212 reviews for:

Autumn Chills

Agatha Christie

3.79 AVERAGE

gepetto's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: N/A

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

lovestodancw_81's review against another edition

3.0

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This was a physically beautiful book and one that from that outside, at least, was great to read in the fall. Some of the stories made brief mentions to the season and I was quite jealous to read that Poirot happened to be vacationing in some tropical vacation spot in October while I was contemplating adding foot warmers to my Amazon cart.

I liked this short story collection and I was also in a headspace where I needed my mysteries to be short so I picked this book up at the perfect time. Thank goodness for Agatha Christie to come in during a pinch!

Also, I have to say that I appreciated the fact that the "detectives" in the collection weren't limited to just one of Christie's go-to characters but her heavy hitters and seldom used problem solvers were called in for this collection for which I was grateful.

hannah_curtis's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark mysterious relaxing fast-paced

hannahsp's review against another edition

4.0

mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

sunny_summers_101's review against another edition

3.0

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There were three that were actually good

allisonhollingsworth's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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Autumn Chills // Murder in the Mews” - I really loved this one! It was unexpected to me. A woman is found dead in the mews and it appears to be a suicide but some things are off; for example the positive of the gun in her right hand but the wound in the left side of the head. Poirot investigates and finds that she was being blackmailed by a guy and she did die by suicide. Her friend found her dead and was so angry that the man who was blackmailing her would go on free that she staged the suicide to look like a murder. Usually it’s the other way around in these mysteries! // “The Case of the Rich Woman” - In this story a super rich woman comes to see Parker Pyne because she is so rich that she doesn’t know what else to spend money on and is looking for happiness. She scoffs at donating it but wants PP to tell her what to do. He tricks her, basically drugging her and taking her out to live on a farm. At first she is furious but as she is working on the farm she finds happiness and doesn’t want anything to do with the fortune anymore. // “While the Light Lasts” - In this short story, married couple George and Deidre are on vacation when Deidre, who lost her first husband in the war, sees the man (Tim) alive. She meets with him and he tells her he still loves her. Deidre hesitates and he thinks she’s pregnant, but she is not really. Tim then ends up shooting him self. I’m not sure if he did that so Deidre could remain with George, who is wealthier and can give her a better life? Or did he do it so he could escape from her? Did he really love her? Probably the first one, but eh. // “Triangle at Rhodes” - In this story, Poirot tries to go on vacation but instead finds himself pulled into a love triangle that ends up in murder. There’s this beautiful woman who seems to attract the eyes of the husband of another woman there. Her husband seems to be very unhappy about this but then the beautiful woman ends up poisoned by a drink her husband gave her. They try to pin it on the other husband but Poirot catches this. While everyone thought the two men wanted the beautiful woman, her husband was actually plotting to kill her so he could run away with another woman but keep her fortune. Poirot warned the woman who was helping him plot the murder to leave but she didn’t, even though she knew what he was implying. // “Death by Drowning” - In this story a girl who becomes pregnant is found dead and Miss Marple thinks she knows the culprit. She writes her theory on a note and gives it to a man who is helping in the investigation. It leads him to this man who wanted to marry the girl but she didn’t care about him, and they thought he might be the jealous type. But it turns out it wasn’t his name that Marple put on the note; it’s the woman that he lives with, who is a widow and who had fallen in love with this guy and killed the girl because she didn’t want them to be together. // “The Bird with the Broken Wing” - In this story, Mr Satterthwaite is summoned to a house party after he gets a message from the mysterious Mr Quin. At this party a girl named Madge Keeley is set to marry a Roger Graham. But another girl there, named Mabelle who is very enchanting, is in love with Roger. There are other guests there as well, including David Keeley, Madge’s father and a man who is over overlooked. The next morning Mabelle is found hanging dead on a door, and Mr Satterthwaite is helping the police try to figure out who did it. After some red herrings we find that David Keeley, Madge’s father, killed her with one of Mabelle’s own violin strings, then staged it to look like a suicide. Despite the fact that he may have wanted to prevent a scandal with Mabelle who loved his daughter’s soon-to-be husband, it seems at the end he just wanted to do it because nobody seems to notice him (can someone say craaaaazy?). Mr. Quin makes a brief appearance at the end thanking Mr Satterthwaite for his help and that even though Mabelle died, there are worse things than dead and he helped shed light on the truth. // “The Lemesurier Inheritance” - In this story, Poirot takes on a family curse. For the Lemesuriers, the curse is that the oldest son will always die. The mother of one of the Lemesuriers comes to Poirot and asks for help because she is worried for her children as there have been several times where they’ve almost died. When Poirot stays with them he determines someone is sabotaging them and we find that their own father has been orchestrating the deaths of everyone this whole time. Poirot discovered it after one of the boys had apparently been stung by a bee and then that night the father comes in tries to kill him with poison; he was going to blame it on the bee sting. The father had been killing his brother to gain ownership of the estate and it’s been driving him crazy. He goes to an asylum and his wife marries his secretary, while Poirot thinks is the real father anyway after commenting on the same hair color as the kids. Clever Poirot! // “The House of Lurking Death” - This is a Tommy and Tuppence story in which they are greeting by a woman who said someone — she thinks someone from inside her own house — has left chocolates and poisoned them. Luckily none of them died but she thinks someone is trying to kill her to get the hands on her fortune that recently come into her possession. T & T agree to look into it but before they get down there, word arrives that this woman has been killed by poisoned sandwiches, and some other members of their house as well. After investigating the various residents, they find that an old woman who was second in line for the fortune conducted the poisoning that killed the woman and then her husband who would have also received the fortune, and she was the next in line. T & T figured this out because the woman had weird injection-looking marks on her arm, which they discovered was her injecting herself slowly with the poison so she would build up a tolerance. And this way she could deflect suspicion off of herself by getting poisoned, because who would poison themselves?? This was a fun short mystery and I always like the brother and sisterly banter between T & T. // “The Tape Measure Murder” - This is a Miss Marple story in which a woman is found dead inside of her home and her husband is accused of killing her. But Miss Marple helps reveal that her dressmaker killed her when she discovers a pin near the body. // “A Voice in the Dark” - This one was pretty interesting, I liked it. This is a Mr. Quin story in which Mr. Satterthwaite has to help reveal the truth behind a murder. He is hanging with a woman named Lady Stranleigh who has been plagued by a lot of death ever since a shipwreck that killed her sister when she was young. All of her 4 husbands also died which at first glance makes her very suspicious. But not for long because she’s found dead. But I’m getting ahead of myself — first the lady asks Satterthwaite to go check on her daughter Margaret because she is apparently hearing voices demanding her to “give back what’s not hers.” It seems she’s being haunted by a ghost or something. That’s when the lady ends up dead and Margaret is drawing up a new will and needs witnesses when he sees her maid has written her first name Alice and it reminds Satterthwaite that he had kissed her once upon a time (since they knew each other as kids) and he realizes that on the shipwreck it was actually the maid who died and the sister is still alive. But she hit her head and lost her memory and was told she was the maid. But her memory is slowly coming back, in the form of haunting Margaret. This was twisty! // “Four and Twenty Blackbirds” - In this story, Poirot is having lunch with a friend in a diner and the friend says there is a guy there who always comes on the same day and orders the same thing, except that day he ordered something different and it was strange to Poirot. We find out a week later the man has not come in since the strange order. He has died. Poirot finds out that the man had a twin brother who also died that day. The nephew was to inherit the money and Poirot reveals he murdered the man because he wanted the money and then impersonated him at the diner. But he ordered something — blackberries that stain the teeth — that gave him away. // “Witness for the Prosecution” - This was a fun one! When an older weather woman is found dead, a man named Leonard is blamed because he is the sole heir, but he is already married. He gives his wife as an alibi but in a twist she testifies against him, but then she fabricates evidence that eventually discredits her, allowing Leonard to go free. It’s revealed that this was her plan all along to free her husband, and that Leonard actually did kill her!

amy2113's review against another edition

3.5

mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

shadypinesma's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous lighthearted mysterious relaxing medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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It took a lot of self-control to stretch this out throughout autumn, and I think I'll still be smiling from this collection into the new year. 

elizabeth_noel's review against another edition

4.5

challenging informative mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

ladyiguana's review against another edition

4.0

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3.5