Customer Reviews

At Bertram's Hotel (Miss Marple)

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This novel takes place at Bertram's Hotel (hence the title!) but it lacks something that the other Miss Marple novels have: the rural setting! Miss Marple isn't the same in the city, and she barely appears in the novel. I'd stay with THE MIRROR CRACK'D as my all-time Miss Marple favorite.

Sheepishly I admit that, prior to reading AT BERTRAMS HOTEL, the only Agatha Christie mystery I had read was THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD.

The Ackroyd book was a prime pick (understandably) of required reading for a graduate level detective novel class, which I attended in 1970 at Portland State University while working on my Master's Degree in English Literature. The focus of that seminar was a fascinating analysis of the style dichotomy of British Vs American detective fiction. (a dichotomy which was enthralling to me, open-mouthed student).

To summarize that professor's points:

On the other side of the pond (please excuse this stereotype; it's used to spotlight a style contrast):

- The UK domain of the Hercule Poirots and Lord Peter Wimseys, featuring the lifted-pinky-on-the-china-tea cup, is delightfully cerebrally challenging. The inspector cajoles his reading participants with the brilliance of rambling-reasoning-romps. If the "Sherlock" is sagacious, his setting is scrumptious: "Entre-vu and be pampered in a mansion." This style might initiate the plot with a castle caretaker managing an extensive staff of butlers, maids, and chatelaines, each bowing and bolting to cater to every imagined slight of luxuries lost. Slumber is sensual (even if unsafe) atop feather ticks and down-puffy pillows.

On this side of the pond (again, please excuse this stereotype; it's used to emphasize a contrast in genre content):

- The US Domain of the Mike Hammers and Lew Archers, featuring the broken-nose and sliced-off-finger, is physically brutal. The detective rivets his readers with chillingly raw, tangy-testosterone-tangents. If the P.I. is gritty, his setting is grimy: "Come-hither and slum it." This style might open into an unheralded urban mood of a classic, sleazy-motel-room, set into sad surrealism by the blinking of a red-neon-light staged outside an oil-coated, cracked window lifted half-way to invite dreams of momentary night breezes which effortlessly evaporate the sweat of fitful slumber

In either venue, murder is most dreadful, and justice is sought. With precision, ambition, and thought.

Primed with reminiscence of this ambiance awareness, I approached AT BERTRAM'S HOTEL. Prior to arriving at the doorman's attention, I perused my reading history...

To be honest, I'd been side-stepping full-blown studies of long-established, hard core mystery writers. Unashamedly, I read fiction for personal enjoyment (I did not apply for that Master's degree, even after finishing the required class work with colors flying). I need to slip into a sensual setting, or I can't escape into the book's world enough to avoid the early yawn, the closing of a book's covers, the final tuck-under-chin of bed clothes ... as eyelids weigh down ... and the cerebrum closes shop.

Then, one fine sunny day, Sue Grafton's Alphabet series gatecrashed me into the genre for keeps. ALIBI took me for a ride beyond the college classroom, into the exquisite realm of escape fiction. After reading Grafton's series, I didn't want to wait a year for more. Yet, I still wasn't attracted to macho bats and bruises, or the cerebral-cereals sans creme.

Diane Mott Davidson's yummy Goldy repeatedly cooked up, just for Marla and me, the creme de la creme, which I devoured. Of course I wanted more, and didn't want to wait a year for the next catering campaign. From Davidson's appetizers, I gate-cashed into the collections of cozy culinaries, and contentedly set up housekeeping.

Burping escape-reading-satiation, I wondered if I might return to some of the established mystery masters, give them another chance to capture my cozy.

AT BERTRAM'S seemed to offer a classy HOTEL ambiance (kicked up several notches). I could live there, I thought, hoping Christie had slipped in enough sensual detail of the hotel lobby to shove me over the threshold of my resistance to drought. Satisfied with every nuance as the first few pages leisurely fed word pictures, I checked into Bertram's, and eased into the London high life through full-blown-characters, wallowed in that world, plodded pleasantly through subplots.

All that for the price of paperback. I was, am, and will be forever impressed.

Like Miss Marple, without a means beyond my pocketbook, I'd never have been able to pay the price of a closet-under-the stairs at this swanky ritz. As Marple's niece and nephew gifted her to a room for a "week or two," I laid my dollop of dollars onto a bookstore counter, and walked off with The Milky Way waiting under fingertips.

The opening paragraphs described the "way" to Bertram's so well, the prose could be excerpted and placed into a framed example of how to lead a reader down-a-garden-path of delicious detection. Why did I think Agatha was ... though fitting my pansy taste buds by avoiding broken noses, and not featuring characters walking gingerly with constantly cracked ribs ... why had I believed Agatha was, in a word, too dry to escape into and stick therein?

Maybe the reading part of my cerebrum hadn't matured enough yet? Maybe my lack of short term memory, aggravated by dyslexia, made me dread the impossible task of memorizing every clue? Or was it just a change of attitude to read-to-enjoy, to be-taken-for-a-ride, rather than working too hard to stay in the driver's seat, alert and focused, with nemonic-devices pasted to the dash?

Whatever it was. Something worked, and a reading worm hole appeared.

The classic car on the cover (of a 1992 Harper paperback edition) of AT BERTRAM'S HOTEL opened it's door, and I stepped right in, breathing the aroma, feeling the smooth, cozy-crack of leather seats polished to prime.

Agatha had her way with characters, plot, and setting. The setting wasn't simply something to get my senses rolling in a Rolls. It was intricately designed into a complex web with every angle and tangle interconnected in near religious fervor. The ingredients of storytelling were so ... precisely intertwined ... so perfectly woven. I had to conclude that my tastes had matured into picking up skiffs of subtleties and rolling them on my tongue. Though apparently dormant, they had been there all along.

Two of the main captivating points in this novel were the hotel becoming a functioning world, and the culprit(s) stepping into such living, breathing, complex characterization as to be not only "comprehended," but, in a sense ... admired ... even as the evil was exposed. This type of clear creation of the villain mystique; this fathomless dark in a living labyrinth, is rarely executed with such glamour. This level of complexity is rare even for heroes in detective fiction.

Most often the dangerous ones are painted through a glass darkly; we might feel pity for them through a haze of disgust, as directed by the author, but we do NOT like them nor identify with them. Yes, we have the arch-evil personifications of Sherlock's Moriarti and Stout's Zeck. But these, rich and full-bodied though they become, are archetypes.

The culprits at Bertram's could literally walk off the page.

A third major point of captivation was the way Miss Marple worked with Chief Inspector Davy, so behind the scenes, yet so brilliant with simple insights, which he endearingly, intuitively respected. The somewhat limited, though balsamic, direct exchanges between Marple and Davy were delicious, especially the final conversation as they sagely nodded heads, ensconced (innocently of course) in a suite at Bertram's.

I'll happily return to The Master of Mystery, with sensual side trips to the Gurus of "picnic" plots, absorbing nutrients to keep me primed to "see the light," to spot each vigil on the path leading away from perdition.

For your legacy, Agatha, I stand and applaud, (with tears of honest admiration in check). You be The Mystery Lady.

Linda G. Shelnutt

[This is a copy of a review which was originally composed and posted by me, copyright April 10 2005, on a USA Amazon page for a paper printing of this title.]