6.4 /10 1 Votes
Cover artist Margaret Murray Publication date October 1973 Originally published October 1973 Genre Crime Fiction Country United Kingdom | 3.2/5 Goodreads Language English ISBN 0-00-231190-9 Publisher Collins Crime Club | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (hardback & paperback) Pages 256 pp (first edition, hardcover) Preceded by By the Pricking of My Thumbs Similar Agatha Christie books, Crime Fiction books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Postern of Fate is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie that was first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1973 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at £2.00 and the US edition at $6.95.
Contents
- Explanation of the Title
- Plot summary
- Literary significance and reception
- Publication history
- References
The book features her detectives Tommy and Tuppence Beresford and is the detectives' last appearance. It is the last novel Christie wrote, but not the last to be published as it was followed by two previously unpublished novels from the 1940s.
It is one of only four Christie novels to have not received an adaptation of any kind (such as screen, stage or radio) and one of only five of her novels to have not received a screen adaptation - the others being Death Comes as the End, Destination Unknown, Passenger to Frankfurt, and Crooked House.
Explanation of the Title
The title comes from the poem Gates of Damascus by James Elroy Flecker. The poem is also referenced in the short story The Gate of Baghdad in the 1934 collection Parker Pyne Investigates.
Plot summary
Now in their seventies (though the author never states their age clearly), Tommy and Tuppence move to a quiet English village, looking forward to a peaceful retirement. But, as they soon discover, their rambling old house holds secrets. Who is Mary Jordan? And why has someone left a code message in an old book about her 'unnatural' death? Once more, ingenuity and insight are called for as they are drawn into old mysteries and new dangers.
Literary significance and reception
Most critics remarked how noticeable Christie's advanced age is here. For example, the main characters Tommy and Tuppence, also of advanced age, seem to forget in one chapter what they discussed in the previous chapter. Some conversations seem to be repeated again and again, before any action takes place. Some puzzles which are obvious and easy to solve for the reader take chapters to be tackled by the main characters.
Maurice Richardson in The Observer of 11 November 1973 was positive in his review: "Now in their seventies, the Beresfords, that amateur detective couple of hers whom some of us found too sprightly for comfort, have acquired a Proustian complexity. A code message in an Edwardian children's book puts them on to the murder of a governess involved in a pre-1914 German spy case. Past and present go on interlocking impressively. Despite political naivety; this is a genuine tour de force with a star part for Hannibal, the Manchester Terrier."
Robert Barnard wrote negatively that "Postern of Fate" was "The last book Christie wrote. Best (and easily) forgotten."
According to The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English, this novel is one of the "execrable last novels" in which Christie purportedly "loses her grip altogether".
A Canadian study which compared the texts of a number of Christie novels indicated that her later works, including Postern of Fate showed a 30% decrease in vocabulary. This change, along with the use of indeterminate words and repetitiveness are indicative of Alzheimer's Disease, although Christie was never diagnosed.