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Sparkling Cyanide
by Agatha Christie
Product Group: Book
Publisher: MacMillan (2001)
ISBN: 0333908481
EAN: 9780333908488
Binding/Media: Audio Cassette
SKU: S220t-1012
Condition: New
Comments: In stock - Sent fast from British booksellers.
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Customer Reviews
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Colonel Race is drawn into a poisoning case (details)
Rating  (4)
Date: 2010-02-27
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
This work is also sold under its original U.S. title, Remembered Death(original British Title - Sparkling Cyanide), a fact Christie fans find irritating as publishers have changed titles on a number of her popular books - this unnecessary practice has led to considerable confusion for readers. I'm reviewing the original U.S. title here, a 1964 7th printing Pocket Books paperback edition (first appearing in 1947) which sports the cool black, red, and school bus yellow cover, 214 pages.
I should also mention that some of these publishers have more recently begun editing, redacting, and even (unscrupulously) re-writing some of Christie's actual words which is why I much prefer the older editions. But the one I've cited as reviewing here is terrific if you can find it.
THE STORY: A young heiress of stunning appearance weds an older gentleman, a man blinded by love, who is thus unable to recognize his lovely bride's personal failings as a wife. She soon expands her illicit romantic activities with her enthusiastic, dynamic, and passionate paramours. But she doesn't get to engage in her concupiscent behavior for too long because, during an elaborate birthday supper sponsored by her generous husband at a high-end restaurant, she drops dead of cyanide poisoning. Even though the death is suspicious and likely suspects abound, the coroner ultimately rules the death a suicide, citing the decedent's depression subsequent to her having suffered from the flu.
After a year passes, the husband becomes convinced of two actualities:
1. His wife had been having love affairs behind his back.
2. She was murdered by someone at the dinner table.
These epiphanies were chiefly the result of anonymous letters which he began receiving, advising him directly of the latter thought and strongly implying the former. So the distraught husband calls in his lifelong friend and man-of-the-world, Colonel Race, to aid him in trapping the killer. Unfortunately this widower's meticulous plan, which involved a second celebratory dinner with all the same guests present as before and conducted at the same restaurant, gives rise to a second murder.
That last comment is not a spoiler as all this is revealed by the book's back cover teaser -- Christie wanted us to know all this up front. The resolution is quite clever and most readers will anticipate neither the murderer nor the method.
Christie devotees have previously encountered the fictional Colonel Race, formerly of Great Britain's MI-5 organization, a man who also paired up with the renowned Hercule Poirot in Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot). Race's role is somewhat unique to Christie mysteries in that he functions as a (semi-private) "helper detective" to the primary investigator who in this case is Scotland Yard Inspector Kemp, (whom, it is further noted, had been mentored by the more well-known and now-retired Inspector Battle, ergo: Towards Zero (St. Martin's Minotaur Mysteries).) While it is true that even Hercule Poirot serves as a secondary detective to the Scotland Yard one most of the time, (as does Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, etc.), the reader still knows that it will be Poirot, and not the Scotland Yard sleuth, who actually resolves the case. But here, Colonel Race's role is truly a supplemental and secondary one.
While this mystery is a pretty good read overall, it's not, from my view, Christie's best effort. But since she generated a total of over eighty mysteries, romance novels, and plays it's logical that not every work can rank among "the very best." Of British cozy murder mysteries in general, (all authors), this one easily falls within the top twenty percent because Christie was simply that skilled in the art.
This book was first published in 1945 by Dodd, Mead. For those who are just commencing to explore the plethora of Agatha Christie mysteries there are probably better starting points. I would recommend Agatha Christie's Mysterious Affair at Styles (Hercule Poirot Mysteries); Murder at the Vicarage: A Miss Marple Mystery (Agatha Christie Collection), or; By the Pricking of My Thumbs.
Highly recommended for all Christie fans and generally recommended for those who enjoy various authors of the cozy murder genre.
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Sparkling Cyanide
by Agatha Christie
Rating  (5)
Date: 2009-11-29
This book is a must read for mystery lovers. It is a great book with a lot of suspense. The case is very clever what with everybody having a motive. This novel will keep you on your toes wondering who is the murderer and the reader suspects everybody... except the murdered!
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Avid Reader
Rating  (3)
Date: 2009-11-24
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Does not come across as a legitimate Agatha Christie. I have read most of her books, and this one is "strange". Not exactly her style. A bit disappointed.
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Not a (ahem) sparkling achievement
Rating  (2)
Date: 2008-05-28
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Young and beautiful Rosemary Barton died while dining at a fine restaurant. Her death was purportedly caused by Rosemary's spiking of her own champagne with cyanide. A year having passed, Rosemary's grieving husband and younger sister are coming to believe that Rosemary's death was not by her own hand. There are, as one might expect, several good suspects and little good evidence. Rosemary's husband has a plan to flush out the killer, a recreation of the fatal dinner. Will the killer be given away or will death be again on the menu?
Remembered Death (or Sparkling Cyanide) has lots of the elements that make a Christie novel identifiably a Christie novel. There are the idle rich, a suspicious death with few and vague clues, a group of people all with good reason to want the murdered person dead and a subtle detective plodding to a revelatory denouement. This book, however, is clearly not one of Ms. Christie's better efforts. The plot lacks forward momentum, the characters are flat and non-compelling and, perhaps worst, the solution isn't entirely persuasive. Go ahead and read this if you're a Christie completist. If not, you're best off picking another.
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WILL SOMEONE LET THE WOMAN SPEAK?
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-05-01
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
What "improvements" have been made for the St. Martin's Minotaur edition? There are already major differences in punctuation, word choices, and scene breaks between the original Collins and Dodd Mead (REMEMBERED DEATH) editions of this novel. There are further differences between the Dodd Mead editions republished by Random House/Avenel and the Dodd Mead editions republished by Simon & Shuster/Pocket. There are further additions still in the Signet, Bantam, Berkley, and Black Dog & Leventhal editions. For every publishing house putting out her works, there seem to be a new batch of editors altering Agatha Christie's words and the sound of her voice. What's the matter with these publishers? Whose voice do they think we want to hear when we sit down to a novel by Agatha Christie? And what will she sound like twenty years from now? It's frightening that her estate has failed to see the importance of guarding her words as she wrote them. Please tell me I'm not the only one here who senses that a crime has been committed.
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