This edition published 20th April 2017 by Harper Collins.
From the cover of the book:
A collection of short stories featuring the ‘heart specialist’, Parker Pyne.Mrs Packington felt alone, helpless and utterly forlorn. But her life changed when she stumbled upon an advertisement in The Times which read: ‘ARE YOU HAPPY? IF NOT, CONSULT MR PARKER PYNE’.
Equally adept at putting together the fragments of a murder mystery or the pieces of a marriage, Mr Parker Pyne is possibly the world’s most unconventional private investigator.
Armed with just an intuitive knowledge of human nature, he is an Englishman abroad, travelling the globe to solve and undo crime and misdemenour.
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My choice for this month's Read Christie 2022 challenge to choose an Agatha Christie featuring travel and romance is the short story collection Parker Pyne Investigates.
Parker Pyne is a genial, retired government statistician who is dedicated to helping people lead happy lives, using the considerable experience about human nature that he has gained over his working life. He offers his services via an advertisement in The Times asking 'Are you happy? if not consult Mr Parker Pyne', and promises an almost perfect success rate at providing satisfaction for his clients - crimes of the heart are his forté.
The collection comprises fourteen stories, and it is really a book of two halves. The first part of the book revolves around stories which focus on what seems to be the original concept behind the character: that there are a specific number of reasons why people are unhappy, and specific remedies to their problems. Parker Pyne claims that there are only five reasons, and he has the cures to them if his clients are willing to submit to his recommendations and pay the required fee - if they are willing then comes up with a plan and sets it in motion using his faithful team of employees, while he oversees the schemes from his office in Richmond Street, London. The second half of the book, contains stories which are quite different in nature, as they are cases almost entirely foisted upon him during his attempts to get away from it all in exotic locations and, in all but one, he is the sole operative in putting things to rights.
The stories are so distinctly disparate in nature that I did wonder if Christie got a bit bored with Mr Parker Pyne and decided to take him a completely different direction halfway through the life of his character, because he changes from being the mastermind behind helping his clients to find happiness through some very amusing schemes, while he stays put in a single location; to more of a conventional private investigator who solves crimes in far-flung destinations, despite claiming to not be a detective. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this, as he suddenly becomes the centre of the stories as a crime sleuth, which was a bit odd. There is no real character development for Parker Pyne himself and you are left knowing little more about him at the end of the book as you knew at the beginning - and I was a little frustrated that you never find out what all the five causes of unhappiness are.
The cases which involve his delightful gang of accomplices are by far the most enjoyable, as they are such a great assortment of characters, including the deliciously smarmy lounge-lizzard Claude Luttrell, and the beautiful queen of vamps Madeleine de Sara, who could both be called upon to incite jealousy in the cases of marital disharmony. There are also a couple of faces familiar to fans of the Poirot books, with Miss Lemon taking the role of highly efficient secretary to Parker Pyne (before her days in charge of Poirot's files), and the enchanting Mrs Ariadne Oliver supplementing her income as famous novelist to help out when more creative game plans are required to bring about a successful result.
Overall, I did find this collection enjoyable. The stories are light, fun and entertaining, with a nice balance of romance, mystery and crime, and the foreign locations are very 'Christie', which made this book a fitting choice for the brief. I found them rather humorous too, as there are plenty of chuckles to be had. There are flashes of Poirot about many of these adventures (interestingly the final two stories, Problem at Pollensa Bay and The Regatta Mystery, were originally written for Poirot), but for me, they lack the personality and substance that a well developed main character brings. Definitely examples of Christie's more frivolous side!
Parker Pyne Investigates is now availanle to buy in paperback, ebook and audio formats from your favourite book retailer.
Note that the audio version of this collection, read by the wonderful Hugh Fraser, does not include the later stories Problem at Pollensa Bay and The Regatta Mystery.
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