Sad Cypress is a novel by Agatha Christie published in 1939 or 1940 depending on where you look. It was written while the author was using the name Agatha Christie Mallowan, something I know from looking at the inside of the front cover. I had never noticed before that she used her married name - the second one - but it's only on the inside of the book so perhaps she didn't use it often. Something I found out thinking of all this was that not only did she use her first husband's name Christie even after the marriage was over, she again used her husband's last name, Mallowan, here anyway, the only name she didn't seem to use all that often was Miller, which was the name of her parents, but perhaps Christie and Mallowan seemed more interesting than Miller. I bet you think I'm getting somewhere with all this, but I'm not, I'm just rambling on as usual. Oh, before I move on, I found that Christie's second husband's name was (according to Wikipedia anyway), Sir Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan, CBE. I don't know what the CBE is and I didn't try to find out. I was wondering why he had all those names and if he remembered them when I read, "Born Edgar Mallowan in Wandsworth on May 6, 1904, he was the son of Frederick Mallowan and his wige Marguerite." Well that looks like he only had two names when he was born, so where did the rest of them show up? Sorry Mr. Mallowan, but I don't care enough to find out and it's time for the book anyway. As for Sad Cypress it retailed in the UK for eight shillings and threepence, which means nothing to me, but it does mean that it was the first price rise for a UK Christie edition since her 1921 debut. I don't know what the US was doing, probably rising the price long before this book came around. I wondered and wondered and wondered why it was named Sad Cypress and never found out. I found nothing particularly sad about the novel, except for the dying people I suppose, but I don't remember any cypress trees or bushes or shrubs, or whatever a cypress could be, roses I remember, but no cypress. Then I read "The title is drawn from a song in Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night." I'll take their word for it, I have no desire to go look up a Shakespeare play looking for a cypress song. I read that the novel was well received by her critics who said things like; "the ingenuity and superb clueing put it among the very best of the classic titles" and "it is economically written, the clues are placed before the reader with impeccable fairness, the red herrings are deftly laid and the solution will cause many readers to kick themselves." And here we go:We begin the story with Elinor Katharine Carlisle on trial for the murder of Mary Gerrard. That isn't a spoiler, it's the very first line of the novel. We are in court at the trial of Miss Carlisle, she appears to be in shock, because she is hearing only bits and pieces of the trial. Things like:"Case a peculiarly simple and straightforward one....It is the duty of the Crown......prove motive and opportunity........No one, as far as can be seen, had any motive to kill this unfortunate girl.......no one had any opportunity to commit this crime except the accused...."Things like that, and through it all Elinor stands as though imprisoned in a thick mist. A thick enveloping blanket, a heavy fog, that's how Elinor feels. And through it all we have the faces watching her. Rows and rows of faces, with one particular face with a big black moustache and shrewd eyes, Hercule Poirot. And so the book begins. Elinor Carlisle and Roddy Welman, are cousins by marriage or some such thing, and are also engaged to be married someday, sometime, somewhere. Elinor receives a letter, an anonymous letter warning her that someone is "sucking up to" their wealthy aunt, Laura Welman. Elinor and Roddy are Mrs. Welman's only family and are expected to inherit her large fortune. According to the letter girls are very artful and old ladies very soft, and Elinor better come down before "she" gets all the money. And Elinor does go down, along with Roddy, but they aren't really as money hungry as this sounds, they do seem to like their aunt and appreciate all she has done for them thus far. Roddy says that Aunt Laura has been so much of a "brick" that he and Elinor have lived pretty extravagantly, considering what their means really are. And so they go to see their aunt and find the "artful" girl to be Mary Gerrard, the daughter of the people at the lodge. Mrs. Welman has become fond of Mary, paying for her schooling, piano lessons, French lessons, things like that. Her mother died years ago and her father is awful. He jeers at her because of her schooling and her "fine ways", and they don't seem to be able to get along. She spends a great amount of time with Mrs. Welman sitting with her and reading to her. We are now arriving at the house, along with Elinor and Roddy, and I have to mention some of the other people there, there is Nurse O'Brien who takes care of Mrs. Welman unless Nurse Hopkins is doing it, there is also Mrs. Bishop, she's the housekeeper, Peter Lord, he's the doctor, Ted Bigland, he's in love with Mary, speaking of being in love with Mary......Roddy and Elinor are engaged, they've always been close, Roddy says they belong together and he is terribly fond of her. That is until he walks into the house and sees Mary Gerrard, suddenly he's not so in love with Elinor anymore. Meanwhile, Elinor is in love with Roddy, she was in love with him when they came here, she was in love with him when they got engaged, when they were young, forever and ever type of thing. But now Roddy loves Mary Gerrard, and that same person is supposedly trying to get their aunt's inheritance. And bad things are about to start happening, Mrs. Welman tells Elinor she would like to see her lawyer to "do something" for Mary Gerrard, but before the lawyer arrives, her aunt is dead. The woman was old, the woman was sick, the woman died of those reasons, or was she poisoned? However she ended up dead, that's what she is, and having never made the will she talked about all her wealth goes to Elinor. So did Elinor kill her to get her money? And when soon Mary is also found dead with supposedly no way anyone but Elinor could have done it, did she? Was she Mary's murderer? And if so, why did she do it? If she already killed her aunt for her money, she doesn't have to kill Mary to keep the money away from her. I suppose she could have killed her to get Roddy back, but he's already gone. When he found out that all the money had gone to Elinor, he left for a long vacation, he finds that he can't marry her now that she is rich. And so Mary is dead and Elinor is arrested, and Dr. Lord gets Hercule Poirot into the thing, and of course, once we had him with us, it was all made clear, on the last page anyway, the page that puts us back in the courtroom with Elinor standing there in a fog. I really liked the book, I would have given it five stars, but I was a tiny bit disappointed with the ending, so I'm giving it four. Happy reading.

Re-read on June 2016New rating 3.75 stars

I love Agatha Christie. I love her characters as much as her plot. And I love Hercule Poirot (also Miss Marple but Poirot has my heart).I've actually read Sad Cypress several times but the last time was at least 10 years ago. I wondered if I'd enjoy it as much this time as I have in the past.I did.Elinor's icy demeanor masks a passionate interior. Her fiance, Roddy, is a fastidious, rather weak man with whom Elinor grew up. He's fond of her and doesn't realize how much she adores him. They live off the expectation of an inheritance from their aunt (Roddy's aunt by marriage; the two are not blood-related). An anonymous letter hinting at someone's attempt to work her way into the aunt's good graces (and perhaps upset the inheritance plans) leads to disaster.Reading Christie is like sitting at a fireplace drinking tea even when I'm sitting in a Bronx apartment. I am transported to another world. What more can one ask from a book?