Indeed, Christie really does seem to be having fun with her characters here, being as playfully unsparing of her as she is with everyone else: Unlike most English people, she was capable of speaking to strangers on sight instead of allowing four days to a week to elapse before making the first cautious advance as is the customary British habit. The pure joy of Christie’s writing about these concerns is simply the pleasure she takes in observation of human behaviour, in the same way that she’s not criticising Pamela Lyall when she says that… Miss Pamela Lyall, who sat beside him and talked ceaselessly, represented the modern school of thought in that she was wearing the barest minimum of clothing on her sun-browned person.Īnd yet, as is typical with Christie, you get no sense of judgement of the younger generations for being so free, in the same way that she does not castigate the older generation for being so very stuck in their ways. belonged to the old-fashioned generation which believed in covering itself carefully from the sun. …but also in the attitudes one takes while on holiday: Of these four the American had died, but the others had been shed negligently in the divorce court. She had in turn been the wife of an Italian count, of an American steel magnate, of a tennis professional, of a racing motorist.

had had five husbands and innumerable lovers. And yet the scope doesn’t fell especially smaller, almost as if this is the first time in this collection that a story is being told at the right speed.Īgain we have a commentary on the different generations, this time evinced not just in their attitudes to divorce and relationships… ‘Before It’s Too Late’ (1936), the fourth and final case in the Murder in the Mews (1937) collection, is significantly shorter than the three previous stories. It turns out - and I really should have noticed before I started reading - that ‘Triangle at Rhodes’, a.k.a.

So, can you have four people in an eternal triangle? Asking for a friend.

Agatha christie murder under the sun