Age does not protect against ingenuity

Age does not protect against ingenuity (original title Postern of Fate , literally the wicket door of fate) is the 64th detective novel by Agatha Christie . It is the last novel the author wrote. The two novels published in the following years - Curtain and Rest Rough - were written much earlier.

The novel first appeared in the UK at the Collins Crime Club in October 1973 and later that year in the US with Dodd, Mead and Company . The German first edition was published by Scherz Verlag (Bern, Munich) in 1978 in the translation by Edda Janus, which is still used today.

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford investigate it in their fourth and final novel.

Explanation of the English original title

The English original title of the novel is a quote from the poem Gates of Damascus by James Elroy Flecker :

The city of Damascus has four large gates

The gate of fate, the desert gate, the cave of misfortune and the festival of terror

Don't cross it, oh caravan, and if you do, don't sing

Do you know that silence where the birds are dead and you can still hear birds chirping?

(Introduction to the German audio book edition, translated by Axel Henrici )

English quote:

Four great gates has the city of Damascus

And four Great Wardens, on their spears reclining,

All day long stand like tall stone men

And sleep on the towers when the moon is shining.

This is the song of the East Gate Warden

When he locks the great gate and smokes in his garden.

Postern of Fate, the Desert Gate, Disaster's Cavern, Fort of Fear,

The Portal of Baghdad am I, and Doorway of Diarbekir.

action

Now in their seventies, Tommy and Tuppence decide to move again. You want to live in a quiet English village. The house they bought still contains some of the furniture and parts of the library from the numerous previous owners. This includes an extensive collection of English children's books. Instead of cleaning up, Tuppence gets stuck in the books because they remind her of her own childhood. As Tuppence sorts through the books, she discovers an encrypted message in one of them: "Mary Jordan did not die of natural causes and it was one of us". At first, Tommy is not enthusiastic about his wife's newly awakened sense of detectiveism. However, he soon becomes infected and plays a detective himself. For example, he goes to the old village cemetery, accompanied by his dog Hannibal, on the search for clues, rummages in old archives and makes contact with former secret service colleagues in London. Both are now looking for traces of Mary Jordan. You immerse yourself in a German-British espionage affair from before the First World War and partially solve the murder of Mary Jordan, an agent in British service. The couple's old, 90-year-old gardener, Isaac, is also murdered in the course of the novel because he knew something about the conspirators. Ultimately, the whole dimension of the case remains unresolved. The masterminds are a small group of British fascists .

The description of Hannibal's character and behavior takes up a lot of space in the novel. Extensive passages are also devoted to the description of the old children's books that Tuppence discovered. The favorite book is The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson .

people

• Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, an aging couple
• Albert, her servant, now widowed
• Deborah, their daughter, married and mother of three children (Andrew, Janet and Rosalie)
• Hannibal, her little black dog, a Manchester Terrier
• Isaac the old gardener
• Miss Little, a tall and expansive woman, nicknamed "The Community Trumpet"
• Miss Price-Ridley, an angular lady with many teeth
• Mrs. Lupton, an old lady who walks on two sticks
• Miss Bolland, lives next to the rectory
• The vicar
• Miss Griffin, a smart old lady in her 90s
• Clarence, boy next door, 13, with detective skills
• Mr. Crispin, secret agent
• Mr. Robinson, very senior intelligence officer
• Colonel Pikeway, intelligence officer

Major expenses

• 1973 Collins Crime Club (London), October 1973
• 1973 Dodd Mead and Company (New York)
• 1978 German first edition by Scherzverlag

Film adaptations

This novel is one of the few Christies that has not yet been made into a film.

Audio books

• 2007 Age does not protect against acumen (3 CDs): Read by Peter Kaempfe . Director: Sven Stricker . From the English by Axel Henrici. Abridged version by Michael Bartlett . The Hörverlag (Munich)

Web links

• Posters of Fate on the official Agatha Christie website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Collins Crime Club - A checklist of First Editions Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15)
2. ^ Cooper and Pyke. Detective Fiction - the collector's guide: Second Edition (Pages 82 and 87) Scholar Press. 1994. ISBN 0-85967-991-8
3. ↑ American Tribute to Agatha Christie
4. ↑ ^{a b} German first edition in the catalog of the German National Library
5. ↑ The Gates of Damascus - James Elroy Flecker at The Wondering Minstrels, August 2008
6. ^ Audiobook (abridged) in the catalog of the German National Library