The Sittaford Mystery By Agatha Christie

ISBN: 978-0007354597

Published By Harper Collins

Sittaford House is in a small village of only a few houses in a remote location on the edge of Dartmoor. Cut off by snow, Mrs Willetts and her daughter who rent the house, invite their neighbours to tea.  They decide it might be fun to hold a séance. It all beings with good humour, but quickly turns more sinister when a spirit seems to tell them that Captain Trevelyan who lives in a local town has been murdered. His friend, Major Burnaby who was at the tea decides to set out to make sure his friend is OK, even though it is a six mile walk through a serious snow storm. On arriving at his friends house, he discovers the Captain has been murdered, and it happened at the exact time that the séance occurred.

The police arrest a rather stupid young man called James Pearson, the Captain’s nephew, who stands to gain from the will. James is engaged to Emily Trefusis who refuses to believe that James is guilty and with the the help of a local journalist starts to investigate herself.

I rather enjoyed the set up of the mystery, I like the idea of an “impossible” crime. In this case, how on earth did a séance manage to predict the Captain’s death? Sometimes a “how-dunnit” is more satisfying than a “who-dunnit”. It did rather loose pace towards the end, and some key clues were left right until the very last pages, so it would have been hard to solve this based on the previous chapters. Having said that, when the solution was revealed it was blindingly obvious, if only I had stopped to think about it.

In this book Christie focuses a little more on her characters, and we start to see some more emphasis placed on how people really do react to different circumstances, rather than her characters simply being tools to execute the plot. The motive of the murderer in particular shows she has started to develop her thoughts in this area.

After a few dodgy ones, it looks like Christie is back on form!