The word on the street is that you should always give your taxi driver a good tip if you're being dropped off at the St. Martins Theatre in London where Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" will have been running for 58 years come the 25th of November. Fail to do so and he, or she, is likely to punish you by shouting out the name of the murderer. This would make for rather a frustrating 2 hours 20 minutes of theatre-going.
I've never managed to read "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" because I made the mistake of reading a "spoiler" synopsis of the plot. A few weeks back (September6th.) there was a post on Martin Edwards' excellent blog ("Do you write under your own name?") which pointed out that there are two types of mystery readers- those who try to solve the mystery ahead of the author's revelation and those who simply go along for the story. Like Martin I'm firmly in the former group. Let's face it, Dame Agatha was a great entertainer but no-one reads her for her literary style. Take away the puzzle and the novels fire blanks, hence my inability to finish " 'Ackroyd".
When Anne and I visited Rome my second bedside book was "Shutter Island" by Dennis Lehane. I really enjoyed it ,as I have most of Mr. Lehane's novels, but the edge was taken off it slightly by a spoiler I happened to read on another website. This made me resolve never to give away plot details and aslo never to knowingly read another spoiler.
All of this reminds me of an idea thought up by the wonderful and much missed Bob Shaw in his comic SF novel "Who goes here?". One of the main characters enjoys reading but is often disappointed in novels picked at random. His solution: find a book that you really enjoy then use futuristic mind-wipe technology to erase it's plot and characters from your memory. By keeping the book you're then guaranteed a wonderful reading experience. Forever. If that technology becomes available I'll give "Roger Ackroyd" another try.
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