I was Hangin' with Miss Marple Last Week - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

I was Hangin' with Miss Marple Last Week

“I think, my dear, we won't talk any more about murder

 during tea.  Such an unpleasant subject.”

 

-4:50 from Paddington

 

I visited Miss Marple this past week

In her little home in St. Mary Mead

Fluffy in her appearance and pink of cheek

Troweling with vehemence another garden weed

 

Kindness itself, she asked me to sit down

On a wooden bench near the hollyhock

A warm soft evening with the bees around

And the hourly chime from the old church clock

 

Tea and scandal at four, soft-scented soap –

 

     And in Pentonville, forlorn of any hope

 

A murderer awaiting the hangman’s rope

Murder Most Cosy - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Murder Most Cosy

 

A murder cannot possibly be cosy

With blood all over the vicarage floor

And while Miss Marple is politely nosy

There is still the problem of all that gore

 

A murder committed in an English village

Is hardly cosy to m’lord who died

Surrounded by hop fields under tillage

He still is dead (tho’ in the countryside)

 

A murder cannot possibly be cosy –

But is the widow finding life now rosy?

Passenger to Frankfurt, by Agatha Christie

Passenger to Frankfurt
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie Ltd: 1970

One of Miss Christie’s stand-alone (that is, not a Poirot or a Miss Marple) yarns, Passenger to Frankfurt is a dated query into the various post-war revolutions that continued the foul works of Hitler and Stalin. Miss Christie considers the world-wide situation of that dark time, and then creates fictional characters to investigate the source. The neo-Nazi denouement is, in retrospect, mostly in error, but then Miss Christie was writing fiction and, anyway, could not have known that the mischief was almost wholly Communist in origin.

The villains of this story are part of a secret, international Nazi resurgence of youth funded by decayed tycoons and even more decayed European aristocracy. That Nazis, like Communists, originate with dysfunctional and uneducated gangs posing as workers’ movements seems not to have occurred to Miss Christie, or perhaps she assumed that the reality would not have the appeal of alpine castles and marching Hitler Youth. With a little more violence and any sex at all this book could have been any one of the hundreds of mass-market, look-alike paperbacks with lurid covers featuring swastikas and / or hammers-and-sickles and / or automatic pistols occupying, like Soviet soldiers along the Berlin Wall, yards and yards of bookstore shelves .

Even so, this is a good read for an airplane trip or a vegetative Sunday afternoon, and the characterizations, especially of the minor characters, are delightful.

Agatha Christie’s books, more than a generation after her death, continue to sell by the thousands and thousands.

The reviewer’s books sell not by the thousands, or even by the hundred or dozens, but rather by the ones from lulu.com.

Moehammed O'Chang, Uiger-Irish-Han Detective

Mack Hall


I blame it all on Agatha Christie. In the 1920s she created the fictional detective Hercule Poirot based on the characteristics of real Belgian refugees she met in England during World War I. The gag worked so well that Poirot and his rather dim friend Captain Hastings have been the subjects of dozens of novels, short stories, and films for some eighty years.

In the past decade or so, multi-ethnic detectives appear to be a requirement for any new detective stories: Indian (as in sub-continent), Indian (as in Native American), African (as in Kenya), and combinations thereof indicate that nowadays ya can’t be a detective without a hyphen.

Sherlock Holmes had his pipe and Doctor Watson, Inspector Morse his cigarettes and Sergeant Lewis, and Chief Superintendent Foyle his Scotch and his driver Samantha, but in this chemical-free, pal-free era the new detectives are pretty much restricted to a dog or cat to help them along.

I propose to publishing companies these following chemically-correct, pet-friendly detectives:

Johann Smythe-Bulkovsky, Norwegian-English-Russian police detective and his herring, Bob.

Sammi Robichaux-Gianelli, transgendered Finnish-French-Italian spy and his/her reindeer, Bubba.

Paddy O’Hara-Moriarty, Newfoundland-Newfoundland-Newfoundland police inspector with three eyes, an Irish ancestry that needs a little more genetic diversity, and a talking codfish named Seamus that nobody else can see or hear.

Lupe McKenzie-Nguyen, Mexican-Canadian-Vietnamese private detective and her pal Sparky, a crime-solving electric eel.

Angus Hussein-Llewellyn, Scotch-Iraqi-Welsh police constable and his suicide-bomber hamster, Darryl.

Bubba Boudreau-Zulu, Texan-Cajun-Kenyan CSI geek and his springbok, Hoppy.

Rush Beck-Hannity, ‘merican sit-behind-a-desk-and-think-stuff crime non-fighter, you bet’cha, and his drooling pet fox, Sean. He doesn’t actually do anything; all he does is criticize working police officers and detectives.

X X-X, F.I.L.B.E.R.T. enforcer. If he wanted you to know any more he’d beat it into you.

Dr. Misloz Hans-Hans, Czech-Swiss-Dutch police consulting physician and his petri dish of intuitive bacteria.

Chef Cletus Rabinowitz-Park, the Tennessean-Israeli-Korean cooking-show host who dishes up omelettes and solves crimes using sign language, and his pal Handy the Signing Squirrel, who keeps being accused of making obscene gestures because squirrels haven’t as many fingers as humans.

So whatever happened to Hercule Poirot? He was busted for income-tax fraud and incarcerated in the little grey cells.

Ouch.

Moehammed O'Chang, Uiger-Irish-Han Detective

Mack Hall


I blame it all on Agatha Christie. In the 1920s she created the fictional detective Hercule Poirot based on the characteristics of real Belgian refugees she met in England during World War I. The gag worked so well that Poirot and his rather dim friend Captain Hastings have been the subjects of dozens of novels, short stories, and films for some eighty years.

In the past decade or so, multi-ethnic detectives appear to be a requirement for any new detective stories: Indian (as in sub-continent), Indian (as in Native American), African (as in Kenya), and combinations thereof indicate that nowadays ya can’t be a detective without a hyphen.

Sherlock Holmes had his pipe and Doctor Watson, Inspector Morse his cigarettes and Sergeant Lewis, and Chief Superintendent Foyle his Scotch and his driver Samantha, but in this chemical-free, pal-free era the new detectives are pretty much restricted to a dog or cat to help them along.

I propose to publishing companies these following chemically-correct, pet-friendly detectives:

Johann Smythe-Bulkovsky, Norwegian-English-Russian police detective and his herring, Bob.

Sammi Robichaux-Gianelli, transgendered Finnish-French-Italian spy and his/her reindeer, Bubba.

Paddy O’Hara-Moriarty, Newfoundland-Newfoundland-Newfoundland police inspector with three eyes, an Irish ancestry that needs a little more genetic diversity, and a talking codfish named Seamus that nobody else can see or hear.

Lupe McKenzie-Nguyen, Mexican-Canadian-Vietnamese private detective and her pal Sparky, a crime-solving electric eel.

Angus Hussein-Llewellyn, Scotch-Iraqi-Welsh police constable and his suicide-bomber hamster, Darryl.

Bubba Boudreau-Zulu, Texan-Cajun-Kenyan CSI geek and his springbok, Hoppy.

Rush Beck-Hannity, ‘merican sit-behind-a-desk-and-think-stuff crime non-fighter, you bet’cha, and his drooling pet fox, Sean. He doesn’t actually do anything; all he does is criticize working police officers and detectives.

X X-X, F.I.L.B.E.R.T. enforcer. If he wanted you to know any more he’d beat it into you.

Dr. Misloz Hans-Hans, Czech-Swiss-Dutch police consulting physician and his petri dish of intuitive bacteria.

Chef Cletus Rabinowitz-Park, the Tennessean-Israeli-Korean cooking-show host who dishes up omelettes and solves crimes using sign language, and his pal Handy the Signing Squirrel, who keeps being accused of making obscene gestures because squirrels haven’t as many fingers as humans.

So whatever happened to Hercule Poirot? He was busted for income-tax fraud and incarcerated in the little grey cells.

Ouch.