Book review: Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie

The thirty-sixth book I read in 2018 was Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie.  Amazon is doing a series of it (apparently with a different murderer), so I thought I'd see what the original was like before perhaps looking into the (much more action-packed, judging by the trailer) update.

In one sense, I enjoyed this book a bit more than the other Christie books I've read.  It was definitely a page-turner as I was curious about the solution to the crime.  But the most awful biases against adoption are on display in this book!  From statements by a character presented as a well-meaning authority that Rachel Argyle wasn't "really" her children's mother though he'll call her that for convenience's sake to the eugenicist assertion that you can never really trust adopted children because their genetic inheritance could rear its criminal or mentally-deficient head when you least expect it (hello, Rachel Lynde), Christie makes it clear that adoption is, in her view, a foolish and selfish act.  There's a very upper-crust attitude that, yes, well, it's certainly sad that poor children are hungry and ill-educated, but you just have to nature take its course; you'll only make it worse by intervening, like trying to return a baby bird to the nest. 

Tied to that is an equally offensive view of women.  The same kindly family doctor who offers the proviso that he calls Rachel Argyle the children's mother only as a convenient shorthand compares human women to cats in heat, driven to marriage out of a biological desire for children.  Women apparently fall into two groups, those who want children and those who want men, and never the twain shall meet. 

As a mystery, I suppose the solution works.  I did suspect the correct culprit before the end, thanks again to Christie's condescending attitude toward a certain type of woman.  There are at least two or three other suspects with a compelling motive, which, I suppose, encourages Amazon to tinker.  Make it like the movie "Clue," with a different solution for each season?

The romance is tacked on and, again, border-line offensive.  You can feel Christie pushing the characters together early on, but they seem like such an inappropriate match that I wasn't sure she was actually going through with it.  I guess it's not a happy ending without a wedding?  Given the proclivities for which Jacko is universally condemned, the double standard is glaring.

Speaking of happy endings, I suppose Christie is the ur-text for the "I've gathered you all here today to reveal the identity of the murderer" ending, but it only works because her murderers are all so polite and proper, having contractually agreed to going away quietly after the summation.  The amateur detective in this case doesn't even inform anyone of the result of his investigations or have police back-up on hand.  Given that the murderer has already killed again to maintain secrecy, the assembly was remarkably lucky that they didn't all go down in a spray of bullets or an explosion.  I can't imagine that Amazon's culprit will be such a good sport.

Book review: Wish You Were Eyre by Heather Vogel Frederick

The thirty-fifth book I read in 2018 was the sixth book in Heather Vogel Frederick's The Mother-Daughter Book Club series, Wish You Were Eyre.  As indicated by the title, this time around the girls and their moms are reading Jane Eyre.

Megan's irrepressible Gigi brings home a French exchange student on the spur of the moment, and Megan is jealous of the newcomer's easy rapport with both her mother and her grandmother, not to mention all the boys at Alcott High.  Worse (and in a truly unbelievable coincidence), Sophie is related to all the British characters in Pies and Prejudice, the dreamy brothers Berkeley and Emma's nemesis Annabelle.

In other areas, Emma and Stewart's relationship gets rocky again, Jess is accused of cheating and could lose her scholarship, Cassidy is skating at Nationals and might actually like boys but she's not sure which one, and Megan's mom runs for mayor of Concord.  Oh, and Gigi has a whirlwind romance in Paris over spring break and comes home engaged.

Where to begin?  First I have to admit that I enjoyed this book more than its predecessors.  As the girls have gotten older, they've gotten more competent and less one-note (the smart one, the sporty one, the popular one -- they're like the Spice Girls).

Still, the contrivance is thick, and the connections to the classic novel seem weaker than usual.  Jess's ordeal with an unfair teacher is meant to correspond to Jane at Lowood, Sophie Fairfax is standing in for Blanche Ingram, Emma's uncertainty about Stewart's feelings parallels Jane's experience with Mr. Rochester, Cassidy's triangle with Zach and Tristan is meant to parallel Jane's with St. John Rivers and Mr. Rochester, and Gigi, well, ... reader, she married him.  Laid out like that, it seems clear, but reading the text as written, it's less obvious.

I was going to call shenanigans on Alcott High's spring break being in April rather than March, but looking up the Concord school calendar, they really do have spring break in April!  I guess there's too much snow on the ground in March up north.  In Oklahoma, Texas, and North Carolina where I've lived, spring break is always in March.

This book was Frederick's Reichenbach Falls; she intended it to be the last Mother-Daughter Book Club Book.  Which is odd because it ends with the girls in 11th grade, when senior year would seem to be a more instinctual ending.  More than that, she actually went out of her way to end the series at this point, since the girls read the whole Betsy-Tacy series in the fall of their junior year in Home for the Holidays and this book picked up right after New Year's where that one left off with them reading Jane Eyre in the spring.

I believe she compressed the last two books into one year on purpose, because two of the girls are dating seniors and going on to their own senior year would require her to take a side on Long-Distance Relationships: Yes or No.  However, reading the series, as I am, in the author's future, I know that she got roped back in for one more book, Mother-Daughter Book Camp.  It will be interesting to see what she does when forced past her intended expiration date.

You may notice that I left Becca out of the plot synopsis above.  That's because her role in the story is so peripheral and so dumb that I left it out.  But it does factor into the mad "problem play" matchmaking that goes on at the end of the book just to leave everyone paired off.  Becca goes to Mankato for Spring Break with her grandmother, as planned in Home for the Holidays, and meets a boy named Theo Rochester who keeps snakes in his attic.  Yes, really.  Also, she's suddenly interested in architecture, apropos of a random comment made by her grandmother and nothing else every mentioned in this entire series so she plans to go the University of Minnesota where Theo Rochester will be going, based entirely on knowing him casually for less than a week.  Also, she matches up Sophie with Third and Annabelle with Kevin Mullins, like the female protagonist of "The Pirate Movie."

Also, we're supposed to believe that the girls learned A Valuable Lesson about pranks when they nearly humiliate Sophie on national TV on Clementine's cooking show but fess up before it airs.  However, Emma's book making fun of Annabelle and her friends and using those friends' actual nicknames is published, and that's a great thing, and no one will ever realize that when she says Stinkerbelle, Puff, Smiles, and Buttercup, she's actually referring to a group of girls she knows who are called Tinkerbell, Puff, Smiles and Buttercup.  That is all.