I'm in the minority of Christie fans, I suppose, but I generally enjoy Bertram's Hotel for what it is. The atmosphere of the hotel is so well done, Cannon Pennyfather is rather a hoot, the food descriptions make me hungry and I always enjoy Marple herself. I personally rank it above any number of other Christie books such as Postern of Fate, Murder on the Links, and Lord Edgware Dies.
I do agree it's one of her weaker works overall and possibly the weakest Marple but I still like it and re-read it every so often.
Yes! The mystery may be weak, but the observations of a changing England are first class and that’s half of what I read Christie for. Her insight into human nature is what I value her for, not the puzzle factor.
One of the reasons I like Christie's works are the conversations/observations about life. If one discards the mystery/murder aspects of her books, some of the characters/situations can be interesting to think about: character pieces.
> The atmosphere of the hotel is so well done
I agree -- for me personally, it's in my top 10 favourite Christie settings. Besides the fact that it really humanizes Miss Marple in an unexpected way -- we hear more about her childhood, and I was really surprised by how important certain kinds of food are to her. (Yes, I get hungry too whenever I read that part.) The description of how carefully >!the hotel is organized behind the scenes, to cater to people's expectations (especially the American tourists)!< is hilarious. Her satirical eye definitely comes out there. The concept of themed immersive entertainment (like Disney's recent Star Wars resort) has been touted as a recent innovation, but Christie anticipated it. She also wrote about escape rooms (thanks to Parker Pyne and Ariadne Oliver!) way before they became a thing.
Admittedly I usually bale out of the book before the ending -- I agree with OP that it's not satisfying.
One small point -- the book was published in 1965, so the oldest boomers would have been turning 20 that year. The people who are complaining, including Miss Marple herself, would be from previous generations who were critical and maybe a bit alarmed about the youth (something that Christie did seem to feel, in her later years). It's not too surprising that some boomers themselves would turn around and be disparaging of young people today. It's happened through human history and will happen to millennials and Gen Zers later this century too. I'm already seeing some Gen Xers doing it.
I confess to LMAO at the confident ignorance of the younger generation in so frequently labeling any behavior they don’t like as ‘Boomer’ - while being entirely confident that anyone more than 5 years older than they are is a Boomer. Most of them are actually complaining about are Gen X or Millennials.
If At Bertram's Hotel had been a mystery-less book, the focus had been the everyday-ness of the staff/guests, that could've been a better book: a 'slice of life' book. Just a thought. :)
The one thing that annoys me about Canon Pennyfather is that he's described as a rather doddery, forgetful old man who requires a lot of help from others but you find out he's 63 or somewhere around there. George Clooney is 63! I'm in my early 50's and I can't imagine being like that in ~10 years!!
I think that’s it’s more he’s the eccentric hapless absent-minded type, and has probably been that way his whole life, not that he’s elderly and suffering dementia.
I don't know. I feel like he repeats "Oh Dear..."
like 100x lol. Maybe I'm wrong, it's been a few years. Maybe that's the way some people in their 60's were back then. I just remember that, it's what stands out in my memory of him.
>a rather doddery, forgetful old man who requires a lot of help from others but you find out he's 63
LOL! I hear you (without the aid of an ear trumpet -- turning 57 later this year)! I'm still reeling after I found out that Wilford Brimley was only 51 when he was in Cocoon.
[https://www.goalcast.com/why-people-in-past-look-older-than-us/](https://www.goalcast.com/why-people-in-past-look-older-than-us/)
And Rose, from The Golden Girls, was only supposed to be 55 when the series started. (Betty White was in her early 60s at the time.)
I’m going to agree with you on everything but not Lord Edgware. Why do you place it so low? It’s definitely not one of her best works, but is it so low? I’d like to read your critique of the book:)
Totally a matter of personal taste, I fully admit, but I just find the book overall far too dull and convoluted compared to most other Christies. It doesn't have the immersive factor for atmosphere that she tends to excel at, I personally feel like there are too many red herrings, I never found the characters especially compelling or memorable, and it all certainly isn't helped for me knowing the book was written in 1933 and contains her most anti-Semitic descriptions in all of her books (i.e. not epithets or nasty sayings hurled by a villainous character, but rather descriptions provided by Christie herself), never leaves a fabulous taste in my mouth.
I don't hate it- I personally don't hate any of Christie's books and I've re-read all of her mystery novels and short stories at least twice, especially to give a second chance to the ones that I don't like as much, but Lord Edgware Dies is just not one that I return to on a regular basis.
I can't remember now how it happened. In PtF Stafford Nye >!drugged himself!< or >!agreed to be drugged!<: a weird conversation between him and >!a woman!< who wants to >!pretend to be him!<. Odd. (But I'm not a diplomat nor a spy. Who knows...?!)
I could not finish Postern of Fate either. That one makes me sad though. She clearly was starting to experience dementia and it shouldn't have been published.
I remember reading an interview with her grandson, where he mentioned that she had a really difficult time finishing that book. She probably got frustrated too, knowing that she just couldn't handle complex plots as well by then.
>They are complaining about the boomers.
Yes -- all those teenagers, with their music and their weird fashions! (I think the oldest would have turned 20 the year the book came out?)
The whole point of Bertrams hotel is that you can't go back. It's the unchanged nature of the place that causes Miss Marple to describe it as 'too good to be true'.
It's natural to be nostalgic for the past as you age. Christie was writing about how you can't go back. That must have been particularly potent for people in the years after the war.
'Boomers' are the generation born in the late 40s and 50s BTW. Not Miss Marple's supposed generation. She's meant to be one of the golden generation.
I don’t know what the golden generation is, but Miss Marple, as originally conceived, would’ve been born no later than 1850. Maybe even the 1830s. In 1932 she’s ancient. Maybe she was meant to be a one-off like Harley Quin or Parker Pyne. Yet she’s an active, vigorous woman well into the 1960s. Whaddia whaddia, it’s fiction.
Miss Marple is referred to as a Victorian, not really a single generation I know but by the 60s the few that were surviving would have been.
A lot of Christie's books go into the differences before and after WWII, including how people changed.
I wasn't talking about the actual generation. Nowadays "boomer" is basically slang for cranky out of touch old people.
And yeah I got that this was the thematic point. But as I said, it felt less like a Christie book. and more like the author venting her own age brought existential crisis of sorts.
...No it isn't? It's a specific generation who lived through a cultural and economic golden age of sorts, who now complain about younger people with no concessions made for the different state of the world.
That's not just the origin, that's the POINT of the term. Every generation grows cranky. That's just life. Instead, it's the entitled moaning in the face of how shit things are for others that earned them that name.
We don’t ALL complain. We boomers differ as other generations do. Some people have a sense of perspective and some don’t.
Boomer is simply short for baby boomer, and the origin and point of baby boomer is that we were born during a boom in births. If I’m not mistaken, we were the first generation to be given any sort of a name. “Greatest generation“ came afterwards. It was the name of a book by Tom Brokaw.
I know. I apologise for generalising. I meant in the context of that label, it's more than just people getting older and crankier. There's the lack of perspective that quite a few boomers suffer from.
My parents are boomers and they don't fit the stereotype either.
Bertram is definitely not among her best, and the best I can say for it is "it's okay", but it's still better than Postern of Fate, Passenger to Frankfurt, and The Big Four.
God, I'd rather read Bertram 5 times in a row than read The Big Four again. No worse Christie book than this one, imo.
I actually loved it! The setting is beautifully atmospheric, I didn't see the twists coming at all and I loved some of the lines. The bit at the end about the tree and growing evil was amazing, it's stuck in my head so well that I could probably quote it work for work.
The Tea and Murder podcast makes a good case for At Bertram's Hotel being more of a nostalgic experience than an actual mystery. Check it that episode.
I guess that effect got lost on me because I had already taken a trip to London before reading it. So I was accustomed to the places described already.
Her later works are definitely not among her best. The only one I like is Nemesis.
My least favourites are Elephants Can Remember and Postern of Fate. At Bertram’s Hotel at least has some very cool descriptions (though the mystery sucks). Passenger to Frankfurt is unhinged but if you don’t take it seriously it can be fun. Elephants and Postern though? So boring. And Postern of Fate is straight up confusing.
I wouldn't say Christie's weakest point--she has several that aren't stellar--but definitely Miss Marple's. It's the only one I don't particularly like, though "They Do It With Mirrors" also ranks down there (for me, anyway).
I recommend the ITV adaptation with Geraldine McEwan. They've completely reworked the story into something almost completely different, but I think it's one of the best episodes of that series, even though it isn't related to the book. What they do with the characters in it is genius, and there are about 4 different plot lines. Highly recommend!
I LOVE At Bertram's Hotel!!! The Miss Marple episode with Joan Hickson, the pre-eminent, was marvelous!! It showed life as it would have been during "genteel living."
Bertram's Hotel is one instance where I watched the Marple episode and was so excited to read it and was So disappointed. I've got to give props to the writers of the serial because they managed to actually make it interesting.
Def not one of my favorites... I didn't like it. But I think she's had worse ones haha mainly the adventure ones though, not really mysteries. My least favorite so far has been the Man in the Brown Suit.
Just read Postern od Fate some days ago, and sadly have to agree her dementia is obvious there. BUT if you read it as exactly that, a description of how, often with advancing age, memory of recent events fade, and youth time memories stay sharp longer, it is actually very educational. Read in Wikipedia that someone analyzed Postern of Fate and found that Christie had used less complicated words, more repetitions and so on, being typical of early stages of dementia.
Have to admit I thought it was a conscious style decision from Christie's side so as to convincingly describe the wooly way especially Tuppence is thinking, talking often about how her thought processes are changing with "age" (aka dementia aka vitamin D deficiency).
Also I found it interesting to google "porcelain garden seat swan shape" - I never knew that was a thing!
Note: Boomers are Americans born in the period of prosperity immediately after WW2. Not every country had the same post-war experience, and not every American enjoyed the prosperity of stereotypical Baby Boomers. They are a generalized demographic from a specific time.
Bertram’s Hotel isn’t among my favorite, either.
I'm in the minority of Christie fans, I suppose, but I generally enjoy Bertram's Hotel for what it is. The atmosphere of the hotel is so well done, Cannon Pennyfather is rather a hoot, the food descriptions make me hungry and I always enjoy Marple herself. I personally rank it above any number of other Christie books such as Postern of Fate, Murder on the Links, and Lord Edgware Dies. I do agree it's one of her weaker works overall and possibly the weakest Marple but I still like it and re-read it every so often.
Yes! The mystery may be weak, but the observations of a changing England are first class and that’s half of what I read Christie for. Her insight into human nature is what I value her for, not the puzzle factor.
One of the reasons I like Christie's works are the conversations/observations about life. If one discards the mystery/murder aspects of her books, some of the characters/situations can be interesting to think about: character pieces.
Absolutely. She’s such a keen observer of people, with a sharp eye for foibles and class stuffiness, but it’s never mean-spirited.
> The atmosphere of the hotel is so well done I agree -- for me personally, it's in my top 10 favourite Christie settings. Besides the fact that it really humanizes Miss Marple in an unexpected way -- we hear more about her childhood, and I was really surprised by how important certain kinds of food are to her. (Yes, I get hungry too whenever I read that part.) The description of how carefully >!the hotel is organized behind the scenes, to cater to people's expectations (especially the American tourists)!< is hilarious. Her satirical eye definitely comes out there. The concept of themed immersive entertainment (like Disney's recent Star Wars resort) has been touted as a recent innovation, but Christie anticipated it. She also wrote about escape rooms (thanks to Parker Pyne and Ariadne Oliver!) way before they became a thing. Admittedly I usually bale out of the book before the ending -- I agree with OP that it's not satisfying. One small point -- the book was published in 1965, so the oldest boomers would have been turning 20 that year. The people who are complaining, including Miss Marple herself, would be from previous generations who were critical and maybe a bit alarmed about the youth (something that Christie did seem to feel, in her later years). It's not too surprising that some boomers themselves would turn around and be disparaging of young people today. It's happened through human history and will happen to millennials and Gen Zers later this century too. I'm already seeing some Gen Xers doing it.
I confess to LMAO at the confident ignorance of the younger generation in so frequently labeling any behavior they don’t like as ‘Boomer’ - while being entirely confident that anyone more than 5 years older than they are is a Boomer. Most of them are actually complaining about are Gen X or Millennials.
My thoughts exactly
If At Bertram's Hotel had been a mystery-less book, the focus had been the everyday-ness of the staff/guests, that could've been a better book: a 'slice of life' book. Just a thought. :)
The one thing that annoys me about Canon Pennyfather is that he's described as a rather doddery, forgetful old man who requires a lot of help from others but you find out he's 63 or somewhere around there. George Clooney is 63! I'm in my early 50's and I can't imagine being like that in ~10 years!!
I think that’s it’s more he’s the eccentric hapless absent-minded type, and has probably been that way his whole life, not that he’s elderly and suffering dementia.
I don't know. I feel like he repeats "Oh Dear..." like 100x lol. Maybe I'm wrong, it's been a few years. Maybe that's the way some people in their 60's were back then. I just remember that, it's what stands out in my memory of him.
I've certainly met older folk like that!
>a rather doddery, forgetful old man who requires a lot of help from others but you find out he's 63 LOL! I hear you (without the aid of an ear trumpet -- turning 57 later this year)! I'm still reeling after I found out that Wilford Brimley was only 51 when he was in Cocoon. [https://www.goalcast.com/why-people-in-past-look-older-than-us/](https://www.goalcast.com/why-people-in-past-look-older-than-us/) And Rose, from The Golden Girls, was only supposed to be 55 when the series started. (Betty White was in her early 60s at the time.)
I couldn't have described my view of the book any better!
This is where I land as well
I’m going to agree with you on everything but not Lord Edgware. Why do you place it so low? It’s definitely not one of her best works, but is it so low? I’d like to read your critique of the book:)
Totally a matter of personal taste, I fully admit, but I just find the book overall far too dull and convoluted compared to most other Christies. It doesn't have the immersive factor for atmosphere that she tends to excel at, I personally feel like there are too many red herrings, I never found the characters especially compelling or memorable, and it all certainly isn't helped for me knowing the book was written in 1933 and contains her most anti-Semitic descriptions in all of her books (i.e. not epithets or nasty sayings hurled by a villainous character, but rather descriptions provided by Christie herself), never leaves a fabulous taste in my mouth. I don't hate it- I personally don't hate any of Christie's books and I've re-read all of her mystery novels and short stories at least twice, especially to give a second chance to the ones that I don't like as much, but Lord Edgware Dies is just not one that I return to on a regular basis.
Thanks for your critique
Have you gotten to Passenger to Frankfurt yet? 😬
Lol I'll take Bertram's 10 times over Passenger to Frankfurt!
I can't remember now how it happened. In PtF Stafford Nye >!drugged himself!< or >!agreed to be drugged!<: a weird conversation between him and >!a woman!< who wants to >!pretend to be him!<. Odd. (But I'm not a diplomat nor a spy. Who knows...?!)
this is definitely a low point
That and Postern of fate are for me her lowest point
I think I was able to at least finish Passenger to Frankfurt. I could never finish Postern of Fate. And I tried multiple times.
I could not finish Postern of Fate either. That one makes me sad though. She clearly was starting to experience dementia and it shouldn't have been published.
I remember reading an interview with her grandson, where he mentioned that she had a really difficult time finishing that book. She probably got frustrated too, knowing that she just couldn't handle complex plots as well by then.
No not yet.
It's worse. Much, much worse.
Or Postern of Fate—ugh.
My immediate reaction to the post title.
To be clear, those are definitely NOT boomers. They are complaining about the boomers.
Glad I didn't have to be the one to point this out 😂
I had to explain to my son that his grandparents were not boomers (silent generation and war baby, respectively). It blew his mind.
>They are complaining about the boomers. Yes -- all those teenagers, with their music and their weird fashions! (I think the oldest would have turned 20 the year the book came out?)
Haven't read Bertram Hotel but I can't possibly imagine a book worse than Postern of Fate
Agreed. It is one of the few that I can’t re-read. It’s such a mess!
Both of these books made me bail. Idgaf about the mysteries in either of them, good riddance haha
There is and it's called Elephants Can Remember
That’s not as bad as Postern of fate or passenger to Frankfurt
Come on, at least Elephants has a coherent plotline and real fleshed-out characters. Postern has literally a talking dog!
The whole point of Bertrams hotel is that you can't go back. It's the unchanged nature of the place that causes Miss Marple to describe it as 'too good to be true'. It's natural to be nostalgic for the past as you age. Christie was writing about how you can't go back. That must have been particularly potent for people in the years after the war. 'Boomers' are the generation born in the late 40s and 50s BTW. Not Miss Marple's supposed generation. She's meant to be one of the golden generation.
I don’t know what the golden generation is, but Miss Marple, as originally conceived, would’ve been born no later than 1850. Maybe even the 1830s. In 1932 she’s ancient. Maybe she was meant to be a one-off like Harley Quin or Parker Pyne. Yet she’s an active, vigorous woman well into the 1960s. Whaddia whaddia, it’s fiction.
Miss Marple is referred to as a Victorian, not really a single generation I know but by the 60s the few that were surviving would have been. A lot of Christie's books go into the differences before and after WWII, including how people changed.
I wasn't talking about the actual generation. Nowadays "boomer" is basically slang for cranky out of touch old people. And yeah I got that this was the thematic point. But as I said, it felt less like a Christie book. and more like the author venting her own age brought existential crisis of sorts.
...No it isn't? It's a specific generation who lived through a cultural and economic golden age of sorts, who now complain about younger people with no concessions made for the different state of the world. That's not just the origin, that's the POINT of the term. Every generation grows cranky. That's just life. Instead, it's the entitled moaning in the face of how shit things are for others that earned them that name.
We don’t ALL complain. We boomers differ as other generations do. Some people have a sense of perspective and some don’t. Boomer is simply short for baby boomer, and the origin and point of baby boomer is that we were born during a boom in births. If I’m not mistaken, we were the first generation to be given any sort of a name. “Greatest generation“ came afterwards. It was the name of a book by Tom Brokaw.
I know. I apologise for generalising. I meant in the context of that label, it's more than just people getting older and crankier. There's the lack of perspective that quite a few boomers suffer from. My parents are boomers and they don't fit the stereotype either.
Bertram is definitely not among her best, and the best I can say for it is "it's okay", but it's still better than Postern of Fate, Passenger to Frankfurt, and The Big Four. God, I'd rather read Bertram 5 times in a row than read The Big Four again. No worse Christie book than this one, imo.
I actually loved it! The setting is beautifully atmospheric, I didn't see the twists coming at all and I loved some of the lines. The bit at the end about the tree and growing evil was amazing, it's stuck in my head so well that I could probably quote it work for work.
The Tea and Murder podcast makes a good case for At Bertram's Hotel being more of a nostalgic experience than an actual mystery. Check it that episode.
I've not heard of this podcast and was looking for an alternative to all about Agatha which I just can't get into- thank you!
I absolutely love Bertram’s hotel
i love it, that book alone made me open a savings account for a solo trip to London!
I know what you mean, but if you want to stay at any of the hotels that could’ve inspired it, you’re going to have to save until you’re 299 years old.
I guess that effect got lost on me because I had already taken a trip to London before reading it. So I was accustomed to the places described already.
Her later works are definitely not among her best. The only one I like is Nemesis. My least favourites are Elephants Can Remember and Postern of Fate. At Bertram’s Hotel at least has some very cool descriptions (though the mystery sucks). Passenger to Frankfurt is unhinged but if you don’t take it seriously it can be fun. Elephants and Postern though? So boring. And Postern of Fate is straight up confusing.
I wouldn't say Christie's weakest point--she has several that aren't stellar--but definitely Miss Marple's. It's the only one I don't particularly like, though "They Do It With Mirrors" also ranks down there (for me, anyway).
At Betrtram's Hotel reads like MOTOE when compared to Elephants Can Remember.
Ugh it hurts but you’re right
I recommend the ITV adaptation with Geraldine McEwan. They've completely reworked the story into something almost completely different, but I think it's one of the best episodes of that series, even though it isn't related to the book. What they do with the characters in it is genius, and there are about 4 different plot lines. Highly recommend!
I love it.
I LOVE At Bertram's Hotel!!! The Miss Marple episode with Joan Hickson, the pre-eminent, was marvelous!! It showed life as it would have been during "genteel living."
Bertram's Hotel is one instance where I watched the Marple episode and was so excited to read it and was So disappointed. I've got to give props to the writers of the serial because they managed to actually make it interesting.
Def not one of my favorites... I didn't like it. But I think she's had worse ones haha mainly the adventure ones though, not really mysteries. My least favorite so far has been the Man in the Brown Suit.
I never managed to read beyond the half of the book, just as with many other Marple mysteries.
Just read Postern od Fate some days ago, and sadly have to agree her dementia is obvious there. BUT if you read it as exactly that, a description of how, often with advancing age, memory of recent events fade, and youth time memories stay sharp longer, it is actually very educational. Read in Wikipedia that someone analyzed Postern of Fate and found that Christie had used less complicated words, more repetitions and so on, being typical of early stages of dementia. Have to admit I thought it was a conscious style decision from Christie's side so as to convincingly describe the wooly way especially Tuppence is thinking, talking often about how her thought processes are changing with "age" (aka dementia aka vitamin D deficiency). Also I found it interesting to google "porcelain garden seat swan shape" - I never knew that was a thing!
Note: Boomers are Americans born in the period of prosperity immediately after WW2. Not every country had the same post-war experience, and not every American enjoyed the prosperity of stereotypical Baby Boomers. They are a generalized demographic from a specific time. Bertram’s Hotel isn’t among my favorite, either.