21 July 2015

Review: THREE BLIND MICE and other stories, Agatha Christie

  • This edition published by Center Point Large Print in 2013. The collection was first published in 1950.
  • ISBN 978-1-61173-777-6
  • 294 pages
  • source: my local library
Synopsis

1950 Three Blind Mice and Other Stories (nine short stories - US only)

The collection contains
  • Three Blind Mice
  • Strange Jest
  • Tape Measure Murder
  • The Case of the Perfect Maid
  • The Case of the Caretaker
  • The Third Floor Flat
  • The Adventure of Johnnie Waverley
  • Four and Twenty Blackbirds
  • The Love Detectives 
Three Blind Mice is a novella and is the only one in the list that I haven't been able to read in another collection. Reading it will complete my challenge to read all the Agatha Christie novels and short stories.

Blurb from back cover
The guests and residents of the newly opened guest house, Monkswell Manor, find themselves trapped by a blinding snowstorm and threatened by a psychotic killer. With a finite cast of characters in this "locked room" mystery it is not long before suspicions are voiced, and under growing pressure newlyweds Molly and Giles Davis start to suspect each other of murder.

My Take

This story is the basis for the West End play The Mouse Trap which had its first performance in 1952.
From Wikipedia
The story Three Blind Mice was written in 1947, and published in the US in 1950.

The story is really a novella and the action slips past very quickly. Once the guest house becomes cut off by a snow storm, the tension builds and a murder takes place. There is a dramatic quality to the events, or is it just that I know that it is the basis of The Mouse Trap? One can imagine these events being played out on a stage.

Following the tradition with The Mouse Trap there will be no revealing of how the plot works out here. For the record, I did work out who the murderer was.
I am glad I read it.

My rating: 4.2

I read this for my participation in the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge, and at last, after over 6 years, I've finished! I have read 66 novels and 154 short stories (including this novella) in 23 collections.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your posting. I will add this one to my TBR list. But this suggests a thought. Agatha Christie, frequently cited as not really being a very good writer, remains quite popular among readers, and I wonder if she would have remained so popular without the hundreds of movie and TV versions that have "hooked" new converts. Hmmm.

Margaret @ BooksPlease said...

Congratulations, Kerrie! It's been a long journey but a most enjoyable one. I'm nearing the end too, but still have a lot of the short stories to read, Three Blind Mice being one of them, as well as a few novels.

Kettie said...

Hey Kerrie, I just wanted to ask how to get the "You Might Also Like"s to the bottoms of your posts? Also, thanks, this was an interesting post.

Kerrie said...

Kettie, it is a Blogger widget called Link Within which you put under the post in Layout

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