Customer Reviews

4.50 from Paddington (Agatha Christie Signature Edition)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In "The 4:50 From Paddington" Agatha Christie gives us another in her long list of detective stories involving a large family at their estate. This is, in my opinion, one of the best, and begins when Elspeth McGillicuddy, a friend of Miss Marple's, is returning from Christmas shopping in London and on her way to visit Jane in St. Mary Mead. Her train is running alongside another one on a nearby track, and Mrs. McGillicuddy has an excellent view inside the parallel carriage of the other train. What she sees is the back of a man strangling a woman. No one believes Mrs. McGillicuddy since no corpse is found and no injured woman turns up at any hospital. Only Miss Marple believes her friend. Although Mrs. McGillicuddy is leaving for Ceylon to spend Christmas with her son, Miss Marple continues her quest to prove her friend's story. First she books passage on the same train and narrows the search for where a body should have been thrown to the area around Rutherford Hall, the large family estate of the Crackenthorpes. The family consists of the semi-invalided and grouchy Mr. Crackenthorpe, his daughter Emma, three sons, a son-in-law, and a grandson. At least four of the men are likely candidates for the strangler.

Because Miss Marple is not young enough to physically search for the body in unknown territory, she engages Lucy Eyelesbarrow, one of Christie's most interesting female creations. Lucy quickly gains employment at Rutherford Hall as a domestic and busily does all the legwork for Miss Marple. Meanwhile, Jane Marple has taken up residence at a nearby home and advises and assists Lucy.

In 1961, this became the basis for "Murder, She Said," the first of four films starring Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple. Although it deviates from the book, most notably in the omission of Lucy, it is enjoyable and worth viewing.

Old and new readers of Agatha Christie's whodunits will not be disappointed with her 1957 puzzler. It has an unforgettable opening sequence, an ingenious denouement, and an interesting sleuth, especially created for the occasion, named Lucy Eylesbarrow. Although it is the elderly Jane Marple who exerts her powers of detection, she does it by remote control while her much younger friend does the spadework - or the domestic work. As Agatha Christie explains, "The point about Lucy Eylesbarrow was that all worry, anxiety, and hard work went out of a house when she came into it." Accordingly, the tertiary-trained domestic, Lucy, is soon installed in Rutherford Hall, where Jane Marple believes a body thrown from a train might be hidden.

Surprises, further murders, gossip, marriage proposals, and poisonings follow in rapid succession, so that before you know it, the hours have sped by, the murderer is revealed, and you admit that once again you were quite unable to guess whodunit.

Agatha Christie adds to the usual cozy elements of her murder mysteries a heavy involvement with passenger trains, timetables and railway matters so beloved of the British. Otherwise you'll find the book fits into the pattern of the dysfunctional family's struggles being worked out with a particularly stubborn, callous and crusty old man as the family's head.

Feature film and TV adaptations of this novel have been made, the most faithful to the text featuring Joan Hickson who also can be heard in an unabridged reading on audiotapes.

Elspeth McGillicuddy had spent a busy day Christmas shopping in London so when she settled into her comfortable 1st class train compartment on her way to visit her friend it was natural that she dozed off for a few minutes. It was most unsettling that she woke up just in time to see a murder being committed in a passing train. It was understandable that the train conducter did not believe this elderly lady's fantastic story. It was fortunate that Mrs. McGillicuddy's friend was none other than Jane Marple.

Miss Marple believed her friend was not imagining whole thing. When the police found no evidence of the crime Miss Marple began to investigate for herself. She located the most likely place a body could be disposed of, a large estate owned by the Crackenthorpe family and arranged for a confederate, Lucy Eyelesbarrow to work for the family.

The Crackenthorpe family is another of Christie's large dysfunctional families dominated by a disagreeable father (Luther), downtrodden daughter (Emma), ambitious son (Harold) and a pair of blacksheep - the artistic Cedric and the slightly crooked Alfred. Two other siblings have died, Edmund and Edith. Edith's husband, Bryan and son, Alexander are also part of the household.

The body is found, more murders commited, the culprit unmasked and the true motive revealed in dramitic fashion by Miss Marple.
Along the way romance flourishes and leaves the reader with an unanswered question.

The family is very much like characters from similiar families in other books, (HERCULE POIROT'S CHRISTMAS, A POCKET FULL OF RYE, CROOKED HOUSE and others). This, coupled with the various titles this story has had over the years - WHAT MRS. McGILLICUDDY SAW, EYEWITNESS TO MURDER and MURDER SHE SAID, could lead a reader to think they had read this one before. Do not pass this one by, it is worth reading for the delightful Lucy Eyelesbarrow alone!

What "improvements" have been made for the Bantam edition? There are already major differences in punctuation, word choices, and scene breaks between the original Collins (4:50 FROM PADDINGTON) 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 Signet, 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.

I have read all of Christie's books and I must say I enjoyed this one the most. It was solved through actual detective work and not just some detective who percieved the solution through out. Miss Marple is my favorite of Christie's detectives and Lucy Eyelesbarrow is a very admirable young lady.

- it must be Agatha Christie.

On the train ride home from shopping, Mrs. McGillicuddy sees a man strangling a woman in a train running parallel to her own. Being a woman of some age, when no corroborating evidence quickly comes to light, Mrs. McGillicuddy's concerns are dismissed by all who are informed. Not, however, by the famed Jane Marple. Convinced of that her friend correctly interpreted what she saw, Miss Marple sets out to determine how the murder was so effectively disguised. In finding first the body, then the killer, Miss Marple assigns crack domestic Lucy Eyelesbarrow to Rutherford Hall, home of the dysfunctional Crackenthorpes. Each of the family members, we soon learn, has reason to kill, a sketchy alibi and questionable character. Then, more people start dying.

This book combines two settings well known to Agatha Christie fans - trains and giant, old countryside homes. Many aspects of the plot, too, are quite familiar - dysfunctional families, money payable on death, hidden identities, etc. This book will, thus, no doubt please many of Ms. Christie's fans. I, however, found little to separate this book from Ms. Christie's other books. Indeed, I never really became engaged with this book because, it seems to me, the characters were pretty flat and the story felt about half told. A few interesting ideas here, but not, in my opinion, one of Agatha's best.

In this classic Jane Marple story, Joan Hickson, who portrayed Jane Marple perfectly on the BBC series, wonderfully dramatizes all the parts in this fascinating murder mystery. Elderly Elspeth McGillicudy witnesses a murder on the 4:50 train from Paddington Station. She reports it but no one believes her as there is no body to be found. When she tells her old friend, Jane Marple the story, Jane does believe her and re-enacts the so-called crime to see how and where the body could have been hidden. When Miss Marple pinpoints the most likely spot, she engages the young Lucy Eyelesberry to take up a post at that place, Rutherford Hall, to look for the body. The ensuing story is one of the best of Agatha Christie's with Jane Marple taking an important, though supporting role to the plucky Lucy. Not only does she find the body but she engages all the members of the dysfunctional family and serves as a foil to ferret out information about motives and alibis. Of course, all family members remind Miss Marple of someone in her village of St Mary Mead but that is the charm of the story and character. Elspeth McGillicudy does enter the plot again at the end and is instrumental in identifying the murderer.

This audio book is just perfect for a long car trip or even for many short commutes. I couldnt wait to get back to my car and engage the traffic because I so looked forward to Joan Hickson, Miss Marple and Lucy. Highly recommended.

I really enjoyed reading this novel, in fact my first from Agatha Christie. It was really good to read but I was somewhat disappointed at the end. It was not up to the theme of the novel.

This book keeps you guessing until the end. Ms. Christie shows her truly amazing skills of knowing people, creating intrigue and suspense. Worth a read any time!

In the 1961 mystery-comedy "Murder She Said," Margaret Rutherford plays a feisty version of Miss Marple (an interpretation that infuriated author Agatha Christie) who takes a job as a domestic to solve a murder she saw committed as her train was passing another. Rutherford shared a scene or two with another character actress named Joan Hickson, who was to play Miss Marple in a series of television mysteries that were far more faithful to their originals than were the films. So if you have already seen the two dramatic treatments of "4:50 From Paddington" or (as it was called over here) "What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw" and love comparisons, you might want to make a triple one with what Christie actually wrote by either reading the book itself or hearing an authoritative reading of it by Joan Hickson herself on an Audio Partners set on 5 audio cassettes or on 6 CDs.

In a houseful of potential murderers, the very interesting Christie character named Lucy Eyelesbarrow takes a position in order to find the body. As one commentator mentions, she is Christie's strongest independent woman to date and possibly in all of the mysteries. So where Rutherford simply was given a fatter role, the original story is that of Lucy with some fancy brainwork by Miss Marple, of course.

A very good entry in Audio Partners readings.