And Again, Agatha

57. THE MOVING FINGER (A little bit of Miss Marple)
A brother and a sister move to a quiet and almost boring English village. But suddenly the villagers start receiving anonymous hate-mail. When one recipient commits suicide, the letters have to be taken seriously. A tiny bit of Miss Marple, who, of course, helps to solve the case.

Memorable quotes:
-"There are questions that you don't ask because you're afraid of the answers to them."
-"The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself ..."
-"God doesn't really need to punish us, Miss Barton. We're very busy punishing ourselves."
-"If suicide is your idea of escape from trouble then it doesn't very much matter what the trouble is."
-"How strange that a girl could trouble your inmost soul so long as she kept her mouth shut ..."

Favourite Guest Character: Mrs Dane Calthrop
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: ****
Entertainment: ***
10/15

56. DESTINATION UNKNOWN
Ian Fleming would be proud of Agatha as this is a true James Bond adventure. A proper hero(ine), a proper villain, underground laboratories, pocket gadgets, swapped identities, secret codes, radioactivity, you name it! But what are the odds - I randomly choose Agatha's books to read and end up with two so similar in a row. Anyway, Hilary travels to Morocco to say goodbye to the world. Her similarity to another English girl leads her to an unknown destination. With a known ending :-)

Memorable quotes:
-"When she no longer looked for peace, she had found it."
-"Science is for all, and must not be held jealously by one power or the other."
-"I suppose even in the desert there's nothing you can't do, given water and money - plenty of both of them."
-"Women were adaptable by nature. It was their strength and their weakness."
-"The trouble in this life is that you never really know where you're going."

Favourite Guest Character: Hilary, of course.
Mystery:***
Final Solution: ***
Entertainment: ****
10/15

In the middle of High Atlas, Morocco.

55. PASSENGER TO FRANKFURT
A diplomatic, political and even science-fictionesque novel by Agatha! It has almost no murders - just long mono- and dialogues about serious political issues. And Wagner. But I love the idea of travelling with a bandit's cloak from Corsica :-)

Memorable quotes:
-"One mustn't refuse the unusual if it is offered to one."
-"... politicians have a feeling that they have a kind of divine right to tell lies in a good cause."
-"I ask only to be amused, to live comfortably, to eat, to drink in moderation, to have friends who amuse me."
-"One gets very tired of universities. They repeat themselves so much."
-"Scientists can only think of things for destroying you."
-"We take the risks and the risks are not in what we've discovered, it's the risks of what the people we'll have to tell about it will do with what we've discovered."

Favourite Guest Character: Sir Stafford Nye
Mystery: ***
Final Solution: **
Entertainment: **
7/15

Festspielhaus in Bayreuth