The Runaways is Dull and Off-Target

 

THE RUNAWAYS (2010)

Directed by Floria Sigismondi

Apparition, 106 minutes, R (sexual situations involving teens)

★★

 

 

 

Is it possible to make Joan Jett seem boring? Watch the 2010 film The Runaways and you’ve got your answer. It’s an oblique glance at the band that not-yet-17Jett envisioned in 1975 that’s now considered a pioneering all-female rock ensemble. The movie, though, focuses more on 15-year-old lead singer Cherie Currie–to the degree that it stays focused on anything.

 

1975 was a weird cultural moment; 1960s rock gave way to soft rock and the sonic emptiness of disco. Into the void stepped punk, a DIY alternative to corporate rock. It allegedly embraced an ethos of violence, rebellion, and rejection of disco’s glittery-but- vacuous materialism. In truth, many punk bands were every bit as fabricated as made-for-TV Monkees (1966), a list includes The Sex Pistols and, to a great degree, The Runaways. Joan Marie Larkin transformed herself into Joan Jett, but the band was largely assembled by record producer Kim Fowley to get the right “look.” The right sound was of secondary concern.

 

Sparkling fidelity was seldom the point of punk, but Fowley never quite decided what his creation was supposed to be: punk, hard rock, glam, or something else. (Their glam persona looked a bit like the Bee Gees undergoing hormone treatment.) The film leaves the impression that Fowley (Michael Shannon) wanted the Runaways to be a masturbatory jailbait fantasy for young men. Jett (Kristen Stewart) recedes into the background as we watch Currie (Dakota Fanning) mutate into a 15-year-old Lolita crossed with a Victoria’s Secret street walker. The other Runaways–Lita Ford, Sandy West, and Robin Robins–are little more than extras that occasionally moan about how Currie’s come-hither soft porn, drug usage, and raging ego is ruining the band. In less than four years The Runaways went from international sensation–the Japanese went nuts over them–to Jett solo projects.

 

This bit of music history has been dissected like high school biology frogs, but this isn’t the movie’s biggest problem. Currie’s story held potential for a potent drama–an alcoholic father, a broken home, manipulation by Fowley, drug addiction, a breakdown, reconciliation with her twin sister–but director Floria Sigismondi presents everything without taking into account that The Runaways was Jett’s band and she its enduring legacy.

 

Casting was a major problem. Stewart and Fanning were roughly the right age for their respective parts back then–20 and 16–but this doesn’t mean either was cut out for them. Some may take issue with this, but I simply don’t get the Kristen Stewart phenomenon then or now; at her best she’s merely adequate and in The Runaways she’s as flat as a Heartland highway. Fanning was/is much more talented, but Currie wasn’t a good role. I suspect she was cast because Sigismondi wanted audiences to infer a physical as well as emotional loss of innocence, but at 16 Fanning exuded a sweetness that makeup, foul language, and lingerie could not hide. She was, as she appeared, a skinny kid whose attempts at playing a sex kitten invokes the feeling she hadn’t yet been weaned.

 

Michael Shannon was given leeway to portray Fowley as a greedy and abusive sexist pig. What we see on the screen is classic overkill with Shannon hurling invectives, threats, screams, and garbage. Fowley’s questionable character aside, Shannon’s overwrought performance comes off as caricature, not a slice of musical history.

 

The Runaways has a few redeeming qualities. It’s another reminder of why Joni Mitchell chose the phrase “star maker machinery” in her 1974 song “Free Man in Paris.” (Mitchell is proof not all mid-70s music sucked!) Celebrity can be a deadly game if you try to live the hype. Despite Sigismondi’s clunky direction, it’s hard not to sympathize with how a kid like Currie could get ground up by the machine (and that it still happens). It was also interesting to see a mature Taum O’Neal cameo as Currie’s mother, given that some felt she too was stained by early fame.

 

Mostly, though, The Runaways was more dud than a “Cherry Bomb.”

 

Rob Weir

Cranberries: Bogs to Bags to Bellies

 

I recently wrote about common crackers. Millions of Americans are about to shovel in an equally unpretentious food and I don’t mean the fan-tailed meleagris, aka/ the turkey. I’m talking about its bright red plated sidekick: cranberries.

 

 

 

 

This fall I knocked off a bucket list item by venturing to Chatham on Cape Cod to see and hear all about the cranberry harvest. Suffice it to say I had little idea about the process or the challenges facing growers. My defense is that I grew up in dairy and mixed farming country; cows and wheat I know, cranberries not so much. I’m not sure I ever saw fresh cranberries as a kid; for all I knew, they grew inside cans or muffins.

 

 

 

Like farmers of all kinds, cranberry producers work hard and are at the mercy of the weather and the market. Cranberries have to be tended constantly despite the fact they grow in “bogs.” Too much or too little rain wreaks havoc and the picking season is maddeningly short–pretty much October to the week before Thanksgiving. Then it’s pray for a good price. The bulk of Massachusetts cranberries are sold to two large firms: Ocean Spray or Quebec processor Fruit d’Or. Don’t want to accept what they offer? Good luck with all those berries.

 

 

 

Sixty-one-year-old Dave Ross of Little Scoop Cranberry Farm hires help for the harvest, but he’s essentially a one-man operation. In the company of Emily and friends Dominique and Tess we toured Dave’s property and got the lowdown. You’ve probably seen pictures of berries floating on ponds. I foolishly thought cranberries grew in water like some mutant form of red rice. I knew they ripened on bushes, but I was thinking something along the lines of tall, watery domesticated blueberries. I should have been thinking about wild blueberries–the sort that grow on the surface and are seldom higher than a foot or so high. 

 

 

 

The water is the nearly last step, not the first. Before that happens, a cranberry bog isn’t very picturesque; it’s a big messy shrubland with weeds and other vegetation poking out. Any standing water comes from Mother Nature, not human hands. The berries ripen and look a bit like rounded vermilion coffee beans. When they blush red, it’s time to turn on the taps.

 

 

Here's where I was really clueless. All those aerial shots of cranberries suggest they float in a deep lake, so I assumed boats were somehow involved in knocking the berries off their stems. What was I thinking!? Some kind of weed whacker for fruit? Actually, cranberry ponds are shallow enough that in ye olden days farmers donned waders, carried snapping scoops through the water, and plucked the berries from the vines. A few hobby farmers still do that if there are growing only for personal use.

 

Today, most cranberries are harvested by something that looks like a Rube Goldberg lawn mower crossed with an egg beater. They are driven through the water and rotating blunt blades knock the berries into the water. Because cranberries have four air pockets in which the seeds are held, the berries rise to the surface. Cranberry dogs then round up the berries and put them in a corral. Oh wait! I’m wrong about that. Actually, booms are used to contain them and it depends on how meticulous the farmer gets in collecting them. Those that are not gathered help reseed the area. Those wicked cool crimson seas pictured on the Internet are the contained berries that get vacuumed into the back of trucks through wide hoses; no aquatic Roombas need apply. 

 

 

 

 

Then berries are cleaned, sorted, and sent to the distributor while farmers spend the holiday season hoping for a nice check that covers growing costs, hired labor, and leaves a bit of profit behind. Soon, it’s first-and-ten/do it again as they prep for the next year’s crop. Let’s be frank:  New England cranberry growers are at a metaphorical crossroad. Hybrid berries increase their yield, but can old-style bogs compete with the enormous square plantation-style production of Wisconsin, which is now the largest producer in the nation?

 I hope so. Dave’s farm is a throwback, but it’s colorful in ways no industrial farm can be. I gained appreciation for how something as unpresuming as a cranberry is a labor of love. I shall ponder this each time I bite into a muffin or see a red berried puddle on my Thanksgiving plate.

 

Rob Weir

 [Note: All photos are mine except the two harvester machines and old-fashioned scoop.]

 

Hanneke Cassel: November 2022 Artist of the Month

HANNEKE CASSEL:

NOVEMBER 2022 ARTIST OF THE MONTH

 

Hanneke Cassel Band at West Whately Chapel

 

Some media outlets continue to call fiddler extraordinaire Hanneke Cassel a “rising star” in Celtic music. Good grief! After eight solo albums and two collaboration albums in less than two decades, what more do they need? (Or are they doing the famed Internet cut-and-paste-don’t-look-at-the date routine?) Do the math; that’s an album every two years.

 

To be sure, Ms. Cassel, a Portland, Oregon native who now lives in Somerville, has worn a lot of hats. She cut her teeth on Tex-Mex music before making her way to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, a school that doesn’t turn out half-talents. She was part of Berklee’s scholarship tour in 1996 and won the National Scottish Fiddle Championship the next year, a career-altering experience. It didn’t hurt to apprentice with Alasdair Fraser, my candidate for the finest Celtic fiddler on the planet. How good is Cassel? Good enough to teach at Fraser’s camp in California and instruct students in Boston. Good enough to wow audience across the globe. Good enough to try her hand at Baroque music.

 

 

 

Cassel specializes in Scottish and Cape Breton styles, the later island the home to older styles of Scottish music before they were influenced–for good or ill–by 19^th century Victorianism. The Boston Irish Reporter calls her “artistic and emotive,” but what immediately strikes most people is her exuberance. A friend of mine endearingly calls her “The Energizer Bunny,” an apt appellation. Even though she’s also the mother of a two-year-old–her husband is cellist Mike Block, a superb player in his own right–Cassel is a performer who leaves it all on the stage. I caught her in a recent Watermelon Wednesday concert at the West Whately Chapel. Perhaps “see” is too tame a verb; she’s often a blur when her part comes around. That night she was with guitarist Keith Murphy and five-string fiddler Jenna Moynihan. Sometimes the Hanneke Cassel Band also includes cellist/fiddler Tristram Clarridge.

 

Cassel played from both her back catalogue and from her latest album, Over the Sea to Skye, which I don’t own yet, but given what I heard, I soon will. Like all good artists, her repertoire has grown more sophisticated over the years. There’s something sublime to be said of all her records, but if you want to hear her in her most traditional mode, her 2004 recording Some Melodious Sonnet offers old-style strathspeys, some jigs, a few early compositions, a couple of hymeneals (wedding songs), a journey to Norway, and even some Irish tunes. Pick up Dot the Dragon’s Eyes (great title!) and you can hear how she picked up the tempo in nine years, but also retained the grace. That’s really the key to great music; you let the music play you instead of trying to cast the spotlight on yourself. Do it well and the accolades follow. (How often have you stifled the urge to shout “Overdone!” at a concert or belt it out at home?)    

 

The best way to experience Cassel is to check her out for yourself. Here are a few live links that come close to capturing her performances. Close but only half of a cigar. The best way lies in the category of “You had to be there.”

 

Rob Weir

 

Instructional video for the Dot the Dragon’s Eyes title track. Note the control and emotion though it’s a fast-paced tune. You can turn it off at 1:41 if, like me, you’re only a fiddler in your dreams. 

 

Catch her with hubby Mike Block on a medley of “Christina’sJig/Dot the Dragon’s Eye.” I love the way she uses her whole arm and the subtle transition of tones and pace. And I adore the deep resonance of Block’s cello. Can “dark” light up a room? 

 

Think that went by fast, how about this Cape Breton set that includes a bit of everything with Montreal’s Yann Falquet.Precision + control = amazing. Having a lot of fun helps too!

 

The true test of a fiddler is how well they play a slow tune. Cassel’s take on the air “Hector the Hero” answers any questions about her prowess. Listen through to 4:21

Worst Person in the World is Uneven

 

THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (2021)

Directed by Joachim Trier 

Oslo pictures/Snow Globe/Criterion, 127 minutes, R (nudity, sex )

In Norwegian with English subtitles 

* * *  

 

The Worst person in the World is far from being the worst movie in the world, but it's not as good as it should be unless your tolerance for about-to-be 30-year-olds struggling to grow up is higher than mine. 

 

Julie—an alluring Renate Reinsve–lives with Eksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), an underground comics artist. Although the story takes place in Oslo, Julie is flaky in ways analogous to Woody Allen's titular character in Annie Hall. She is impulsive and maddening, the sort of modern woman who is strong enough to express what she doesn't want, yet is clueless about what she does desire. Eksel is older than she and certainly more mature, his unconventional job notwithstanding. Among other things, he would like to have children; she doesn't. 

 

At this point I should mention that because all the men in this film are Norwegian, they are they are calm and behave well–no violence, screaming, or tantrums– even when they are being dumped. This will happen to Eksel when, Julie on a whim, crashes a party and finds herself attracted to a man her own age, Eivind (Herbert Nordrum). They flirt and began to see each other, not to “cheat” they assure each other, but to be intimate in other ways –like swallowing smoke and smelling each other's armpits! As you can surmise in an Oslo minute, this will spiral out of control and Julie will dump Eksel and take up with Eivind. Theirs is a more tempestuous relationship, but is this what Julie actually desires? 

 

Director Joachim Trier tells this tale in a prologue, 12 chapter whose titles often set up what is about to happen, such as: “Bad Timing,” “Oral Sex in the Age of MeToo,”, “A New Chapter,” and “First Person Singular.” There is also an epilogue of which I will comment in a moment.  Trier’s direction and the cinematography of Kaspar Tuxen are the best things about the film. There is a superb sequence that occurs when Julie finally decides it's Eivind that she wants. She sprints across Oslo to be with him as all of the city freezes in place with only the two of them animated. 

 

Tuxen's camera work is stunning. He makes Oslo into a character and captures moods via blurring versus sharp focus and through visual contrasts: a sterile hospital versus crisp parks, moody walks juxtaposed against the energy of the city, and gray days jousting with vibrant sunsets. I'd have to go back to him again–yes Woody Allen–and his film Manhattan to find someone who connected the urban landscape to character moods as well as Trier in The Worst Person in the World. 

 

If only the script—cowritten by Trier and Esks Vogt–was as sharp. Reinsve won a lot of best actress hardware and is quite competent and fetching. Alas, her character is that of a Millennial in both the hopeful and annoying ways in which those born near the end of the 20th century can be.  Danielson Lie is also strong, especially when he goes into wounded hangdog mode. Maybe he’s a thing in Norway, but I found Nordrum less compelling. He comes off as a guy with a hunky body and a small brain. 

 

Shortly after we get a goofy portrait of Eivind’s ex-, Sunniva, who decides to go full Sami yoga queen though it's just 3.4% of her heritage, the movie shifts in tone and mood. Oddly, it moves from quirky to sentimental, tragic, and conservative. Why beat up on family values for part of the movie and then valorize them? Why, indeed, shift from offbeat to serious at all? 

 

The namesake worst person in the world is, of course, Julie. The title is a deliberate and ironic misnomer. She's a mess in many respects but, as psychological portraits go, she's not even a serious contender for the planet's most awful human being. We are not meant to take this literally; It is Julie's self-perception– until it isn't! This film gets labeled as a rom-com, but that’s off base unless you think introducing the Big C (cancer) is a bucket of laughs.  Plus, rom-coms are generally broader and they seldom stray upon tragic themes without a concomitant miraculous escape. The Worst Person in the World isn't a bad film, just a flawed and extremely uneven one. 

 

Rob Weir

 

Common Crackers for an Unexpected Treat

Common Cracker: The Exhibit

Through January 28, 2023 

Vermont History Museum 

109 State Street, Pavilion Building 

Montpelier, Vermont 

 

 

 

Have you ever visited a historical recreation of an old-time general store? Chances are good it features a large wooden barrel near the counter, perhaps with a checkers board atop it. If you thought it once held Saltines, let me make a counter claim. That’s a pun on my on my part, but those barrels were filled with “common crackers” not Saltines.  

 

 

 

I recently visited the Vermont History Museum and found myself fascinated by a common crackers exhibit I assumed would be as boring as waiting for the laundry to finish. If you are unfamiliar with this humble culinary offering, they are about 2 inches in diameter, about the size of a Ritz cracker, though it bears little resemblance to the flaky, buttery, and additive-laden Ritz wafers.  

 

 

 

Common crackers were a staple of the 19th century New England diet if for no other reason, they kept forever in an age of rudimentary refrigeration. Non-knowers confuse them with oyster crackers, but those are much smaller–about 5/8” in diameter–though they share the quality of being relatively tasteless. Common crackers are also sometimes confused with hardtack, but the latter –a favored food of long-range travelers like sailors and cowboys­– is much less palatable. As its name suggests it's like chewing on a piece of board, though worms seem to like them. Unlike hardtack, common crackers contain yeast. They are meticulously kneaded, rise for 24 hours, baked, and air dried. This makes them puffier and easier to split, which means you can put yummy things inside of them, such as cheddar cheese or butter and jam.

 

Relatives of ours who grew up in Massachusetts devoured a dish called “cracker toast.” Common crackers were placed in a bowl of warm milk into which butter had been melted, and a dash of salt was added. It creates a sort of mush, not exactly gourmet dining, but it’s surprisingly warming winter fare. A similar concoction is called “cracker and milk” in other parts of New England. Common crackers proved to have many other uses as well; they could be crumbled and used to coat other foods and, according to no less an expert than Julia Child, provide a unique substitute for oyster crackers in chowder. 

 

 

 

Before you dismiss the common cracker, know that millions were produced in Vermont during the 19th century. Who actually invented them is contestable. Theodore Pearson of Newburyport MA claimed credit, but his crackers are thought to be more of a cousin to yeast-less hardtack. Another Bay Stater claims he invented the common cracker in 1801, Artemus Kennedy of Arlington, MA said he did in1805, and to confuse matters more, an English immigrant to New Jersey claims he did so in 1842. You might encounter the term “Boston Crackers,” though today they are allegedly softer than the originals. Maine also got into the act; Portland Crackers were a thing.

 

 

 Vermonters responded that other claimants made prototypes of oyster crackers and the real deal was made by the Orton family in the 1820s. The Cross clan certainly invented the first machine to mass produce crackers in 1847, when Vermonters consumed common crackers with glee and in great volume. Before the 20th century dawned, it was as if every town in Vermont had its own common cracker: Burlington, Brattleboro, Morrisville, Montpelier, Rutland, St. Johnsbury, and a concern that straddled the White River/Hanover NH sides of the Connecticut River.  

 

The triumph of corporations doomed most of the small concerns and changed consumer palettes. Saltines dominate, but they are made by Nabisco, a multinational giant. Common crackers haven't disappeared, though. Hannaford's still sells them and the Vermont Country Store will mail you a reusable tin filled with common crackers they claim are based on the 1828 Orton recipe. You can also find items that that come in various colors and flavors, though they are abominations IMHO. 

 

With the holiday season upon us with all manner of sugary, caloric offerings, why not give the humble common cracker a taste drive? If you can, stop by Montpelier to unearth a fascinating chapter from the past. If that doesn't make you want to try common crackers, I can't help you.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

WHEREABOUTS  (2021)

By Jhumpa Lahiri

Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf, 157 pages

★★ ½

 

 

 

Whereabouts is an unusual piece of writing. It has been highly praised by critics for its literary merits. That's not always a good thing; sometimes it means a book appeals to elites and self-identified intellectuals more than a general readership. In the case of this Jhumpa Lahiri work, there's truth in both interpretations.

 

Whereabouts is indeed elegantly written, but it stretches the definition of a novel. It often reads as if its intent might be more obvious to Lahiri to anyone outside of a lit crit graduate seminar. I call it more of a meditation or an extended prose poem than a conventional work of fiction.

 

The narrator – perhaps Lahiri’s avatar – meanders through an unnamed Italian city. The narrative centers on themes of movement and stasis, but in each case the female narrator is metaphorically adrift. When she “travels,” it is usually within the city – to a park, the rail station, a museum, a shop, a café, or, appropriately, a stationary store. We infer that she is lonely and goes to public places to alleviate that feeling, though the encounters she has (if any) in such places are superficial and brief. She is more of an observer than a participant, almost as if she wants to be part of a display or the decor rather than thrust herself amidst any sort of collective encounter. She describes her trip to the stationer’s thusly,

 

Even when I don't need anything in particular, I stop in front of the window to admire the display, which always appears so festive, decked with backpacks, scissors, tacks, glue, Scotch tape, and piles of little notebooks, with and without lines on their pages. I'd like to fill them all up, even the unwelcoming accounts ledger. Even though I can't draw, I'd like one of those sketchbooks, hand bound, with thick cream-colored paper.

 

Though she doesn’t seem to desire as to be the kind of person who might, she draws comfort from the familiar and is unsettled to learn that the shop has changed ownership. She's even more shaken by a display of hard-shell suitcases:

 

I grew sad looking at all those brand-new suitcases, all of them are empty, waiting for a traveler, waiting for various things to fill them, waiting for someplace to go. There's nothing else for sale. Just suitcases. But then, right at the entrance, I noticed a bunch of umbrellas, big ones and small ones, of the cheapest quality, bait for tourists caught in a downpour, those pathetic umbrellas that almost always end up in the garbage can after the storm, shoved in with a certain fury, looking like tortured herons.

 

Later, and in a chapter titled “Nowhere,” she reflects upon movement:

 

 

 

I've never stayed still, I've always been moving, that's all I've ever been doing. Always waiting either to get somewhere or to come back. Or to escape. I keep packing and unpacking the small suitcase at my feet. I hold my purse in my lap, it's got some money in a book to read. Is there any place we're not moving through? Disoriented, lost, at sea, adrift, astray, adrift, bewildered, confused, uprooted, turned around. [Emphasis hers.]

 

Yes, it's this kind of book. In my reading there is a subtext of existential dread in Whereabouts. This book is noteworthy because it's the first time Lahiri has written in Italian and has done her own translation. I'll be candid; I'm not quite sure of what I think about this work. The closest I come is to observe that I was greatly impressed by it, but did not find it very engaging. You might feel differently and, at just 157 pages, you can travel through it rapidly.

 

Rob Weir

Agatha Christie Revisited: Murder of Roger Ackroyd

 

THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD (1926)

By Agatha Christie

William Collins and Sons, 312 pages.

★★★★

 

 

 

I’ve been reading a lot of mysteries these days so I decided to cram a throwback into my reading queue. Many consider The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to be the greatest of all Agatha Christie novels. For me, it’s not up to the level of Murder on the Orient Express or The A. B. C. Murders, but it’s a good one. It was, depending on how one counts, either the third or fourth novel to spotlight the Belgian-born detective Hercule Poirot and the book that made him into the equivalent of a fictional rock star.

 

First, a word of caution: If you are a person who has trouble getting out of your 21^st century mindset, Agatha Christie might not be your spot o’ tea, old chum. Her work was generally of the genteel drawing room variety. Her detectives seldom travel far from the manor house and village to solve crimes, nor are her tales crammed with wild chases or gunfire. Forensic science did exist, but we’re talking about discovering a hair on a topcoat, fingerprints, and matching boots to footprints, not DNA analysis. Poirot’s weapon is deductive reasoning or, as he puts it, using “zee leetle gray cells.” With a 5’4” roly-poly body and fastidious OCD habits, Poirot is the sort who is more likely to do damage to camembert than a bad guy’s jaw.

 

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd opens with the suicide of Mrs. Ferrars who, many locals believe once poisoned her husband. This is tough toffee for Roger Ackroyd, who was affianced to the now-deceased wealthy widow. This puts a jolly big damper on Ackroyd’s dinner party attended by his sister-in-law and her daughter, Flora; big-game hunter Hector Blunt, who fancies Flora; Roger’s personal secretary, Geoffrey Raymond; and Dr. James Sheppard, who narrates the novel. There is, of course, house staff, including parlourmaid Ursula Bourne, butler John Parker, and housekeeper Elizabeth Russell. There is also the matter of Ackroyd’s stepson via Roger’s late wife’s first marriage, Ralph Paton, whom Roger has fingered as a suitable husband for Flora, much to Blunt’s lament and Ralph’s indifference. Roger also tells Dr. Sheppard that the late Mrs. Ferrars was being blackmailed by someone claiming to have proof she killed her husband. A perfectly dreadful evening gets worse when, later in the night, Roger is murdered.

 

Enter Hercule Poirot, already famed on the Continent, but supposedly in retirement in England. (It’s hard to know why he chose England, as Christie’s Poirot novels are filled with xenophobic dislike and distrust of the diminutive detective because, after all, he’s a foreigner.) Poirot will, of course, be lured away from his easy chair to investigate Roger’s murder. A few more dodgy characters enter into the equation, including one Charles Kent, a drug addict; Sheppard’s unmarried sister, a local snoop and gossip; and relatives of the house staff.

 

If this sounds like a stuffed cast, it is. Possible motives for murder proliferate as well: money woes, jealousy, family secrets, the disappearance of Ralph, and the sort of generalized reprobate behaviors we have come to expect of upper-class British twits. Poirot begins his extensive interrogations and knows immediately that nearly everyone is withholding information. All of this is vintage Agatha Christie. Suffice it to say Poirot is certain that the murderer is near but given that here are enough red herrings to feed the entire population of Holland, where to start? What to make of a found dagger, a gold ring in a pond, finger prints, property titles in play, a goose quill, footprints, and a Dictaphone? And let’s not forget two clueless police inspectors. (Neither is Japp or Hastings, who factor into later Poirot tales.)

 

Will Poirot solve the murder? Of course! And in grand Christie style, with all of the suspects gathered in the same room, and that’s just about everyone. Poirot’s modus operandi is to make them all sweat by detailing the reasons why each of them might have been the killer before fingering the real culprit.   

 

All Agatha Christie novels are carefully plotted and she certainly had a flair for pulling the rug out from under dim-witted British aristocrats whose eccentricities are less amusing and more emblematic of the decline of the Empire. Much like her other detective, Miss Marple, Christie’s books are old-fashioned, though I like them because they rest on brainpower rather than James Bond-like cloak-and-dagger intrigue. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd has but one dagger. That’s enough, but I could have done with fewer suspects.

 

Rob Weir