Marple: Twelve New Stories has me reflecting on what it is that I’ve liked about other anthologies of this nature, most particularly Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration — they’re modest.
That’s not to say Marple: Twelve New Stories is unambitious — it’s a collection of work by twelve accomplished authors offering their take on one of the most read, known, and loved characters in fiction. But when the objective is to pay homage to the original artist and give her fans another cheeky go around then you colour within the lines, unlike, say, the torrents of Holmesian fanfic that delights in teaming the great detective with Fu Manchu, the better to take on Jack the Ripper.
In fact, the most striking feature of these stories is how calmly familiar they feel. They’re all stylistically different and, with some rare but amazingly cack-handed exceptions, they’re lyrical and likeable. Much like Christie’s original clinical prose, the narrative clicks along and reports the events and is only really noticeable when it rises above (or falls wincingly, amateurishly short of) the standard.
However (again, with a few startling exceptions), the professionalism is in the plot. The stories are quick and concise and the reader can observe the deft Christieology in a Petri dish — the meaningful detail and the absence of meaningless detail, the psychology, botany, and criminology, and the nearly always surprising and nevertheless inevitable solution.
I probably learned more about Agatha Christie’s ingenious mechanisms reading these stories than I did from the original Marples. I can’t say for the moment to what degree or precisely how this will inform and improve the next Anty Boisjoly mystery, but I look forward to finding out.
Anty Boisjoly travels to the Riviera to finally have that awkward ‘did you murder my father’ conversation with his mother, but instead finds himself in the ticklish position of defending her and an innocent elephant against charges of a murder that no one could have committed.
That which I like about Dorothy L Sayers is abundant in Whose Body and so I find myself wishing it were possible to know what it would have been like were it not the first Lord Peter Wimsey book and/or written ten years later, say about the time that she wrote Murder Must Advertise.
The title of Catt Out of the Bag doesn’t start to make sense until the last, I think, twenty pages, and even then it comes as a drop in a torrent of revelations that might have been more intriguingly distributed throughout the book. I enjoyed Catt Out of the Bag for a lot of reasons unrelated to this pacing issue, thankfully, but it utterly defines the story.
Just in time for Easter, 
With his first departure from the canon — Jeeves and the King of Clubs — Ben Schott began the transformation of Bertie Wooster from Wodehousian gadabout and loveable dope to wise-cracking playboy and international man of mystery. Now, with this next installment, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith, the process is complete and the result is the anti-Wodehouse.
I can’t get enough of Uncle Fred and although I prefer him as or introducing an imposter into Blandings Castle, it’s refreshing to see his irrepressible wit thriving in this new terrain.
Leave It To Psmith is, to my mind, the book in which Blandings finds its voice. There’s yet no Empress, and she’s sorely missed, but the absent-minded Lord Emsworth substitutes flowers for his prize pig and Connie is present, as is the efficient Baxter, romance, imposters, a conundrum and, above all, someone like Galahad.
Indefensible Publishing 