Mark Pghfan’s Comments (group member since Mar 06, 2014)

Mark Pghfan’s comments from the The Parlor PI's group.

There is a bit about the blonde hair being dyed, while Elinor is a natural blonde. It might happen a little further in the book.

My guess would be that he is in his late 20's. Carol is 24.

Here is our next section, and I hope people will be caught up soon. (We got a late start on this book!)

Here we find that Lucy, who suffered a broken leg on the apparent night of the murder in the Yellow Room, was kept secluded from all visitors, presumably because she might have something interesting to reveal in her testimony at the inquest. She told the story of the young woman, claiming to be a friend of Carol, who came to the house. Lucy allowed her in and put her up for the night. Suspiciously, she tells very little else and people are suspecting she is hiding something. What happens to people who hide things in a murder investigation? They get killed themselves, of course!

Dane is certainly developing a odd relationship with Carol; he trying to solve the murder and protect her at the same time, and she not sure of him at all. (He is rather mysterious!)

Discuss!

Just doing the next section now. I was waiting for people to catch up.

I'll start the second section next week. Clearly, we will go into September on this one, but I am game if the rest of you are...

Are we ready to start part two?

I think Dane is a Major, but there is even some question about his war record, as Colonel Richardson notes. (He is the Father of Carol's apparently deceased fiancee.) The whole business of the upper class behavior with their selfishness (for the most part) and the servant's timidness certainly make for a scene we are not used to with contemporary mysteries!

I am well into the next section, and I will move on when you are ready, though I don't think many of you are there yet. (I'm trying to get the book done in time to return it to the library!) There is a lot of plot happenings and twists coming up! I have to admit, I am enjoying this one.

I'm just onto chapter 10 and the plot is thickening. Since I've never read any MRR before, I don't know whether I should be picking up on certain things that are going on, as I would in Christie, or whether they are just her way of creating complexity. Things that make you go "hmmm".

I'm nearly through the first section. I've never read MRR before and I wonder whether her other stories are set in upper class situations. Some of the women are particularly helpless seeming, like Carol's sister and her dreadful Mother. And the maids are quite skittish. Carol, though braver than most, still has her moments. I wonder whether she will grow throughout the book. (Or for that matter whether she solves the mystery?)

Greetings! One of our discussions this month is The Yellow Room, by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Published in 1945, there are 30 chapters, which I divided (in my head, no less!) into three discussion sections. It appears to be set during the war years, here in the US.

Our protagonist is Carol Spencer, 24 years old, and is traveling with her crotchety mother, to their summer home in Maine to escape the heat. They stop briefly at Carol's sister's house in Newport (they are all rich, but sister Eileen married money!) Carol's fiance, Don, died in the war (or apparently so...) Her brother Greg is in the war as well and is engaged to Virginia.

After a protracted and annoying trip, they finally arrive in the house in Maine to find that nothing has been prepared for them. Roughing it, Carol takes charge and finds that the housekeeper, Lucy, is in the hospital with a broken leg, after fleeing from the house, having seen a ghost. The servants brought along on the trip are in the house and seeing to getting it up and livable. Suddenly, one of the young maids comes screaming that there is a dead body in one of the upstairs rooms. And indeed there is. Not only dead but there has been a fire in the room.

Well, here is our mystery. Who is the girl? What happened? Did Lucy see the murdered? And then there is Jerry Dane, a soldier who is recuperating from his wounds nearby and seems quite adept at trying to find out what happened. Methinks that there might be a romance here, with him and Carol.

Discuss!

I'll start the discussion on Monday. I was a little sad at the lack of discussion on this. But not any longer!!

Is anyone ready for the discussion?

I'm concerned that we will not have many people for a Yellow Room discussion...

Sittaford was WWAAAYYY different than the book. And not in a good way...

When do you all think we will be ready to start the Yellow Room discussion?

Tina, I've had my Kindle for a long time. I purchased the version with internal 3G (as it was at the time) access, so I wouldn't have to hook to a computer to download things. I got a number of MRR books as part of a "Classic Mystery" collection, for free. Yellow Room was not included, though. It may be available by itself; I haven't checked. I got my book from our local library yesterday--it was right on the shelf! If no one agrees to host this book, I will cave in and do it.

Well, since we have wound down this discussion, I though I'd comment on the differences between the book and the TV version. If you don't want the spoilers, stop reading now!




First of all, Battle has been replaced among the sleuths, for a rather unsavory reason. I"ll leave that up to you to find out when you watch. My biggest gripe, though, was that in the book Anne tried to drown Rhoda, but in the TV version, it was the other way around! Why? I suppose because of the other big change, which is that they made Anne the daughter of Mrs. Lorrimer. (For some reason that still doesn't seem clear to me.) Of course Shiatana was much younger than pictured in the book and with a questionable past in addition to his practice of holding power over others by finding out their "sins". Yet another attempt (I presume) of the later Poirot's trying to make things modern for today's audience.

I have a bunch of MRR's on my Kindle but not this one. I see though, that it is on the shelves in my local library, so I should be able to scarf up a copy today. Since I just hosted in July, I will leave that duty to someone else.

Either MRR is fine with me, but Yellow Room seems to be slightly in the lead. So that is my vote.

I'm with MRR.