At Bertram’s Hotel

At Bertram’s Hotel (1965) Agatha Christie (Miss Marple)

I’m not sure what it is that makes this story feel so weak compared to the others, but it is.

Miss Marple gets a vacation to Bertram’s Hotel, but something just isn’t quite right there.

“But how can that pay you?”

“It’s a question of atmosphere… Strangers coming to this country (Americans, in particular, because they are the ones who have the money) have their own rather queer ideas of what England is like. I’m not talking, you understand, of the rich business tycoons who are always crossing the Atlantic. They usually go to the Savoy or the Dorchester. They want modern décor, American food, all the things that will make them feel at home. But there are a lot of people who come abroad at rare intervals and who expect this country to be— well, I won’t go back as far as Dickens, but they’ve read Cranford and Henry James, and they don’t want to find this country just the same as their own! So they go back home afterwards and say: ‘There’s a wonderful place in London; Bertram’s Hotel, it’s called. It’s just like stepping back a hundred years. It just is old England!

The problem, I think, with this story is that it just doesn’t seem to hold together very well. All that parts are there, but they seem only loosely connected.

Publisher : William Morrow Paperbacks
Rating: 6/10

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