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The Pale Horse
by Christie
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Pocket (1985-09-02)
ISBN: 0671542079
EAN: 9780671542078
Paperback
SKU: 11396
Condition: Good
Comments: Binding: Softcover. Condition: Good. Slightly creased spine.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
A dark offering from the Queen of Crime. This represents the world-famous author's most successful foray into the dark world of murder and black magic. To understand the strange goings on at The Pale Horse Inn, Mark Easterbrook knew he had to begin at the beginning. But where exactly was the beginning?Was it the savage blow to the back of Father Gorman's head? Or was it when the priest's assailant searched him so roughly he tore the clergyman's cassock? Or could it have been the priest's visit, just minutes before, to a woman on her death bed?Or was there a deeper significance to the violent squabble which Mark Easterbrook had himself witnessed earlier?Wherever the beginning lies, Mark and his sidekick, Ginger Corrigan, may soon have cause to wish they'd never found it...
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Customer Reviews
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Classic Agatha Christie with a distinctly modern flavour!
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-09-28
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
Father Gorman attends to one of his parishioners who, with her dying breath, asks for forgiveness and gives him a list of names with a wish that the evil be "Stopped ... it must be stopped ... You will see?" When Father Gorman was found murdered later that night, the police suspect that the murderer failed to find the crumpled list of names stuffed in Gorman's shoe and that the list was likely the reason he had been murdered. This list of names and a series of serendipitous events, happenstance conversations and fortuitous meetings put Mark Easterbrook, Dame Agatha Christie's ever-present amateur sleuth, onto the trail of a gang of ruthless murders for hire. But Easterbrook is terrified to discover that the murders seem to be committed by a coven of three odd witches dispatching their victims for a fee with a malevolent brew of witchcraft, psychic arts, black magic and the mere power of suggestion.
"The Pale Horse" retains many of the characteristics of Agatha Christie's earliest cozy mysteries - country fêtes and bazaars, afternoon tea, parish vicars and their long-suffering wives and the obligatory parlour room confrontation with the suspects. Agatha Christie even allows herself a cameo appearance in the novel in the person of twittering author Ariadne Oliver. But "The Pale Horse" also has a much more modern flavour as an aging Dame Christie brings her craft into London of the early sixties - Soho, Chelsea coffee bars, discussions of avant garde productions of Shakespearean plays in ways the bard would never have imagined, a more graphic approach to violence and brutality and a somewhat grudging if critical acceptance of the popular culture of London's younger people.
But the ending, whether you think of it as vintage mystery or new age police procedural, is classic Agatha Christie - a beautiful blind-side twist that no reader will see coming until it's right on top of you!
Highly recommended and thoroughly entertaining!
Paul Weiss
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Didn't like the 'malevolent powers' references...
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-06-08
This was a spooky book. There are a lot of mentions of 'malevolent powers' in the book, even though they are scoffed at by most of the characters. There are no famous Christie characters in this book, except a small part played by Ariadne Oliver. I have to laugh at Ms. Oliver, because as she discusses writing her murder mysteries, she may very well be expressing some of the frustration Ms. Christie felt at times while she was trying to write. Anyway, I did not like the spiritual references, but otherwise it was a great mystery with a great twist at the end.
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The Pale Horse
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-06-04
"The Pale Horse," written in the 1960s when Dame Agatha' work was increasingly spotty in quality, is a return to form. While she does not entirely suppress her annoyance and dismay at what she viewed as the decline in popular culture--chiefly expressed as criticism of badly dressed, dirty-looking girls, and excessively tough or elegant boys who spent too much time in coffee bars--it is better-humored than in other books, and doesn't spoil the fun.
A well-loved priest is found dead in the street--was it a random crime or was Father Gorman intentionally killed? The list of names found in his shoe seems to point to the latter--the people on the list have one unhappy thing in common. Police doctor Corrigan by chance involves his friend Mark Easterbrook, a young historian of the Mogul period who, also by chance, has a tangential connection to the case already. And chance again brings Easterbrook to visit in Much Deeping, where he encounters the three rather odd women who live in the former inn known as the Pale Horse. These women are connected to the crimes--but how? To find out, Mark and his friend Ginger embark on a masquerade that may result in her death.
This book is a lark--and the presence of Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, Agatha Christie's delightful alter ego, tells us that things are not altogether serious. But, as always, Christie is also sounding the theme of evil in the world, and she has rarely established more successfully an eerie atmosphere of malice than that she has achieved here. (Down-to-earth Mrs. Dane Calthrop, the local vicar's wife, voices this theme in the way that Jane Marple might have done a generation earlier.) The means of procuring the deaths is a shocking contrast to all this--and to those who think it fanciful: bear in mind that, sadly, after the book was published, a real-life crime was carried out in Britain on the same basis.
Sixties London, Chelsea coffee bars, rural villages, seances, brooding mystery, abrupt brutality--and Dame Agatha at full tilt--you'll enjoy this!
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WILL SOMEONE LET THE WOMAN SPEAK?
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-05-19
What "improvements" have been made for the Bantam edition? There are already major differences in punctuation, word choices, and scene breaks between the original Collins and Dodd Mead editions of this novel. There are further differences between the Dodd Mead editions republished by Random House/Avenel and the Dodd Mead editions republished by Simon & Shuster/Pocket. There are further additions still in the Signet, Berkley, and Black Dog & Leventhal editions. For every publishing house putting out her works, there seem to be a new batch of editors altering Agatha Christie's words and the sound of her voice. What's the matter with these publishers? Whose voice do they think we want to hear when we sit down to a novel by Agatha Christie? And what will she sound like twenty years from now? It's frightening that her estate has failed to see the importance of guarding her words as she wrote them. Please tell me I'm not the only one here who senses that a crime has been committed.
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Rating (4)
Date: 2004-10-18
Christie has, in the past, used occultic themes in some short stories, or as a side element in a full length. This time, however, she chose to flesh that out and use it at the heart of one of her mysteries.
"The Pale Horse" is a good read for several reasons. She uses several characters that have appeared in other novels, but none of them are named Poirot or Marple. This forces her to flesh out other characters since she can't rely on either of them to carry the story. While one doesn't read Christie to get intimate with characters (as opposed to Martha Grimes), it's nice to get a better look at some characters.
The story revolves around a society where people mysteriously kill people without leaving a trace. It is "advertised" as killing through supernatural powers controled by three witches. As a result it seems impossible to prove... and even more possible to convict without getting laughed out of court.
The solution is good (and I only guessed the mastermind through a semi-lucky guess), however, the best part is the explaination mid-way through the book about how the payment for the murder happens. That was bloody ingenious. The solicitor and the person wanting to hire the murder make a bet. If the person to be killed dies before a certain date, the person wanting the murder pays X amount of money. If the person to be killed doesn't, then the solicitor pays up the money.
It's all in all a satisfying read and will probably keep you guessing throughout the book.
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