Wickham, Wimsey, Westmacott: What I Read in October, November and December 2025

October:

Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie

I re-read this for the Halloween episode of Shedunnit, and was pleased to find it better than I remembered. There's a folk horror, pagan element to it that I rather enjoyed.

Third Girl by Agatha Christie

A less successful Christie, mostly because of her attempts to be up to date. She tried to fold details about youth culture and drug taking into the story when she clearly didn't know very much about them. I did, however, enjoy Mrs Oliver's antics in this book, especially the bit where she tails a suspect across London and then ends up having tea with them.

An Unsuitable Heir by K.J. Charles

I read this on the recommendation of a blog reader (thank you, Theodora!) and ended up agreeing with her that K.J. Charles writes good romance-mystery hybrids that are straightforward enough to read for relaxation but sufficiently well-written that your brain doesn't snag on any rough edges. This one was a queer nineteenth century romance that included some discussion of gender fluidity, circus/music hall performing, and ghosts. I'll pick up other books by this author when I'm in the right mood, for sure.

Giant's Bread by Mary Westmacott

A work project that I can't talk about yet required me to re-read all six of the Mary Westmacott books (written by Agatha Christie under a penname) in a short space of time. I've covered them on Shedunnit before but haven't looked at them in at least five years and arrived at some new insights this time around, probably because I've advanced in my knowledge of the Christie canon quite a lot in that time. I do think all six are worth reading. In this one, I was rather struck by the details about music, which was Christie's first choice for a career (she was a talented singer and pianist).

A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee

This was the Shedunnit Book Club's November book and my detailed thoughts on it are available to members over there. In brief: I found the setting in Raj-era India fascinating, the mystery just ok, and the author's choice of first-person narration frustrating.

Unfinished Portrait by Mary Westmacott

The correspondences between this second Westmacott novel and the sections of Agatha Christie's autobiography (which she didn't start writing for a couple of decades after this) are very striking. All of her youthful courtship details are the same and the failed marriage of "Celia" and "Dermot" is very similar to that of Agatha and Archie Christie. It actually made me wonder about the extent to which Christie's memories were shaped by working on this novel in the early 1930s, and whether that was what she was remembering, rather than the actual events, when she came to write her memoirs.

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman

A new Thursday Murder Club novel, consumed as an audiobook. It was just OK for me, this time. I still regret the loss of Lesley Manville as the original reader of the series (sorry, Fiona Shaw). I also feel like any attempt at serious mystery plotting has been shelved in favour of dialogue and character stuff, which doesn't work as well for me.

Pride and Prescience by Carrie Bebris

Another instalment in my continued and never-ending effort to read every Austen spin-off ever written. This series is a crime fiction crossover, with a now-married Darcy and Elizabeth taking on the role of "detectives" when things go awry in their social circle. In this one, Caroline Bingley has married a rich American and started behaving very strangely. Then, while everyone is staying at Netherfield Park, a murder takes place... A decent premise, but stilted dialogue and a slow-moving plot meant it disappointed, and I won't be continuing the series.

November:

Penhallow by Georgette Heyer

Now, this is a book I've thought about a lot since I finished it. I read and largely enjoyed all of Heyer's twelve detective novels this year as I was making a podcast episode about them, and this was the standout. Perhaps because it's barely a detective novel at all, but rather a grim, Gothic portrait of a family being controlled by a brutal patriarch on a remote estate in Cornwall. Shades of Rebecca, for sure. According to her biographer Jennifer Kloester, Heyer personally considered this to be one of her best books and was rather disappointed when the reading public didn't agree. I think I might, though! There is a murder plot in it, of a sort, but now that I've read some of Heyer's historical fiction this feels like a bridge between her work in the two different genres.

Duplicate Death by Georgette Heyer

Here, Heyer was on much safer ground, genre-wise — this is a traditional whodunnit, set around a card party at a fancy London house and detected by her recurring detective, Inspector Hemingway. After I mentioned this book in passing on the podcast, a bridge expert felt compelled to get in touch to point out that the "duplicate bridge" aspect of the plot doesn't really work, but since I don't know what that is anyway it didn't bother me. Perfectly readable, and with the usual Heyer sharpness of wit and description.

The Rasp by Philip Macdonald

I had heard bad things about this book from a fellow devotee of interwar crime fiction. But despite the dire warnings, I had a generally good time reading it. It felt to me like a mid-1920s hybrid, with MacDonald including both R. Austin Freeman-style forensic investigation of footprints and more thriller-ish elements such as you find in an early Christie like The Secret Adversary. Sometimes these two styles vie for the reader's attention in an irritating fashion, but mostly I wasn't bothered by it. I liked the early details about contemporary journalism and liked the amateur sleuth MacDonald sets up here, Anthony Gethryn. What this book has over and above everything else is vim and purpose: the narrative momentum is so great that it positively zips along. When I discussed this book with my guest for the podcast episode, I learned a lot about MacDonald's subsequent screenwriting work, and this unlocked a whole new appreciate in me for what he does with structure in this book. Have a listen to the Shedunnit episode about it.

Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott

I am convinced that this was Agatha Christie's experiment with horror fiction. It follows a self-satisfied, middle class English woman as she travels back home from visiting her married daughter in Baghdad. Owing to some bad weather, she misses a connection and has to wait for an unknown number of days at a remote rest-house on the Turkish border until the next train can get through. She quickly finishes the small amount of reading material she has with her and runs out of writing paper. There is nothing to do and nobody to talk to, beyond the staff who have no interest in engaging with her.

For the first time in her life, she has nothing but her own mind to fill her days. She takes desultory walks in the surrounding desert, reliving happy memories of her wonderful husband, lovely children, and attentive neighbours. But the more she thinks about her life, the more she comes to realise that she has been living in a smug, self-centred bubble, absolutely unaware of what is really going on around her. Her husband was relieved that she was going away on a long trip because he finds her hard work to live with. Her children pity her and have made hasty, unsuitable marriages to get away from her. The neighbours she has looked down on with their coarse, inferior lives were actually much better off — happy, together, honest. It's an intense and fascinating psychological portrait. Christie wrote this book in three days straight without sleeping, during WW2, and the intensity of tone and the narrative momentum is consistent with this kind of creation. I'd highly recommend it.

The Rose and the Yew Tree by Mary Westmacott

The back half of the Westmacott half dozen is a bit less rewarding. The overarching storyline of this one makes me go "hmmm". I do, however, like the details of a post-WW2 parliamentary election campaign, supposedly gathered by Christie from the experiences of her nephew Jack Watts.

A Daughter's A Daughter by Mary Westmacott

Originally a play and I can imagine it being better in that format. Still, a very clear-sighted and not especially flattering viewpoint on motherhood, written by someone who was mother to an adult daughter who hated this piece of work.

The Burden by Mary Westmacott

The final Westmacott and, like the one above, centred around quasi-parental relationships and the tensions thereof. My main observation coming out of this one: for someone who didn't write much in her crime fiction about children, Christie really loved to write about childhood.

The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers

This was the Shedunnit Book Club's December book and my detailed thoughts on it are available to members over there. I already knew that I liked this book a lot (bellringing, crime fiction and East Anglia being three of my favourite things) but on this re-read I unlocked a whole new level of love for it.

The Murder of Mr Wickham by Claudia Gray

Another Austen follow-on, again with a crime slant. Wickham, for obvious reasons, is a popular murder victim in this type of book (P.D. James is not alone in thinking that, although for me, Death Comes to Pemberley was far too weighed down with all the period research she had done to be a good read). I liked this one best of all the Austen-crimes I have read so far, principally because Gray does a great job of blending all the characters from all the different Austen novels together into one wide circle of acquaintance so she has plenty of scope (she explains her reasoning regarding timelines in an explanatory preface). Thus, our amateur detectives are Mr Jonathan Darcy (son of Darcy and Elizabeth) and Miss Juliet Tilney (daughter of Catherine from Northanger Abbey), and they detect a crime that takes place in the home of Emma and Mr Knightley. I will read more of these!

The Victorian Prizefighters series by Alice Coldbreath (three books)

In a similar vein to the K.J. Charles book mentioned above, these are well-structured but quite repetitive historical romance novels that I read either when travelling in hard-to-concentrate circumstances (in this case, incredibly busy and loud trains to a conference) or when extremely tired. If you have similar need for a brain-break but find a lot of supposedly "cosy" fiction frustratingly badly written, these might work for you (as long as you can handle the occasional spicy scene).

December:

Detection Unlimited by Georgette Heyer

The twelfth Heyer detective novel is something of an anticlimax, being very far from her best either in plot or character terms. I'm glad I managed to read all of them this year, though.

Elephants Can Remember by Agatha Christie

Another re-read for an upcoming podcast episode. This one still isn't a favourite of mine, even though I am fond of Mrs Oliver. By 1972, at the age of 82, I think Christie was a bit tired of writing mystery novels.

The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace

This is the next title in my Green Penguin Book Club series on the podcast and a book I have a real soft spot for. Probably because it's Dorothy L. Sayers at her most peculiar: there's no Peter Wimsey, no conventional mystery structure, and no well-developed characters who go on a journey through the novel. Just 53 documents, laying out the inner lives of the inhabitants of a suburban London villa in the early 1930s and the horrible crime that gets committed as a result. The episode will be out in January.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

This is the Shedunnit Book Club's chosen book for January! Join us if you'd like to discuss it together.

The Adventures of Dagobert Trostler by Balduin Groller

These are short stories starring the "Sherlock Holmes of Vienna", the titular amateur detective, Dagobert Trostler. I really enjoyed these and would have read lots more, but I have so far struggled to find any more English translations beyond the Kazabo edition. If you have any leads for me, please get in touch.

A Case of Life and Limb by Sally Smith

A Christmas present, devoured in one day on 26th December! I recorded this time last year how much I enjoyed the first book in this historical mystery series set in the Inner Temple in the early 1900s, and the second book held up well. Here's hoping Smith keeps up her schedule so I can keep getting these as gifts for some years to come.

These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer

More on this to come in my next reading email...

Carrington's Cases by J. Storer Clouston

Another Christmas gift — a lovely collection of mystery short stories by an Orkney-born writer from the golden age of detective fiction. I suspect my husband worked quite hard to track this down, but if you do get a chance to pick up a copy, it's well worth it.

That was, belatedly, my reading for October, November and December: 28 books across three months, bringing to 121 for the year (if I finish any others in the remaining three days of December, I'll update the total in the next update). I just hit my target of 120 books read in 2025.

I'll have more coherent thoughts about my year of reading and what I plan to do in 2026 for you next week. Thanks for scrolling this far through all of that — I hope you found something to try reading yourself. If you would like to follow along in real time, you can see what I'm reading at any given moment on the Storygraph.