The Case Of The Discontented Soldier

When civilian life proves too dull for Major Wilbrahams, he contacts Parker Pyne to escape his boredom. Pyne's assistant arranges a chance meeting with the beautiful Freda Clegg and the two join forces, but on leaving for Africa they encounter more than they had bargained for.

A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.

Agatha Christie once again demonstrates her mastery of the short form mystery with Parker Pyne Investigates—short stories of crime and detection featuring Parker Pyne, certainly one of the most unconventional private investigators ever to pursue a hot lead. Mrs. Packington felt alone, helpless and utterly forlorn. But her life changed when she stumbled upon an advertisement in the Times that read: "Are you happy? If not, consult Mr. Parker Pyne." Equally adept at putting together the fragments of a murder mystery or the pieces of a broken marriage, Mr. Parker Pyne is possibly the world's most unconventional private investigator. Armed with just his intuitive knowledge of human nature, he is an Englishman abroad, traveling the globe to solve and undo crime and misdemeanor.

Maria Packington suspects her husband of having an affair. In an attempt to revitalise her marriage, she responds to an ad from Mr. Parker Pyne – who promises to provide solutions to unhappiness. Maria's life soon undergoes a rapid transformation…

 This book focuses on the distinctive role that artists have played in detective fiction—as detectives, as villains and victims, and as bystanders. With a few significant exceptions, literary detectives have always identified themselves as essentially the deconstructors of the artful crimes of others. They may use various methods—ratiocinative, scientific, or hard-boiled—but they always unravel the threads that the villains have woven into deceptive covers for their crimes. The detective does, in the end, produce a work of art: a narrative that explains everything that needs explanation. But the detective’s moral work is often juxtaposed to the aesthetic work of the painters, poets, and writers that the detective encounters during an investigation. The author surveys this juxtaposition in works by important authors from the early development of the genre (Poe, Conan Doyle), the golden age (Bentley, Christie, Sayers, James, et al.), and the hard-boiled era (Hammett, Chandler, Macdonald, Spicer et al.).

This book is the first fully theorized queer reading of a Golden Age British crime writer. Agatha Christie was the most commercially successful novelist of the twentieth century, and her fiction remains popular. She created such memorable characters as Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, and has become synonymous with a nostalgic, conservative tradition of crime fiction. J.C. Bernthal reads Christie through the lens of queer theory, uncovering a playful, alert, and subversive social commentary. After considering Christie’s emergence in a commercial market hostile to her sex, in Queering Agatha Christie Bernthal explores homophobic stereotypes, gender performativity, queer children, and masquerade in key texts published between 1920 and 1952. Christie engaged with debates around human identity in a unique historical period affected by two world wars. The final chapter considers twenty-first century Poirot and Marple adaptations, with visible LGBT characters, and poses the question: might the books be queerer?

This study of the technique of Agatha Christie's detective fiction--sixty-seven novels and over one hundred short stories--is the first extensive analysis of her accomplishment as a writer. Earl F. Bargannier demonstrates that Christie thoroughly understood the conventions of her genre and, with seemingly inexhaustible ingenuity, was able to develop for more than fifty years surprising variations within those conventions.

Цей посібник пропонує вісім оповідань Агати Крісті, які об’єднані в два цикли – оповідання про всесвітньо відомого детектива Еркюля Пуаро та про незрівнянного “лікаря людських душ” Паркера Пайна. Текст оповідань рекомендується для рівня Intermediate. Ця книга продовжує серію посібників для домашнього читання (“Театр” У. С. Моема та “Анна з Грін Гейблз” Л. Монтгомері). Мета посібника – допомогти тим, хто вивчає англійську мову самостійно та в студентській аудиторії, краще розуміти художній текст, розвивати уміння і навички обговорення і аналізу тексту, його проблематики і художньо-стилістичних особливостей, розвивати культуру мовлення, збагатити лексичний запас, вчитися сприймати іноземну мову у певному жанрово-стильовому і культурологічно-часовому контексті.