A non Poirot/Marple mystery. Fun characters-the resolution has the most Columbo -ish gimmick to date for my reading. And the novel has plenty of (to use a word she likes to use all the time ) "atmosphere". ( )

I was introduced to the works of Agatha Christie when I was about eleven or twelve, and started reading them one after another with that particular teenage boy’s avidity that can rapidly morph into mindless obsession. Looking back now, I am not sure whether I even especially enjoyed them at the time – I just turned to the next one as a manifestation of the compulsion to try to ‘complete the set’. I was much the same with the Sherlock Holmes stories, and remember reading the four novels and five volumes of short stories in one block during one school summer holiday.

Looking at Agatha Christie’s books now, I see that in my youth I completely failed to acknowledge any of the occasional wry social comment, or the frequent bitchiness. Indeed, having revisited some of the less well known works in the cannon, I see a brutal side to Ms Christie’s nature, with victims often described in the most starkly negative terms.

The Sittaford Mystery is one of Dame Agatha’s earlier novels, and a standalone story, not featuring any of her famous sleuths. It tells of the murder of Captain Trevelyan RN, a retired naval man who lived alone in Dartmoor, eschewing all company apart from that of his old friend Major Burnaby. Trevelyan is known as a rather solitary and unsociable character with a tendency towards parsimony. Receiving a surprisingly high offer of rent for his large house in Sittaford over the winter period, he has decamped, moving to the nearby town of Exhampton. Burnaby and Trevelyan have fallen in the habit of spending sociable evenings together twice a week, walking the three miles each way.

As the novel opens, heavy snow has all but blocked Sittaford off, to such an extent that Major Burnaby initially decides to miss his customary evening with Captain Trevelyan. Instead, he joins other guests at Treverlyan’s old home, where the new tenants are proving very hospitable to all their neighbours. As a diversion in the wintry evening, the house party decided to have a try at ‘table turning’ conducting an amateur séance. This exercise yields up an alarming message …

The novel is as engaging as Christie’s books generally are, although this is one that has not aged well, I suspect that it may well have been on the cusp of being rather dated even when it was first published. Christie was still honing her act, and had not yet learned to smooth all the potential wrinkles out of her plot, Captain Trevelyan is a surly character, and his taciturn misogyny seems too clumsy to be credible.

However, I enjoyed the glee with which Emily Trefusis and Charles Enderby, the self-appointed nemeses, pursue their investigation, although I felt that the crime when finally revealed lacked any real viability. If this had been the first Agatha Christie book that I had read, I am pretty certain that I would not have bothered with any others. ( )

Despite ITV twisting this to be a Marple story, Marple (nor Poirot) is anywhere to be found in this story. Instead we have an intelligent young woman who gets involved investigating a murder when her fiancée gets accused of doing the crime.

Big houses, death of the owner, small villages, suspicious characters, ouija boards predicting death (apparently correctly), money, snow drifts on Dartmoor and an escaped prisoner from the local criminal mental facility all leads to a compact mystery story.

Christie does write rather strong, forward women investigators, especially if they're on the young side - lots of vigour etc. ( )

Murder at Hazelmoor is a cute little book. A nice easy murder mystery read full of clues to help throw you off of the ending. Nothing special here, they say Agatha Christie is the queen of suspense novels or whatever, but I didn't find this book all too suspenseful. Oh well, it was an enjoyable, quick read, and after all, what else could you ask for. ( )

3.5* ( )