Agatha Christie's Marple:The Pale Horse - review

Agatha Christie's Marple - why do they call it that? It's not as if there's any need to avoid confusion,because Dorothy L. Sayers or someone else also wrote about a character with that name. What's more, I had one or two reservations about the casting of Julia Mackenzie as the great spinster sleuth, and I decided not to watch the adaptation of The Pale Horse, when it was first shown two years ago, because it introduced Jane Marple into a very good story in which she never appeared. It all seemed like a recipe for disaster.

But one or two Christie fans told me that this was one of the best adaptations of her work in recent years, so I decided to give in, and have a look at it. And to be honest, I'm glad I did, because on the whole, it was a pretty good piece of entertainment, despite the radical changes made to the original. The screenplay was written by Russell Lewis, a very experienced writer. I've never met him, but long ago he was mooted as someone to adapt the Harry Devlin books for TV. Sadly, that never happened.

The opening of the story is very different from that of the book. A vicar - played by Nicholas Parsons - is beaten to death after visiting a dying woman. But he is an old pal of Miss Marple, and has already sent her a mysterious letter containing a list of names and a reference to the Book of Revelation. Her enquiries quickly lead her to a spooky hotel deep in rural England called The Pale Horse.

The cast was excellent, including such stars as Neil Pearson, Pauline Collins and Nigel Planer. With a couple of exceptions, over-acting (which really kills the televised Christies) was avoided, thank goodness, and I thought Julia Mackenzie did well enough in the part to overcome my doubts. All in all, very watchable, if very different from the original, which was definitely one of the best Christies written after the 1950s, and a book that's certainly worth reading if you are unfamiliar with it.

Dry Bones That Dream

Dry Bones That Dream is a Peter Robinson novel featuring DCI Alan Banks, recently brought to television by Stephen Tompkinson, which I haven’t read. It's showing in the DCI Banks series this evening, but at present I'm away and out of reach of the TV. However, I recently listened to an abridged audio version, read by Neil Pearson. I like Pearson as an actor, and he does an excellent job as a reader. I’m not sure if he was considered for the TV role, but he would have made a good fist of it, I think, though in a different way from Stephen Tompkinson.

Two masked men visit the home of a wealthy accountant, and murder him. This is fiction, although I have a vague recollection of a real-life case where something similar happened some years ago. What is the motive for the crime? As Banks investigates, it becomes clear that the dead man had secrets in both his personal life and his business dealings.

When a former colleague from Scotland Yard becomes involved, Banks discovers that the crime has an international element. At one stage, I thought the story was in danger of becoming thrillerish, but this didn’t happen. It is, in essence, a conventional police novel, with a plot twist that would not have been out of place in the Golden Age, and which I thought was excellent. It's an example of why Peter Robinson has established himself as one of the leading mystery novelists..

Truncated audio books are not, in theory, the best way to sample a writer’s work, but this one was good entertainment. Even if I were not a long-term Robinson fan, I would have found it enjoyable. As with many good series, you don’t really need to begin at the beginning, and this story isn’t a bad place to start if you haven’t yet encountered Banks. I look forward to catching up with the TV version soon.

The Price of Love - review

A title like The Price of Love suggests romantic fiction, but in fact The Price of Love is simply one of the entries in a crime story collection by Peter Robinson that I’ve just listened to on an audio book. And it’s quite a dark story, too, with nothing Mills & Boon about it at all.

‘Like a Virgin’ is especially noteworthy. It fills in the gaps of DCI Alan Banks’ past life- the main events are told in flashback, and concern a seedy murder case which he investigated in his London days, before decamping to rural Yorkshire, and Eastvale. It’s a good story, although one of the key clues was startlingly easy to spot. I must say I do like the way in which short stories can expand our understanding of a character familiar from a long series of novels.

The collection is very varied, and it made for good listening. ‘Cornelius Jubb’ is set during the Second World War and deals with racial tensions, while ‘The Magic of Your Touch’ involves a supernatural element. Robinson is a very accomplished short story writer, and although - this is, I think, almost inevitable – the quality of the tales is a little uneven, overall they provide plenty of entertainment as well as sometimes provoking thought.

There was a varied cast of readers – a good idea – and it included a number of class acts, such as Neil Pearson, whose voice seems, somehow, very well suited to Robinson’s writing. I’ve enjoyed Pearson as an actor for years, and he makes an excellent reader.