5 Day challenge day 4

 It has been a successful challenge. I am not going to say it's been easy but much better than if it was the 30-day long I have seen other people do. 

I am happy with how it turned out to be. I was expecting to have more posts because I was going to update once a day as each ay was completed but it turned out to be even more due to technicalities I had not foreseen. That was a fun ride. And we're almost done.

Moving on this was the next Agatha Christie book. Just for myself next time I reread her works I might just do it by series instead of publication order, that would be very fun. I have found I enjoy Miss Marple or Mr. Quin a lot more than Poirot even if his adventures are more fantastical. 

Sidenote: Her works have been around for a while but still, why are the titles changed? I have found for most of her books there are several possible titles and I don't just mean the translations. In English, a single one of her books has at least 2 or 3 different titles, which makes it hard when looking for them as I have been trying to buy them all or at least get them in the correct order in digital format. I have a hard time deciding if the book is one I already have with a different name or if it's one I still have to get to later on.

Title: The hound of death 

Other titles: The veiled lady. Double sin

Genre: Mystery/Thriller, Paranormal

Original publication date: October 1933. Funny how this month 87 years ago the book was published. That's one nice coincidence I am reading it on an anniversary.

Book description: 

Twelve unexplained phenomena with no apparent earthly explanation, including a dog-shaped gunpowder mark; an omen from the "other side"; a haunted house; a chilling seance; an elderly lady's hold over a young man; and a mysterious SOS.

Thoughts:

This is a collection of 12 short stories told as Christie likes to do by having the characters tell each other the events they have knowledge of. This group of people starts investigating a weird phenomenon. The mark in the shape of a hound is what starts it all. This collection deviates from what we come to expect from her, as they all include paranormal/mystical elements more than crime investigation. 

It feels like she fell for the atmosphere and decided to include a whole collection of small stories featuring "spooky" ghost stories, communication with the dead, and otherworldly things happening to the characters.

I am not going to go into detail with each one of them, they're very short, and talking too much about them might spoil the fun. 

One of my favorites is the one where the old lady is set against modernizing her home and yet the good-natured nephew is insistent on setting up a few more modern apparatus. The old lady starts to hallucinate her departed husband talking to her and letting her know he's coming for her. 

The other one I found I enjoyed and all for the wrong reasons was the one where the nice lady is a renowned medium. She is going to join her life to the man of her dreams, once married she will no longer entertain. He comes to see her and cheer her on to participate in the last seance of her life. The medium is reluctant to do it. He talks her into it, the mysterious Mrs. X is a very wealthy woman and she is only trying to see her dead child once more. He guilt-trips her into it. He is definitely not the type of man you want as your husband. 

The mysterious SOS story was also one I liked. It did not go on the way I imagined it.

I'll just stop, this is the type of book you might enjoy greatly reading one short story a day, before bed or between bigger reads simply a good atmospheric read especially for October. 

That's it for now, see you later.

Stay safe!