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s miracle to the arrival of the pilgrims to the creation of the festival she wanted complete with theatrical production which went haywire due to a furious downpour that disrupted all the plans of the main actors in the drama then there are the times that don t match according to which someone lied about where he was and the time he left the island with patient detective work and astute deductions aided by superintendent coombe sergeant pender and his assistant inspector fox of scotland yard alleyn will nail the killer a superb novel from 1963 it is a concentration of splendid descriptions ngaio marsh has always been admired for the descriptions of places and people she inserted into her works sharp psychological deductions and sentimental adventures which intertwine to form an intricate tangle of facts and trivia lies and unsaid things which lies at the root of a crime that can be attributed to an event external to the island miss pride s will caused by the death of her friend miss thorpe who died of gullibility if not to an event internal to the island in essence we have a trigger the miracle of the spring a secondary situation the island s fortune a secondary situation the death of mrs thorpe which leads to miss pride s decision to prohibit the exploitation of the spring a series of actions directed against miss pride aimed at frightening her intimidating her and making her desist from her decision the effect someone s death all of this constitutes the plot then we have three major subplots linked to two possible antithetical truths was miss cost killed on purpose or because she was confused with miss pride first subplot the extramarital affair between elspeth cost and major barrymore second subplot the extramarital affair between mrs barrymore and dr maine third subplot the secret revealed by mayor ives nankivell about miss elspeth s nymphomania these three subplots intertwine providing answers to all the questions surrounding miss elspeth s death the title dead water it refers to the water that is dead after the crime whereas before it was alive i was talking about ngaio marsh s descriptions which however are not ends in themselves they are not limited to describing events places and people intended to create a basic atmosphere but are functional to the people and the interpersonal relationships that are formed it would seem that the main force is emily pride who influences the unfolding of everything that happens her strength of character overwhelms all the actors in the drama but this intensity is especially noticeable before the events caused by her decision become fully evident in their dramatic force it is as if this burmese female deity as marsh calls her she looked patrick afterwards suggested like some burmese female deity loses her omnipotence with the death of elspeth cost fearing she was the cause of her death and in that moment rediscovers her intimate human soul her fragility but other elements contrast in character and strength barrymore his wife dr maine rev carstairs nankivell william s father the miracle boy and william himself each is beautifully drawn the style is elegant almost like an operetta before it turns into tragedy and the description of the festival brings it closer to many descriptions of other celebrations narrated for example by agatha christie the macabre quiz or the rite of murder or in the tv series based on the novels by caroline graham inspector barnaby one thing that intrigued me is the story of the spring fairy it s a theme intertwined with the arthurian lake fairy and especially with scottish and irish legends it s no coincidence that a green fairy is mentioned in many places especially in scotland at crathes castle other examples include ashintully castle knock castle and so on the green lady is essentially a nymph and is almost always associated with water like the green fairy in ngaio marsh s novel but i also note an additional derivation les larmes de sybil that paul halter discusses in his novel a magical spring pietro de palma posted by pietro de palma at 23 05 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday march 26 2026 gwen bristow bruce manning the invisible host 1930 gwen bristow was born in marion south carolina in 1903 after the college gwen pursued journalism with excellent results landing a permanent job at a new orleans newspaper and at the same time writing in 1926 she published a collection of poems she later met bruce manning a journalist working for another new orleans newspaper and the two fell in love in 1929 the couple married and the following year they published the first of four mystery novels they later sold the film rights to the first one and wrote the screenplay for the subsequent film thus began a successful career for the two as screenwriters and for bruce as director meanwhile she continued to write historical novels which soon earned her acclaim among the general public so much so that she was even nominated for the nobel prize in literature bristow smoked heavily and drank heavily all we know is that her husband died in the 1960s after illness and depression while she was diagnosed with cancer which led to her death in 1980 the four mystery novels in order are the invisible host 1930 the gutenberg murders 1931 the mardi gras murders 1932 two and two make twenty two 1932 warning spoilers in a new orleans apartment on the 22nd floor of a skyscraper eight people arrive one by one all representing the city s elite to varying degrees awaiting them is not the host as should be the case but the servants as they arrive the guests question the meaning of this suspecting that the host is one of them and at the same time wondering why such behavior was so meaningful when the last guest arrives a voice coming from the radio announces that the eight will be the protagonists of an exciting game the likes of which have never been seen before in their city the initial excitement is followed by a sense of bewilderment and terror when they learn that the game is nothing more than a match between the host and one of their number taking turns with the prize being their life the chosen one must outsmart the host or die but why are the eight guests staying there because the host has preemptively equipped the apartment with every kind of devilish device to prevent them from leaving or altering the course of events in case they wanted to destroy the source of the killer s speech there are four gas cylinders connected to the radio ready to explode in case they wanted to escape the metal doors have been connected to high voltage even the access route to the roof garden also located on the 22nd floor has been sealed off presuming that the eight guests might think of climbing down from the roof garden to the floor below the stems of the climbing plants have been tied to high voltage wires furthermore the hanging garden itself is too high compared to the other hanging garden below a full 15 meters to even consider jumping finally in case they wanted to start a fire each room is equipped with a device that instead of spraying water would release poisonous gas into the air capable of killing anyone however before the games begin since the guests are not all convinced of the host s hostile intentions he convinces them to open a closet from which a dead body already quite cold falls into the room with a dead body already in the room the others terrified don t know what to do so they are convinced to place the body in one of the eight black coffins with silver decorations which are ready to receive their contents there in the hanging garden in the shade of the palm trees brr from then on in the blink of an eye a veritable massacre takes place and each death is announced by the killer with a proclamation on the radio preceded in turn by a gong in the end three remain to fight the relentless killer joan trent actress peter daly writer henry hank abbott painter but it s also possible that one of these three is the killer which is very possible as max reid previously pointed out in an insightful psychological analysis after all if the killer weren t one of those present where could he have hidden the butler the cook and another servant lie asleep in the kitchen there s no one in the bathroom nor in the hanging garden except for the eight coffins which when opened contain nothing except in one the ninth guest previously brought there from the dining room so one of the three is the killer to find out how it ends you have to read the novel end of spoilers the invisible host was said to have influenced agatha christie as it bears obvious similarities to her later novel and then there were none written in 1939 similarities and differences with christie s novel in christie s novel first called ten little niggers then and then there were none and finally ten little indians the idea is that of a gathering of strangers in a mansion on an island once there summoned by telegram they are greeted not by the master of the house but by the servants the mysterious host will announce himself through records played on the gramophone and they will soon realize that the purpose of the gathering is to kill them avenging the deaths of those they themselves caused until no one remains except the murderer one of the guests previously believed dead the similarities are immediately apparent the guests are invited by telegram they are gathered in a closed environment the apartment in the first novel the island in the second in both novels there are servants who do not know the master of the house but were hired through third parties in both novels it s not the host who welcomes them in both the host introduces himself via audio the radio in the first connected to gramophones the gramophone in the second the differences however are notable in the number of guests eight in the first ten in the second in their mutual knowledge in the first the guests know each other in the second they don t the motive in the first it s only clear at the end that the motive is typical of someone who wants to become master of the world accumulate as much power and wealth as possible in the second it s revenge but in a certain noble sense to replace the final judge and inflict a punishment no judge has assigned to each of the ten finally there s one difference more substantial than all of them in the first novel two guests are saved because they manage to defeat the murderer in the game with death in the second no one is saved and it was precisely the fact that no one was saved that sealed the success of a christie s work which has continued to be repeated over the years thus christie ultimately prevails over the former thanks to her greater creativity her qualitative focus on the guests greater psychological depth the first novel s is barely nuanced and her greater breadth of vision also expanding the possibility that the same victims might be struck in different places thus making the possibility of catching the killer less likely agatha christie s masterful way of revolving the story around an innocent nursery rhyme which in the first novel however is nonexistent is also remarkable it s worth noting that both novels are very tense the first can rightly be considered a mix of thriller and mystery the story unfolds claustrophobically in a flat from which the guests cannot escape due to deadly contraptions placed here and there in this the novel follows the influences of previous authors and also the period the 1920s the novel was published in 1930 but written the year before connington crofts freeman and even abbott had inserted electrical and mechanical devices into their novels the claustrophobic atmosphere of the flat from which there is no escape heightens the tension of the characters and the reader and pushes them to an opposite action which however is impossible to carry out without imaginable consequences which happens to sylvia inglesby because she was pushed to do so by her host however where the novel appears to have its strengths it also highlights its shortcomings all that electrical and mechanical gimmickry strikes me as filler as well as a sign that the novel was a novel of the 1920s rather than the 1930s precisely the lack of devices designed to cause death means that in christie s work the killer springs into action directly and thus challenging the detective s action automatically provides the other party with the clues needed to stop him in other words in the 1930s novel in some ways the crime and the detective s action are equally opposed killer and detective fight on equal terms this is why in action and psychology christie s novel is superior to that of bristow manning origin of the idea steeman however as we have said the main difference between the two lies in the fact that in the first novel the killer is discovered in the second no because it is essentially believed that he was killed he made others think he was dead to mislead them and therefore to be free in death to kill others but this which is the difference in christie s favor was not developed by her in fact as we know agatha christie never disdained using ideas taken from other authors but what some say is not entirely true namely that agatha christie took the idea for her 1939 work only from the invisible host undoubtedly she was familiar with the work the original one by the two spouses precedes christie s relative by nine years but if she had only taken the basic idea from bristol manning agatha christie s work would not have had the incredible success it did indeed if we really want to talk about it the phenomenal success was due to the other basic idea the one taken from six hommes morts by stanislas andré steeman a 1931 novel in steeman s novel a belgian author now completely forgotten but very well known to the general public until the 1960s six friends having no luck decide to each set off for a different shore vowing that if one of them were to make a fortune he would have to share it with the others up to this point the plot is similar to many other novels steeman s originality however lay in predicting that the friends would die one by one once the promise made before their separation had been fulfilled and that then no one would be left alive and that it would then be discovered that one of those believed to be dead was actually not and had thus been able to kill the others this is the real difference between the two novels the one by bristow manning and the one by christie copied by steeman another difference between bristow manning s novels and christie s is that while christie s as we ve said is broad in its action and the psychological depth of the characters and therefore has greater breadth and depth of drama the 1930 novel is nothing more than a divertissement a game of murder a pure and simple whodunnit even rather sparse though as we ve said tense the edge is lost at the end ...