Re: RARA-AVIS: Implausibility

From: Patrick King (abrasax93@yahoo.com)
Date: 16 Oct 2010

  • Next message: Patrick King: "Re: RARA-AVIS: Implausible?"

    He he he he he! That is based on a Christie novel, Patrick. MURDER SHE SAW was the title I read it under around 1961, but I think it was originally published under a different title. "Highly unlikely," as my father used to say.

    Patrick King

    --- On Fri, 10/15/10, Patrick Kennedy <pbjk2004@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

    From: Patrick Kennedy <pbjk2004@yahoo.co.uk> Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Implausibility To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com Date: Friday, October 15, 2010, 5:36 AM

     

      

        
          
          
          

    Oh I think I can top that one for implausibility.

    In an unguarded moment I turned on the television recently and found myself

    viewing a recent Miss Marple episode.  However...  I didn't catch the name of

    the episode or notice whether it was actually based on a Christie book or not,

    but does this sound just ever so slightly dodgy to anyone else here as a

    climactic solution to a mystery?

    From her train compartment, a woman, who happens to be an old acquaintance of

    Miss Marple's, has witnessed a woman being strangled in the compartment of

    another passing train.  At the end of the story, Miss Marple is travelling by

    train in the same compartment in which the murder has occurred, has arranged to

    be accompanied by all of the murder suspects and has faked choking on a sandwich

    as a ploy to get one of the group, a doctor, to come to her aid.  His pose

    mimics exactly that of the murderer in the earlier incident witnessed, and

    indeed is again witnessed by the exact same woman travelling in the exact same

    passing rain, both trains having been simultaneously halted by a pull of the

    emergency cord and miraculously come to a halt with the required compartment

    windows yet again serendipitously facing each other.  The woman, of course

    immediately recognises the doctor as the murderer she had witnessed earlier and

    the case is tidily solved.

    Now I ask you, is this remotely likely, or even fair?

    Her books are very entertaining, but sometimes I think Christie could have been

    dubbed The Queen of Implausibility rather than The Queen  of Crime.

    Patrick

    ________________________________

    From: Patrick King <abrasax93@yahoo.com>

    To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com

    Sent: Fri, 15 October, 2010 3:12:50

    Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Implausibility

     

    Remember the Christie story in which Poirot, after a long, involved

    investigation discovers the murderer because her knees were mature and she was

    trying to pass herself off as schoolgirl? CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS, wasn't it? Now,

    a woman lying about her age is not proof of murder. It is not evidence of

    murder. Go to a DA with information like that and they won't even bring her in

    for questioning, much less sign an arrest warrant. That, to me, is implausible.

    And Christie is guilty of it a lot. As are Rinehart, Queen, Gardner, the list

    goes on.

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