A Pocket Full of Rye

What "improvements" have been made for the Signet edition? There are already major differences in punctuation, word choices, and scene breaks between the original Collins and Dodd Mead editions of this novel. There are further differences between the Dodd Mead editions republished by Random House/Avenel and the Dodd Mead editions republished by Simon & Shuster/Pocket. There are further additions still in the Bantam, Berkley, and Black Dog & Leventhal editions. For every publishing house putting out her works, there seem to be a new batch of editors altering Agatha Christie's words and the sound of her voice. What's the matter with these publishers? Whose voice do they think we want to hear when we sit down to a novel by Agatha Christie? And what will she sound like twenty years from now? It's frightening that her estate has failed to see the importance of guarding her words as she wrote them. Please tell me I'm not the only one here who senses that a crime has been committed.

"A Pocket Full of Rye" may perhaps be the best novel Christie wrote that features Miss Jane Marple. It is, at heart, a mystery with an ingenious setup that revolves around a familiar nursery rhyme. With murders happening aplenty and somewhat unexpectedly, this is a mystery that will keep readers on their toes until the very end. When Rex Fortescue is poisoned, suspicion immediately falls upon his young, second wife, an unfaithful woman who definitely had a motive to kill her husband. As do several (if not all) of his family members. Yet when a second poisoning claims the live of Mrs. Fortescue, she is wiped out as a suspect, but someone else within the family is definitely confirmed as the murderer. Almost every family member, or someone connected with them, had something to gain from these two deaths. Miss Marple becomes involved because one of her old serving girls is the third murder victim, filling out the last two lines of the nursery rhyme. Miss Marple helps put the detective in charge along the right track, separating murder from pranks, and finding the heartless killer among the family ranks. "A Pocket Full of Rye" is a fast-paced mystery, as are many of Christie's works, but it is spurred on by its unique story and a compelling cast of characters. As CID Inspector Neele says many times, every member of the Fortescue family is 'unpleasant', as are most of the people who work for them. As with other Christie works where Miss Marple helps out a detective, the mystery is solved but justice isn't necessarily served out in the end.

Once again, "The Queen of Crime" pleased me with another thrilling mystery. Even more delightful, this book follows a similar pattern to "Three Blind Mice and Other Stories" and "Hickory Dickory Dock." When Agatha Christie sets out to write a story with a nursery rhyme pattern it is truly suspenseful and intriguing. This installmen in Christie's large collection has Miss Marple, my favorite of her detectives, trying to solve the mystery of the poisoning of financier Rex Fortescue with taxeine. This case hits close to home for Miss Marple since Gladys Martin, a domestic maid whom she had trained for service becomes a victim of the killer. The culprit is following a bizarre pattern of using the "Sing a Song of Sixpence" nursery rhyme, and thus three victims are discovered. Rex Fortescue is discovered upon death to have a coat pocket full of rye grain, his young wife, Adelle Fortescue is discovered dead over a meal of scones and honey, and Gladys is discovered strangled with a clothespin on her nose, (A cruel imitation of "The little blackbird who nipped off the maids nose.") Miss Marple uses the nursery rhyme to discover the guilty person, and the motive is both enraging and poignant. Since there is a lemited amount of suspects, Christie superbly develops the characters and purposefully misleads the reader with plenty of red herrings. The characters in this particular installment are not as likable as in previous books of the series, but they each have complex personalities. Perhaps my favorite character is Jennifer Fortescue, whom I can relate too in a way. Of course, Miss Marple is unforgettable, and I cannot help but wish that Christie would have put more of her in to the book. Inspector Neal is fine, but Craddock is my personal favorite police officer in Christie's Miss Marple series. However, this book is terrific, and should be read by all mystery fans as a cozy whodunit that is both poignant and mostly fun. Happy reading to you all.

This was one of a string of Agatha Christie mysteries I read in a very short time, but it is the only one which has really stuck with me. What sets it apart is the unusually fine character portrayal, the ingenuity of the crime and its solution, and the striking contrast between the wry humor which pervades much of the book and the wrenching effect of its final pages (noted by aprevious reviewer). I'd never have expected to find a Christie work thought-provoking, but this one was.

Almost every formula, idea, and trick that Agatha Christie used in her detective fiction works proved to be entirely successful and won her an enormous reading public. Making use of nursery rhymes was one such formula. Nursery rhymes can reawaken the sense of wonder, mystery and enchantment in any reader. They also can carry symbolic levels of meaning, and some are allegories. In this her 1953 offering she makes use of the nursery rhyme "Sing A Song Of Sixpence". Appropriately it is one of her Miss Marple books. Although her elderly spinster sleuth has little to do here, and is late making her appearance, it is she who perceives and urges the significance of the nursery rhyme. "Don't you see, it makes a pattern to all this." The murders occur in the disfunctional family of Rex Fortescue, a financier, and the action occurs in his London office and in the family home, Yew Tree Lodge. The opening chapters are wonderfully engaging. Agatha Christie, when she took the trouble, could sketch characters vividly. Amongst all of them in this book, there are not more than a handful of suspects. To compensate, Mrs Christie throws in buckets full of red herrings.You'll enjoy the puzzle, and having innumerable theories suggested and dismissed. The solution, when it comes, however, is no more plausible than is the likelihood of a blackbird pecking off a maid's nose. If you can obtain the unabridged reading of the book by Rosemary Leach, your enjoyment will be enhanced. Rosemary Leach is unusually skilled at "doing" the voices of a large cast of characters, male and female.