At Bertram's Hotel

Laisaac

What is your opinion on 'At Bertram's Hotel'? I saw the TV-adaption with Geraldine McEwan before I read the book, and I really liked it. But then I read the book and I thought it wasn't as good (shame on me). What do you think?

MissQuin

I first read the book and there are ideas in it that I liked.  SPOILERS!!!!!!!!    I thought the identity fraud plot was a clever idea and ahead of it's time. 

I confess, I hated the McEwan version! But then I had read the book, so I kept comparing it. I just didn't like anything. How can I sum up the adaptation? It's difficult. It had women flipping over tables, wool balls being thrown around, thieves, smuggling, murderers.  Also a secret Nazi hunter that is so secret, he conveniently left a Swastika in his hotel room!! I really thought how the murder was done was just far fetched. I don't know that it could even work.

But I don't know how popular the McEwan adapt was. I think that on the old AC forum some people liked it. It has good settings and music at least. Did you guess the murderer at all Laissaac? 

I did like the Hickson version. I stayed close to the plot without having the extra long bits from the book that dragged.

Tommy_A_Jones

I like the book, I didn't like the McKewen Adaptation but I liked the beginning, at the beginning someon says Miss Otis is unable to see you today which is a song the title of which was inspird by a real Occurrence, I also liked the Detective but I am afraid the Adaptation quickly goes down hill IMHO.

I love the Hickson  Adaptaton,, I think the Cast is brilliant, Peter Baldwin, Caroline Blackiston, Helena Michelle and the woman who played Lady Selina Hazy   

glalonzo0408

Just watched and truly like it.......

tudes

I read the book and watched the movie. The film is awful (McEwan version)! It's  confused, poorly done and don't have anything to do with the original plot (the book). It was not an adaption. Someone just used A. C. name and fame to write your own detective story! I think it was one of the worst adaptions!

Tommy_A_Jones

Not as bad as Nemesis or Sleeping Murder.

tudes

Tommy_A_Jones said:

Not as bad as Nemesis or Sleeping Murder.

They are on my list too. By the way, McEwan version's are dreadful, in general! They're indelible, but not in a good way.

Laisaac

I guess my mistake was to see the film adaption before I read the book. As you all say, the book and the McEwan adaption had almost nothing at all to do with each other, and it's annoying to keep comparing them because they're so different.

I didn't guess the murderer, MissQuin, neither in the book or the adaption (it was a long time between them), although I'm normally not that good at guessing the murderer.

YES!!!

 

You did it!  You found the fourth little soldier boy!

 

You may be surprised to know that though the current television adaptation of And Then There Were None sets the story on the traditional “Soldier Island,” most of the English-language movie adaptations move the action elsewhere.  While the 1945 film version uses the traditional island off the coast of England, the 1965 remake sets the story in an isolated chalet in the snow-covered mountains.  (Incidentally, that 1965 version includes a gimmick at the end.  Shortly before the villain is revealed, the action pauses and a narrator provides a series of clues, and the viewers are given one minute to figure out whodunit before the last scene is played.)  The 1974 version takes place in a hotel surrounded by the Iranian desert.  The 1989 adaptation brings the characters on an African safari, and the guests are abandoned in an out-of-the-way camp. 

 

And before you ask, yes, there’s another word written on the soldier boy statuette.  “Taylor.”  All four words so far have something in common, but what does that mean?

Tommy_A_Jones

I mean not as bad as those 2 Adaptations, The Books are Excellent

tudes

The books are very good, especially Sleeping Murder. But  the adaptations (Sleeping Murder, Nemesis and At Bertram's Hotel and others) are really, really bad.

Tommy_A_Jones

I love Sleeping Murder it is one of my 3 favourites

SindhuKamath

Absolutely.. Sleeping murder is one of my favorites as well...

Lucy G Lemon

One of mine too Tommy - I put it in my top five.

Regarding Bertram's - I remember reading the book many years ago and being able to see through the plot and guess the culprit - highly unusual for me! - so in that regard, it's probably not as well plotted as her others.  When we last visited London (I am from Australia) I made a special point of booking our family into what was deemed to be the real life Bertram's hotel - Browns in Mayfair. Beautiful hotel but still not sure if it was the hotel she based the story on - does anybody know if this is in fact the hotel that Agatha based the story on?

Michiel

I am not commenting on the TV adaptations, but I kind of like this one, although it is far from the best Marple. The hotel setting and sixties London in general are nicely done and it has pretty good characters, especially Bess Sedgwick and Canon Pennyfather. I love Pennyfather's antics and the description of his housekeeper's concerns are hilarious too.

Tommy_A_Jones

It is the next Miss Marple book for me to Re-Read and I am looking forward to it, I agree not one of the best, I prefer when Miss Marple has at least one Recurring Character in the book with her but I do like the book.

Daphne

I found the fleshing out of the minor characters in this book very satisfying. I was never so afraid for a fictional character as I was for Canon Pennyfather, thinking he was being set up for murder. I felt a lot of pity for him, in his vague state. The memory lapses, which turned out to be important to the plot, reminded me very much of a person in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. I doubt if that was Christie's intention; I think she just meant him to be scatterbrained. But, having seen close relatives develop the disease, I seemed to see it in his character, and it made me very sympathetic toward him. I was so relieved to see him alive again.
Lady Selina, Mrs. McCrae the housekeeper, poor Mick Gorman, Bridget, and Miss Gorringe stick in my mind as fully realized characters. Christie provides some beautiful example of "show me, don't tell me" character development.

Tommy_A_Jones

I think it is clever that The Reader's attention can be kept considering the Murder appears late in the book, I think Colonel Luscombe is brilliant too and the more understanding Trustee and the Jeweller, I didn't feel sorry for Gorman, I remembered somethings wrongly from the First time, It was nice to re-read it and Listen to the Audio Casssette which did justice to the book unlike The Audio Cassette of Caribbean Mystery which I had just listened to.

Griselda

I think that At Bertram's Hotel suffers from the fact that AC doesn't really know the younger modern, generation. Elvira Blake just isn't convincing. I can see that there is a mother and daughter pair, whom Agatha would have known in her own life, and, as usual, she has grasped the psychological crux, that the mother is outgoing energy, the daughter inward turning, and mean. It could almost be a parallel for the 1940s femme fatale and the moody, introverted, late 1960s actress: a Twiggy, unsmiling type - all that feminine ebullience turned into something less inviting. I like AC's conception of  Elvira's unscrupulous behaviours - they are convincing. 

The older I get, the more I see that the fascination of the fact that people can have one life when young, and almost be a totally different person when middle aged. They shrink from their former selves, and hope the truth does not catch up with them. There is great mileage for plot s on this theme, One Two buckle My Shoe et al.

Lucy G Lemon

The older I get, the more I see that the fascination of the fact that people can have one life when young, and almost be a totally different person when middle aged.

I am intrigued by your comment Griselda:- I had never thought of this before but you are absolutely spot on! Very interesting observation.

Tommy_A_Jones

Although they are in a minority there are women who abandon their Children, I watch Long Lost Family and there was a woman wanting to find the Mother who abandoned her and she discovered she had done it before I thought Elvira was TOTALLY believable.

Griselda

How amazing to have stayed at the prototype hotel, Lucy. I wonder whether the quintessential Englishness can continue into our day too, with the Edwardian feel to it. It must have been possible to imagine being AC, staying at Brown's or similar and realising that something unreal is there in the performance of the staff, and the traditions.

ChristieFanForLife

Daphne said:

I found the fleshing out of the minor characters in this book very satisfying. I was never so afraid for a fictional character as I was for Canon Pennyfather, thinking he was being set up for murder. I felt a lot of pity for him, in his vague state. The memory lapses, which turned out to be important to the plot, reminded me very much of a person in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. I doubt if that was Christie's intention; I think she just meant him to be scatterbrained. But, having seen close relatives develop the disease, I seemed to see it in his character, and it made me very sympathetic toward him. I was so relieved to see him alive again.
Lady Selina, Mrs. McCrae the housekeeper, poor Mick Gorman, Bridget, and Miss Gorringe stick in my mind as fully realized characters. Christie provides some beautiful example of "show me, don't tell me" character development.

Beautifully said insight and one of the most challenging things that a writer can do is "flesh out" their minor characters. I remember reading this interesting piece of information concerning characters: Great characters leap off the page and take up residence in our brains. Every quirk, every bit of dialogue, every small detail just reinforces their realness.

And Canon Pennyfather's quirky characteristics such as his tendency to forget and his scatterbrained mind "reinforces his realness" because if we look in our lives we probably know those or seen others who are scatterbrained and forgetful. I love what you said about "show me, don't tell me" with Agatha Christie's character development. She didn't say that Canon Pennyfather was scatterbrained but she showed it.