Early in this novel a character muses about how best to portray the Witches in a production of ‘Macbeth’. It’s his contention that rather than pushing up the weirdness so the sisters become something which could feasibly fit into a pantomime, they are instead portrayed as the kind of normal – if slightly sinister – old ladies who are frequently dismissed as witches in English country villages. As apparently all English villages have witches (a fact which all country folk know), and it would just be more effective to use their type of gentle malevolence for the Wyrd sisters, rather than go over the top and be silly.‘The Pale Horse’ reads like Christie trying to do Dennis Wheatley and embrace supernatural horror. A Catholic priest is murdered and on his person is a list of names given to him by a dying lady. It becomes clear to the police that a number of the names on that list are now deceased, but that they all died – seemingly – of natural courses. It takes Mark Easterbrook, a busybody with too much time on his hands, and his plucky gal assistant Ginger Corrigan to link the deaths with three spiritualists who live in a former pub called The Pale Horse.Here’s where that theory about Macbeth falls down, as these three ladies – despite the powers they boast of – are not particularly scary. They are just eccentric old dears who mix spells and then offer cups of tea. Perhaps in a more skilled writer’s hands, a really sinister quality could have been spun around them – but in Agatha Christie’s, the entire book falls short of scares. Her jolly hockey-sticks prose style just doesn’t lend itself to fear, and the fact that she wouldn’t recognise a well-rounded character if one started beating her around the face and neck with her own typewriter, means there’s no one really to care about either.(There is also, oddly, a lot of talk about how nobody could be tried for murder by witchcraft. It was actually only seventeen years before the publication of this novel [in 1961:] that the last witchcraft trial took place in Britain, a case that the country’s leading crime writer would surely have been aware of. Follow this link if you think I’m making that fact up – http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jan....)The prosaic ending is distinctly irritating, but very like Christie. And unless you’re an unshakable fan of Dame Agatha, then this book really does promise more than it delivers.
This was the first book from Agatha Christie that I read and I really enjoyed it. One of my friends recommended it and I am glad to accept her advice. This is a fascinating crime story. The setting and the characters are so real-like that the reader can easily imagine them and maybe identify with them. The protagonist is Mark Easterbrook and the story is mostly told from his perspective. It was a very good idea that Agatha marked the person who tells the certain chapter so it was easy to find out if it is not Easterbrook. Furthermore, I was impressed by the elaborateness of the crime itself. At first, I was a bit disappointed because the title focuses our attention too much on the suspected place of the crime but later it turns out to be only a small part of the truth. It was gripping that Agatha combined the traditions and beliefs of the olds with modern technology. I was also impressed by the way through which the reader realizes the main criminal. I have never expected such a solution. In addition to this, at the end of the story the emphasize shifts from the main characters to some minor characters: it is not the protagonist who solves the mystery and the main criminal is not one of the three women. I would recommend this rewarding book to everybody. It is not part of any of Agatha’s series so it is a perfect book to make familiar yourself with the style of the writer and the feelings of her other books.
What do You think about The Pale Horse (2002)?
This was my first book to read by Agatha Christie, I’d add this book to my list of “the best books I’ve read” directly. I honestly chose this book cause of it’s title “the plae horse” since I like horses but then when I came to see who the author of the book was I trusted that it would be a good one since I’ve heard a lot about Agatha Christi and how her books are great and finally got the chance to read one.The story starts in a tea house where a man witnesses a fight between two young girls, a day later one of these girls has been reported dead. Few days later an old dying woman asks to see a priest and when the priest arrived she handed him a list of names and died in the same time. The priest got murdered a short while after that, when the police found the list of names they knew that someone wanted those names because it was hidden in the shoe of the priest, and this is where the investigation starts.A young man named Mark who was a scholar, historian, archaeologist and a well known writer of articles got involved in this by asking his police friend about the list of names and happened to know a few people who died recently with the same names and to his surprise his name was on the list aswell. Mark came across a term called “the pale horse” several times and to his surprise there was an inn named “the pale horse” which was owned by three women who were know for witchcraft and sorcery. A lot of events take place and Mark gets to a point where he believes that “the pale horse” has something to do with all the murders and the names in the list.
—Laila_m_240526
روايتي الثانية لاغاثا و قد جائتني كإقتراح و إعارة من إحدى أعز الصديقات ، في الحقيقة " رغم انني من المتعصبين لدان براون " الا ان اسلوب اغاثا في طي الاحداث بغموض و واقعيه ادهشني ، رواية بحق تجعلك تتلهف للوصول للنهايه لمعرفه سر الجريمة .. و انتهت بخاتمه جميلة و لطيفه جداً ♡
—Molecule
The Pale Horse is Agatha Christie’s novel dealing with black magic. Dame Christie ingeniously weaves a web into the murderous world of an old inn The Pale Horse where a witch, a medium and a psychic form circle of devious intentions. The story opens with Thomasina Tuckerton in a brawl with another woman over a man and that leads to a chain of events that uncovers one murder after another. Ms. Tuckerton’s untimely death and would have been unnoticed if Father Gorman had not been found murdered after taking the confession of Mrs. Davis with a list of names in his shoe. And the one tie to everything is the old inn, The Pale Horse. Mark Easterbrook, with the help of Ariadne Oliver, solves the mystery of the sinister gang.The novel reads easily enough with the classic Christie charm on every page. This is Dame Christie’s only novel that uses “black” magic as means of murder, or a suggestion thereof. It’s a genius plot! The séance scene is a read to behold. This is Mrs. Oliver’s fourth appearance in Christie’s work and the only novel where the fictional writer appears without her friend, the famed Belgium detective Hercule Poirot. I enjoyed this mystery quite a bit. It’s been sometime since I read a Christie mystery and it was a pleasant return to a favored author. The only disappointment was guessing the murder way in advance of the resolution at the conclusion of the story.
—Sergey
