Deal Me In Challenge 2023

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Deal Me In Challenge

Deal Me in Challenge 2023 and again, I stubbornly continue to participate, even though I finish less and less of the selections each year.  Last year, I think I finished one selection (shame!) but even so, I was encouraged by my amount of reading in 2022.  In 2021, I managed to finish 12 books but in 2022 I finished 32.  I think I can keep up that pace and even improve it, so with that in mind, if I concentrate some of my energy on this challenge I should be able to read ….. well, at least more than one!

I kept the same list as last year to save time; better to spend the time saved reading, I think.

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Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

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Murder on the Orient ExpressMurder on the Orient Express: “It was five o’clock on a winter’s morning in Syria.”

Also Published as:  Murder in the Calais Coach

Detective: Hercule Poirot

Published: January 1934

Length: 265 pages

Setting:  Aleppo, Syria; Stamboul (Istanbul), Turkey; somewhere in Yugoslavia

 

In Murder on the Orient Express, after travelling from Aleppo to Istanbul, Hercule Poirot receives a telegram to return home and he books passage on The Orient Express, a well-known passenger train. Also onboard are:

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The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

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The Mill on the Floss“A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace.”

In The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot takes the reader into a lazy, peaceful part of England, where life is lived in a slow reverie with the river ebbing and flowing and yet hard work and struggles can be at the forefront of existence.  Yet within the scenery and the everyday monotony, there are people who live their lives with hopes and cares, frustrations and joys, dreams and tragedies.

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The Hound of Death and Other Stories by Agatha Christie

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The Hound of Death: “It was from William P. Ryan, American newspaper correspondent, that I first heard of the affair.”

Detective: None, as these are tales of the supernatural

Published: October 1933

Length: 218 pages

Setting: various:

A compilation of 12 short stories, The Hound of Death and Other Stories are not mysteries, but instead are tales of the macabre, tales of the supernatural, tales that are linked to the scary unknown.  The tales were as follows:

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The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie

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The Thirteen Problems

The Thirteen Problems:  “Unsolved mysteries.”

Detective: Miss Marple

Published: June 1932

Compilation:  Short Stories

Length: 256 pages

Setting: St. Mary Mead, Downshire (fictional)

 

During two different dinner parties in St. Mary Mead, Miss Marple is host and guest.  There is a suggestion of the sharing of puzzling mysteries, where one person in the group tells a story and the others surmise its outcome or solution. Surprisingly, the small town spinster, Miss Marple, demonstrates her superior brain power and deductive skills.  As each dinner guest shares a puzzling mystery and the others surmise the solution, Miss Marple is able to navigate all the clues, both obvious and unexpected, to solve each mystery in her quiet yet practical manner.

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The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie

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The Sittaford Mystery“Major Burnaby drew on his gum boots, buttoned his overcoat collar around his neck, took from the shelf near the door a hurricane lantern, and cautiously opened the front door of his little bungalow and peered out.”

Originally Published as: The Murder at Hazelmoor

Detective: Emily Trefusis with Inspector Narracott

Published: 1931

Length: 228 pages

Setting: Sittaford & Exhampton, Dartmoor

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