At Bertram’s Hotel

The most pleasing element in reading Agatha Christie is spending time in her world. It’s an orderly place full of rather complacent, pleasant people suddenly faced with the inexplicable: murders are discovered, friends go missing, or incongruities mushroom in either their village or whatever closed community her detectives happen to be in or called to at the time. Her best loved characters, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, are essentially likable, despite one’s occasional flightiness and a touch of narcissism in the other.