the week's page will be posted and 
• the letter of the week.

Monday, 21 May 2012    A
Monday, 28 May 2012    B
Monday, 4 June 2012    C
Monday, 11 June 2012    D
Monday, 18 June 2012    E
Monday, 25 June 2012    F
Monday, 2 July 2012    G
Monday, 9 July 2012    H
Monday, 16 July 2012    I
Monday, 23 July 2012    J
Monday, 30 July 2012    K
Monday, 6 August 2012    L
Monday, 13 August 2012    M
Monday, 20 August 2012    N
Monday, 27 August 2012    O
Monday, 3 September 2012    P
Monday, 10 September 2012    Q
Monday, 17 September 2012    R
Monday, 24 September 2012    S
Monday, 1 October 2012    T
Monday, 8 October 2012    U
Monday, 15 October 2012    V
Monday, 22 October 2012    W
Monday, 29 October 2012    X
Monday, 5 November 2012    Y
Monday, 12 November 2012    Z
Monday, 19 November 2012    summary

Thanks for participating.

---

Review: GONE, Mo Hayder

• Format: Kindle
• File Size: 604 KB
• Print Length: 415 pages
• Publisher: Transworld Digital (March 2, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003ARUTQ0
• Source: I bought it
• #5 in the Jack Caffery series

 Synopsis (Amazon)


Night is falling as murder detective Jack Caffrey arrives to interview the distraught victim of a car-jacking. What he hears horrifies him. The car was taken by force, and on the back seat was a passenger. An eleven-year-old girl. Who is still missing. Before long the jacker starts to communicate with the police. And Caffrey becomes certain that he is planning to take another car. And another child. Who is the car-jacker? How is he choosing his targets? And - most urgent of all - can Caffrey find the child? Before it’s too late …

Jack Caffery (from Fantastic Fiction)
1. Birdman (1999)
2. The Treatment (2001)
3. Ritual (2008)
4. Skin (2009)
5. Gone (2010)

My take

This book had me on the edge of my seat as it raced towards its conclusion. There aren't many books that have done that to me recently.

I have read an earlier title in the series recently  (RITUAL) and I remember being gobsmacked by BIRDMAN long before I began blogging. Now I'm going to go looking for the two that I have missed reading, THE TREATMENT and SKIN.

Detective Inspector Jack Caffery of Bristol's Major Crime Investigation Unit is an impressive very believable character. He has spent 18 years with the Murder Squad and his investigations are marked with thoroughness. Unfortunately those who work for him don't always think outside the square. There are two other interesting characters in the series: police diver Sergeant Flea Marley and a vagrant whom the locals call the Walking Man. Caffery and the Walking Man are connected because both have a close relative who disappeared when young.

The kidnapping of a child is always a traumatic subject and we see the cases in GONE both from the police point of view as they desperately search for clues, and from the parent's points of view as they try to come to terms with what has happened. There's a little touch of the paranormal in a couple of places, but who knows where inspiration and intuition comes from?

This was an excellent read, one of my best so far this year.

My rating: 5.0

GONE has been shortlisted for Best Novel in this year's Edgar Awards.

• Explore Mo Hayder's own website
• Check Petrona's review 
• Michelle's review on EuroCrime 

Reviews of Mo Hayder titles in MiP
PIG ISLAND
RITUAL

Monthly Agatha Christie Blog Carnival launches new format

For a few months now the monthly Agatha Christie Blog Carnival has been having item collection problems caused by the unreliability of the Blog Carnival collecting site.

Today we have converted over to using a Mr Linky similar to the one which I use for Crime Fiction Alphabet and Pick of the Month.

This means that the monthly blog carnival will be open all month.
You can see the March Blog Carnival here

Forgotten Book: THE AMBASSADOR, Morris West

For many of my contributions this year to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books I am going to focus on the books I read 20 years ago in 1992. By then my reading diet was almost exclusively crime fiction.

But there are always exceptions to the rule and today's Forgotten Book is one of those. I remember West as being immensely popular. Wikipedia says that his books were published in 27 languages and sold more than 60 million copies worldwide.

THE AMBASSADOR is an illustration of the fact that 20 years ago many of my reading choices were thrillers.

Morris West (1916-1999) was an Australian author very well known for books that focussed on the Catholic Church like THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN which considered the effects of the election of a Slavic Pope.    The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) was made into a film starring Anthony Quinn, Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud
West also wrote as Michael East and Julian Morris.
His books were often political in tone and a reflection on world events.

THE AMBASSADOR published 1965
Set against the military deadlock in South Vietnam and the crisis of Western diplomacy in the Far East, this novel traces the fortunes of a US ambassador who, in moral confusion and tortured by self-doubt, is made arbiter of his nation's fate, and of life and death for the ruling house of Vietnam.

Mix some History with your Crime Fiction

I've participated in the Historical Reading Challenge hosted this year
Historical Fiction Challenge at Historical Tapestry
for the last 3 years and have surprised myself with how many historical books I have read so far this year, to the point that I have actually already completed the challenge I set myself.

Struggling the Addiction: 10 books
my extra rule: all need to be crime fiction. I expected that my extra rule might limit my reading a bit, but there is some good quality historical crime fiction available.
Here are the ones I have read so far.

1. 4.3, A LILY OF THE FIELD, John Lawton (World War Two)
2. 4.4, INSTRUMENTS OF DARKNESS, Imogen Robertson (England 1780)
3. 5.0, A FEW RIGHT THINKING MEN, Sulari Gentill  (Australia 1930s)
4. 4.4, THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS, Eric Ambler (Europe 1930s)
5. 4.6, THE COLD COLD GROUND, Adrian McKinty (N. Ireland 1981)
6. 4.7, DEATH COMES AS AN END, Agatha Christie  (Egypt 2000 BC)
7. 4.4, THE RESURRECTION MEN, Sara Fraser (England 1826)
8. 4.5, HAVOC IN ITS THIRD YEAR, Ronan Bennett (England in the 1630s)
9. 4.2, THE ANATOMY OF GHOSTS, Andrew Taylor (England 1786)
10. 4.5, MURDER AT THE SAVOY, Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo (Sweden in 1960s)

There are a further two levels to the challenge

Severe Bookaholism: 20 books

Undoubtedly Obsessed: 15 books

and I think I will now set my sights on 20 books, particularly as this challenge overlaps so much with another, the British Books Challenge at the Overflowing Library, and even at times with the Vintage Mystery Challenge.

Review: A LILY OF THE FIELD, John Lawton

• published Atlantic Monthly press, 2010
• ISBN 978-0-8021-1956-8
• 380 pages
• source: my local library
• #7 in published order of the Frederick Troy series, but #4 in chronological order.

Synopsis (from Fantastic Fiction)

Vienna 1934. Ten-year-old Meret Voytek becomes a pupil of esteemed musician professor Viktor Rosen, a Jew in exile from Germany. Three years later, aware that the Nazis are advancing, Rosen tells his promising pupil that he must leave Vienna for London.

When Vienna quietly comes under Nazi rule, Meret witnesses the repercussions for the city's Jews, but when her orchestra becomes a division of the Hitler Youth, she complies and wears the uniform.

Meanwhile, across Europe, Dr. Karel Szabo, a Hungarian physicist, has been interned in a camp on the Isle of Man. Shortly thereafter, Szabo is transported to Canada and rescued by the Americans, who recruit him to join the team in New Mexico building an atomic bomb.

In his ninth book, Lawton moves seamlessly from Vienna and Auschwitz to the deserts of New Mexico to London, illustrating the fascinating parallels of the enemy alien, Szabo and gentile Voytek, as fate carries each across the distinct and untraditional battlefields of the destructive war to an unexpected intersection at the novel's close. The result, A Lily of the Field, is Lawton's best book yet, an historically accurate and remarkably written novel that explores the diaspora of two Europeans from the rise of Hitler to the postatomic age.

My take

"Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin"

Matthew 6:28

I think perhaps my reading of this book suffered from the fact that the series this is part of is already well underway. I definitely didn't enjoy it as much as my friend and fellow blogger at CRIME SCRAPS REVIEW.

In the first half of the book Lawton introduces us to a rich cavalcade of characters all affected by the rise of the Third Reich and the advance of Hitler's troops into Poland and Austria. Some, Jews, Gentiles, Viennese, Poles, flee to England as early as 1935 ahead of the advance. Others are snatched off the streets and put onto trains taking them to Auschwitz.

Some meet again in England when they are rounded up into internment camps and then shipped off to Canada. Others meet in Auschwitz. Some survive because of their talents, others because they sell their souls to the devil, some because they do both.

And then the war ends and we are back in England and the crime fiction part of the novel begins with the murder on a tube station platform of one of the refugees and the subsequent involvement of Freddie Troy of Scotland Yard, his own family Russian refugees just thirty years before.

I think the richness of the information in the first half of the novel made it hard for the reader to decide what was important and what wasn't, what did I need to remember for later reference? Looking at the two halves of the novel, I think perhaps the author had a problem in deciding what he was writing: a historical fiction about the dreadful events of the Holocaust, or a murder mystery set in a Britain still under rationing and full of very confused,damaged, and often eccentric people.

But where I am torn is that this is a novel that makes you think, and, as readers of this blog will know, this is something that I value highly in my reading. A LILY OF THE FIELD presents scenarios that were new to me, and situations that I have not given much thought to before. The historical detail is rich and authentic. I think perhaps it was because there was so much detail that I had a problem in achieving focus and I found myself wondering in the first half of the novel when the crime fiction was going to kick in. It seemed that in the face of such inhumanity an "ordinary" murder would be very low key.

Freddie Troy is an interesting and quirky character who really operates by his own rules and his own sense of justice. He's a maverick in a world that is trying to establish order.

My rating: 4.3

Tell me, have you read this book or any in the series? What would you recommend? Shall I read another? Do I have to start at the beginning?

Another review to check on Euro Crime

Review: 1222 by Anne Holt

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 843 KB
• Publisher: Corvus (December 25, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English (translated by Marlaine Delargy)
• ASIN: B004G5YVSM
• Source: I bought it

Synopsis (Amazon)

1222 metres above sea level, train 601 from Oslo to Bergen careens off iced rails as the worst snowstorm in Norwegian history gathers force around it. Marooned in the high mountains with night falling and the temperature plummeting, its 269 passengers are forced to abandon their snowbound train and decamp to a centuries-old mountain hotel. They ought to be safe from the storm here, but as dawn breaks one of them will be found dead, murdered.

With the storm showing no sign of abating, retired police inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen is asked to investigate. But Hanne has no wish to get involved. She has learned the hard way that truth comes at a price and sometimes that price just isn’t worth paying. Her pursuit of truth and justice has cost her the love of her life, her career in the Oslo Police Department and her mobility: she is paralysed from the waist down by a bullet lodged in her spine.

Trapped in a wheelchair, trapped by the killer within, trapped by the deadly storm outside, Hanne’s growing unease is shared by everyone in the hotel. Should she investigate, or should she just wait for help to arrive? And all the time rumours swirl about a secret cargo carried by train 601. Why was the last carriage sealed? Why is the top floor of the hotel locked down? Who or what is being concealed? And, of course, what if the killer strikes again?

My take

This is the first book by Anne Holt that I have read, and it certainly won't be the last.
Perhaps one of the reasons that I enjoyed it so much is that it is in part a homage to Agatha Christie. Here are 269 train passengers with nowhere to go (169 of them in the hotel 1222), imprisoned by a snow storm, and with little hope of immediate rescue. So when the murder takes place, we have a classic "locked room" mystery.

The central sleuth is wheel-chair bound,  retired police inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen. After the first murder, that of a church minister, Hanne doesn't initiate an investigation as one might expect, but teams up with a doctor, a solicitor, and the hotel manager. Hanne expects their isolation on the highest mountain pass in Norway will be short-lived, but the storm grows in intensity and rescue is actually days away.

‘That’s what you said when you were in here earlier,’ he insisted. ‘You said this investigation would be incredibly simple. Or something along those lines. Is that what you think?’ 

I nodded. ‘We have a very limited number of suspects, all of whom are trapped up here. A limited geographical area to examine, to put it mildly. I think the murder will be cleared up in a day or two. Once the police have taken over, of course. I mean, they have to make a start first.’

There are some obvious parallels between this story and many of the "isolated location" novels of Agatha Christie. Hanne herself draws one:

Twenty-four hours ago, there were 269 people on board a train. Then we became 196. When two men died, we were 194. Now there were only 118 of us left. I thought about Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. I immediately tried to dismiss the thought. And Then There Were None is a story that doesn’t exactly have a happy ending.

The number of people resident in the hotel reduces and they become even more isolated as a connecting passage with another wing of the hotel collapses. And then there is another murder.

Apart from the murder mystery, the story has a second element: who were the people in the last carriage of the train? Why have they taken up residence in the top floor of the hotel? Why do they have an armed guard?

There are a number of details about Hanne's personal life and past history to be pieced together from the novel, and this does seem to take away from the main threads, although they are probably necessary.

Holt does have one disconcerting narrative ploy, that you can see in action here:

I didn’t know how right I was. Just a few weeks later, his business colleagues would be seized and placed under arrest in a major police operation in the Natal province of Brazil. They could look forward to a lengthy trial and an even longer prison sentence, all under conditions that made the prison at Ullersmo look like a five-star hotel.

In more than one place Hanne looks ahead and tells us how something ends up.

However, that aside, this is a good read. Anne Holt a good Norwegian author for you to look for.

My rating: 4.8

What a pity this is the only title in the Hanne Wilhelmsen series that has been translated into English so far. According to Fantastic Fiction, two more will appear this year:
1. The Blind Goddess (2012)
2. 1222 (2010)
3. Blessed Are Those Who Thirst (2012)
There are 4 titles in Holt's other series, Vik & Stubo, already available in English.

Check another review

• On EuroCrime by Maxine Clarke 
• On Scandinavian Books

1222 has been shortlisted for the 2012 Edgar Award for Best Novel

About the author

Anne Holt spent two years working for the Oslo Police Department before founding her own law firm and serving as Norway's Minister for Justice in 1996/97. Her first book was published in 1993 and she has subsequently developed two series: the Hanne Wilhelmsen series and the Vik/Stubo series. Both series will be published by Corvus.

Edgar Nominees for Best Novel and First Novel

The Edgar nominees for Best Novel have been announced. The winner will be announced on April 26.

THE RANGER by Ace Atkins (Penguin Group USA - G.P. Putnam's Sons)
GONE by Mo Hayder (Grove/Atlantic - Atlantic Monthly Press)
THE DEVOTION OF SUSPECT X by Keigo Higashino (Minotaur Books)
1222 by Anne Holt (Simon & Schuster - Scribner)
FIELD GREY by Philip Kerr (Penguin Group USA - G.P. Putnam's Sons - Marion Wood Books)

As usual I am a long way from having read these.
I have GONE on my Kindle, FIELD GRAY currently home from the library, and I'm now reading 1222.
I have read THE DEVOTION OF SUSPECT X  and rated it at 4.5
Looks like I'll have to track down THE RANGER.
I find it a bit strange that 2 of them are translated novels.

Which ones have you read? Which will win?

And I've read none of the First Novel nominees.

RED ON RED by Edward Conlon (Random House Publishing Group - Spiegel & Grau)
LAST TO FOLD by David Duffy (Thomas Dunne Books)
ALL CRY CHAOS by Leonard Rosen (The Permanent Press)
BENT ROAD by Lori Roy (Penguin Group USA - Dutton)
PURGATORY CHASM by Steve Ulfelder (Minotaur Books - Thomas Dunne Books)

Review: SPARKLING CYANIDE, Agatha Christie

• originally published 1945, aka REMEMBERED DEATH
• This edition in a collection called SEVEN DEADLY SINS  published by Harper Collins in 2004, pp 353-513 
• Source: my local library
• sleuth: Colonel Race

Synopsis (from Agatha Christie.com)

At a round table in the Luxembourg nightclub six people sit down to dinner at a table laid for seven. In front of the empty place is a sprig of rosemary – in solemn memory of Rosemary Barton who died at the same table exactly one year previously.
No one present on that fateful night would ever forget the woman’s face, contorted beyond recognition – or what they remembered about her astonishing life. But which of those present has the murder of Rosemary Barton on their conscience?
In 2003 this novel was adapted for television and starred Pauline Collins and Oliver Ford Davies.

My Take

SPARKLING CYANIDE is very carefully constructed, beginning with 5 people remembering the death of Rosemary Barton from cyanide poisoning just a a year before. The coroner brought a verdict of suicide, but recently George, her husband, has received notes leading him to think that perhaps Rosemary was murdered.  There seem to be any number of possible murderers.

George decides to set a trap, to hold another celebration at the same nightclub, this time for the birthday of Rosemary's sister Iris. The empty place at the table on the night of Rosemary's death had been for Colonel Johnny Race who had been unable to get there. George Barton had known Colonel Race in India. George invites Race to Iris' birthday party but Race refuses the invitation. Nevertheless George tells everyone that the empty place is for Colonel Race.

When George also dies from cyanide poisoning Colonel Race assists Chief Inspector Kemp from Scotland Yard to work out who is the murderer and what the motive is.

Colonel Race also appears in THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT (1924),  CARDS ON THE TABLE (1936) and DEATH ON THE NILE (1937). It is unusual for him to appear on his own, as he is generally plays a supporting role for others like Hercule Poirot.  By SPARKLING CYANIDE he is quite elderly.

This is still a cracking good read.

My rating: 4.4

Review: WITCH HUNT, Ian Rankin writing as Jack Harvey - audio

• originally published in 1993
• Audio version published 2005
• Unabridged
• Available at Audible.com
• Length 11 hours 43 mins
• Narrated by Peter Capaldi
• Read the first chapter on Amazon

Synopsis

Witch is a terrorist, one of the best, but this job is going to test even her to the very limit. This time her cold calculation may desert her just when she needs it most. On her tail are three very different detectives: one woman, two men. Two are at the beginning of their careers, while one is staking a lifetime's experience on tracking Witch down.

from Fantastic Fiction

Interpol have tried and failed to find her. Now the combined forces of Scotland Yard and MI5 must try the impossible to prevent a major international incident. Dominic Elder carries her autograph wherever he goes. Witch is his passion, his obsession. And being retired is no bar to his willingness to restart the hunt. MI5 know that the man who wrote the Witch file is the key to catching their quarry. But the truth isn't easy to spot. And it is only when an MI5 novice and his French counterpart piece together the smallest of clues, that Witch suddenly looks vulnerable . . .

My take

This venture by Ian Rankin (writing as Jack Harvey) was the first of 3 novels under that pseudonym. Rankin moves into the world of MI5, spies, and assassinations and WITCH HUNT feels as if it owes a lot to the style of John Le Carre. Certainly the gravelly voice of narrator Peter Capaldi contributes to that feeling. This is very different to his Rebus novels.

The novel begins with a set of seemingly disconnected events: the scuppering of a fishing trawler in the English channel, the murder of a banker in a love nest in Scotland; but to Dominic Elder who took early retirement because of a terrorist incident, they point to one thing: Witch is back!

The plotting in WITCH HUNT is intricate and the novel is part thriller and part police procedural.
It makes very enjoyable listening.

My rating: 4.4

Other reviews of Ian Rankin titles on MiP
THE COMPLAINTS
DOORS OPEN
HIDE & SEEK
4.4, BEGGARS BANQUET

Review: THE BEST MAN TO DIE, Ruth Rendell

• Published by Hutchinson in 1969
• This edition republished by Arrow in2009
• #4 in the Wexford series
• 254 pages
• ISBN 978-0-09-953483-9
• Source: borrowed from a friend.

My contribution to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books this week.

Synopsis

The fatal car accident involving the stockbroker Fanshawe couldn't possibly be connected with the murder of a cocky little lorry driver. But was it a coincidence that the latter died the day after Mrs Fanshawe regained consciousness?

Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be the prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? And Charlie's death was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women. Now Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant join forces with the groom to track down a killer . . .

My take

I'm never quite sure whether I have read an earlier Wexford or not. With 23 titles in the series I guess I can be forgiven. Anyway, I have no memory of this story.

I was taken by the description of Wexford in the early pages, because it is so unlike my George Baker (TV) image. I've never thought of Reg Wexford as ugly.

All he needed, he sometimes thought, was a trunk to make him look exactly like an elephant. His body was huge and ponderous, his skin pachydermatous, wrinkled and grey, and his three-cornered ears stuck out absurdly under the sparse fringe of colourless hair. When he went to the zoo he passed the elephant house quickly lest some irreverent onlooker should make comparisons.

This is early in the Wexford series and I think Ruth Rendell is still finding her way, establishing her style. There are passages in THE BEST MAN TO DIE that are a bit floral, over-descriptive, and she still hasn't got to that economy of words that characterises her later books. There's a wry humour though, and what will become a typical ambiguity in the meaning of the title.

Wexford is in his fifties, and already working with Mike Burden. His elder daughter is married and his younger one living at home, still happy to pass her dental bills and other responsibilities on to Pop. There are nice snippets of the tensions of family life.

A lift is installed in the Kingsmarkham police station and Wexford, ever mistrustful of new gadgets, and very conscious of his weight, is of course in it on his own when it gets stuck between floors. Two hours in an airless lift nearly cuts short his career, but typically he sits on the floor and comes up with the solution to the crime.

In this novel Rendell seems to be toying with the idea of expanding the detective duo. Wexford's doctor, Dr. Crocker is a childhood friend, although six years his junior, and Wexford makes use of him a couple of times. I don't remember Crocker having much of a role in other books.

Altogether a nice read, proving for me that the early Rendell novels still have great appeal.

My rating: 4.6

Check this review on Howard's Bookend

Other reviews of Rendell titles on MiP
FROM DOON WITH DEATH
PORTOBELLO
4.7, THE MONSTER IN THE BOX
4.5, A NEW LEASE OF DEATH
4.6, THE VAULT

Agatha Christie's Seven Deadly Sins

I brought a rather weighty tome home from the library today, 1158 pages, will my wrists be strong enough to hold it?

What I actually want to read is SPARKLING CYANIDE (aka REMEMBERED DEATH), but this is the only format it is available in through my library.

This anthology consists of
seven of the best Agatha Christie crime thrillers, themed around the timeless motives of Sin!
Some I have already read as you can see.
But given the weight of the volume, I may just read SPARKLING CYANIDE this time.

• THE A.B.C. MURDERS
  Pride is the excessive belief in one's own abilities. A murderer has the arrogance to challenge Hercule Poirot's detective prowess! 
• A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED
  Envy is the desire for another's status and abilities. A mysterious joker is eager for Miss Blacklock's money -- and her death! 
• EVIL UNDER THE SUN
  Lust is the craving for the pleasures of the body. Actress Arlena Stuart has the reputation of a 'man-eater' -- until her murder! 
• SPARKLING CYANIDE
  Sloth is the idle avoidance of work. Money doesn't need to be earned: it can be married, won or inherited -- so long as someone dies! 
• ENDLESS NIGHT
  Avarice is the greed for material gain. Buy the perfect piece of land for your dream house -- but be wary of curses and psychopaths! 
• AT BERTRAM'S HOTEL
  Gluttony is the appetite to consume more than you need. Miss Marple wonders if a series of robberies are for money -- or just the thrill! 
• FIVE LITTLE PIGS
  Wrath is the fury when love is spurned. A woman is convicted of poisoning her adulterous husband -- but there are five other suspects!