Hello crime readers and food lovers!  Today we are eating some fish and chips with Dame Agatha.  And discussing The Seven Dials Mystery.  This book could best be described as a caper – I thought it was a really fun romp of a read.  The book features Lady Eileen Brent (aka Bundle) and Inspector Battle who we first met in The Secret of Chimneys.  I very much liked Bundle in the Secret of Chimneys and I like her even more in this one!  She is mostly fearless, smart and funny – my kind of heroine!

The Seven Dials Mystery – The Plot

Chimneys is being rented to Sir Oswald and Lady Croote who are hosting a house party.  One of the guests, Gerry Wade is a chronic oversleeper much to the dismay of Lady Croote.  Gery’s habitual lateness is putting strain in the running of the house.   His friends decide to sneak 8 alarm clocks into Gerry’s room all set to go off at different times of the morning in the hope that the resulting cacophony will get the sleepyhead up at a decent hour.  The clocks go off but Gerry does not wake up.  Then or ever.  Gerry has been murdered!  And weirdly enough, there are now only 7 alarm clocks in his room…

On top of a missing clock and a dead body we have

• Mysterious references to The Seven Dials in hidden letters and on the lips of a dying man
• Another murder – by gunshot this time
• Seedy nightclubs in a London area called Seven Dials
• Secret letters
• Shady Russians,
• Sinister secret societies of seven who wear masks  of clock faces
• Stolen chemical formulae
• And a marriage proposal for Bundle!

The Covers

There is not much variety in the covers for this book.  Nearly all of then feature clocks of some sort.   I like the image of the burning gloves but my favourite is the very are deco looking version (bottom left and below. The  back of this cover also contains an image of Bundle’s reckless driving which features in the story.

Note the above version of The Seven Dials Mystery will set you back a cool £819 GBP so maybe not one for most of us!  At the other end of the spectrum, you can get the Tom Adams cover version on Ebay for $1 AUD  at the moment.

The Recipe – Fish and Chips

Full disclosure here.  I was getting myself into a bit of a tizzy about this meal.  I have one deep fryer which meant that either the fish was going to get cold while I cooked the chips or vice versa.  My solution was to make the fish as per the recipe below but to use frozen oven fries.

Second disclosure. I would normally never make fish and chips at home – to me, this is a meal best eaten as a take away ideally by the seaside.

I used  John Dory as my fish because that is the fish used by our favourite pub fish and chips.  In Seven Dials, they would traditionally use cod.

I added some dill and a little homegrown horseradish into my tartare as well as all the ingredients listed in the recipe.

“Where did everyone go?”

“To the Seven Dials Club of course, ” said Bill, staring.  “Wasn’t that what you were asking about”

“I didn ‘t know it by that name,” said Bundle.

“Used to be a slummy sort of district round about Tottenham Court Road way.  It’s all pulled down and cleaned up now.  But the Seven Dials Club keeps to the old atmosphere.  Fried fish and chips.  General squalor.”

Agatha Christie, The Seven Dials Mystery

Other Food Mentioned in The Seven Dials Mystery

• Quails
• Omelette (I feel every Christie book so far has mentioned an omelette)
• The lightest  thing in souffles
• Grapes for dessert
• Oysters
• Lobster
• Dry biscuits

The next book, if you are reading along, is Murder at the Vicarage.  Yes, March will bring our very first Miss Marple murder mystery!