The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction

Tag: hercule-poirot

  • Helen Baxendale in Poirot, Marple, and P.D. James

    Most non-UK viewers likely remember actor Helen Baxendale from her unfortunate role as Emily, the Englishwoman so unsuitably affianced to the appallingly selfish and immature Ross in Friends. David Schwimmer is a terrific actor, and I enjoy his portrayal of the worst person in the series: an academic who dates his student (oof–well past the…

  • My DNF Pile: Bad Books by Good Writers; and a Happy Free Find by Andrew Taylor

    “Bad” is relative, here. Agatha Christie never wrote a truly terrible book. But my commitment to reading Elephants Can Remember was quickly shaken by the prose style, plotting devices, and endless digressions. This is not a very good Christie, at any rate, and since I’m reading it in an ugly Internet Archive version, with a…

  • When Authors Tire of Their Characters (But Can’t Just Kill Them Off)

    Holmes and Moriarty, 1893 illustration by Harry C. Edwards in McClure’s I’ve been enjoying Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes in “The Final Problem.” That’s the one, you’ll recall, based on the famous story where Holmes is tossed over Switzerland’s Reichanbach Falls by Moriarty, his arch-nemesis. Watson is left to re-trace his steps and mourn his…