I seem to be running a bit behind on my prompts as I am not quite finished with Merry Hall, but I am nearing the end. So I shall press on now that it is June and I am always happy to have a good excuse to pick up a new book. This month's prompt is "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" and a quick glance at my bookshelves netted a few possibilities.
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie -- The first Tommy and Tuppence novel. I am not sure how much of the story actually takes place on board ship as the story involves a mystery about one of the passengers on the Lusitania, but the story of two adventurers "for hire" (as in crime solvers) sounds like great fun.
Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie -- A Poirot mystery about a woman and her unnatural death on a flight from Paris to London. This was written in the 1930s so air travel would have been quite different and likely show another long gone world which I always like reading about.
Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie -- A Poirot mystery, yes another Christie! I need one where someone is motoring along and finds a body somewhere! The Blue train is a luxury train en route to Nice on which a woman has been murdered. Poirot sets up a reenactment. I wonder if this is very similar to Murder on the Orient Express?
Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck -- Here's a "motoring" book. "With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and the unexpected kindness of strangers."
Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith -- " Here we encounter Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno, passengers on the same train. But while Guy is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno turns out to be a sadistic psychopath who manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. "Some people are better off dead," Bruno remarks, "like your wife and my father, for instance." As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy is trapped in Highsmith's perilous world, where, under the right circumstances, anybody is capable of murder."
Circling the Sun by Paula McClain -- "Circling the Sun brings to life a fearless and captivating woman—Beryl Markham, a record-setting aviator caught up in a passionate love triangle with safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen, who as Isak Dinesen wrote the classic memoir Out of Africa."
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware -- So, yeah, scratch this one. I seem to have sailing for my prompt next month so I will save this one for later. I was thinking all modes of transportation . . .
And just thought of a few more that are even more likely possibilities:
Stamboul Train by Graham Greene -- "This spy thriller unfolds aboard the Orient Express as it crosses Europe from Ostend to Constantinople. Weaving a web of subterfuge, murder and politics along the way, it focuses upon the disturbing relationship between Myatt, the pragmatic Jew, and chorus girl, Coral Musker."
Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski -- "sing two cross-country trips on Amtrak as her narrative vehicles, British writer Jenny Diski connects the humming rails, taking her into the heart of America with the track-like scars leading back to her own past."
I see You by Clare Mackintosh -- "It all starts during her commute home one night. Zoe Walker glances through her local paper and sees her own face staring back at her in a classified ad. With the grainy photo is a phone number and a listing for a website called FindTheOne.com. In the following days, she sees other women in the same ad, a different one every day, and nearly all of them show up in the newspapers as victims of increasingly violent crimes—including murder."
(Actually I feel like starting all three, and now wouldn't that be totally indulgent!)
I'm not quite sure what I am in the mood for this month. Maybe the McClain. Or maybe I need to ponder the theme a little bit more and browse. Have you read any of these? Or something else that just oozes travel?