All lovely old ladies
Loud lovely old ladies (original title By the Pricking of My Thumbs ) is the 59th detective novel by Agatha Christie . It first appeared in the UK in November 1968 at the Collins Crime Club and later that year in the US with Dodd, Mead and Company . The German first edition was published by Scherz Verlag (Bern, Munich, Vienna) in 1970 in the translation by Edda Janus, which is still used today.
Tommy and Tuppence Beresford investigate it in their third novel.
Still young people in A Dangerous Adversary (1922) and in their mid-forties in Little Red Riding Hood and the Bad Wolf (1941), Tommy and Tuppence have now aged in real time. This is in contrast to the author's other two famous protagonists, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple , who are always roughly the same age in all novels from the 1920s to the 1970s.
Explanation of the title of the novel
The title of the novel comes from the first scene of the fourth act of William Shakespeare's Macbeth .
- Second Witch :
- By the pricking of my thumbs,
- Something wicked this way comes.
German translation ( Something wicked this way comes ):
- Second witch :
- My thumbs itch a lot,
- Something bad comes from it.
action
In the nursing home where Tommy Beresford's aunt Ada lived, the resident Mrs. Lancaster drives both the staff and the other residents to despair with her crazy gossip. She always talks about a poor child and something behind the fireplace. Tuppence, hearing the talk, becomes curious and the Beresford couple, both now in their sixties, rush into an investigation. This leads them to child murder and other dark secrets.
people
- Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, a retired elderly couple
- Mrs. Lancaster, a resident of the Sunny Hill Nursing Home
- Miss Packard, manager of the nursing home
- Married couple Perry, residents of the house on the canal near Sutton Chancellor
- the pastor of the ward of Sutton Chancellor
- Gertrude Nellie Bligh, a resident of Sutton Chancellor
- Mrs. Copleigh, a resident who rents rooms
- Philip Starke, an elderly gentleman who lives alone near the rectory
Film adaptations
The novel was first filmed for the cinema in 2005 by the French director Pascal Thomas under the title Mon petit doigt m'a dit ... , the French title of the novel. The main roles are played by André Dussollier and Catherine Frot in the roles of Bélisaire and Prudence Beresford (the authors changed the names of the main actors).
For the British television series Agatha Christie's Marple , the novel was filmed again in 2006 with Geraldine McEwan. For this purpose, Miss Marple was written in the script, although she does not appear in the novel. Tommy is played by Anthony Andrews and Tuppence by Greta Scacchi .
Major expenses
- 1968 Collins Crime Club (London), November 1968
- 1968 Dodd Mead and Company (New York), 1968
- 1970 German first edition Scherzverlag
Audio books
- 2006 Loud lovely old ladies (3 CDs): Abridged reading. Read by Stephan Schad . Director: Sven Stricker . Translated from the English by Tanja Handels . The Hörverlag (Munich)
Web links
- By the Pricking of My Thumbs on the official Agatha Christie website
- Mon petit doigt m'a dit ... (2005) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Marple: By the Pricking of My Thumbs (2006) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club - A checklist of First Editions . Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15)
- ↑ John Cooper and BA Pyke. Detective Fiction - the collector's guide : Second Edition (Pages 82 and 87) Scholar Press. 1994. ISBN 0-85967-991-8
- ↑ American Tribute to Agatha Christie
- ↑ a b German first edition in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ Original text in the Wikisource
- ^ Audiobook (licensed) in the catalog of the German National Library