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    The Edge: A Short Story
    The Edge: A Short Story
    The Edge: A Short Story
    Ebook39 pages19 minutes

    The Edge: A Short Story

    By Agatha Christie

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Previously published in the print anthology The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories.

    Claire Halliwell lives a quiet country life with her dogs. A conscientious and popular parish worker, she takes everything in her stride—even when Sir Gerald Lee, the man she loves, marries Vivien, a glamorous city girl. When Claire learns that Vivien is having an affair, her sense of duty to Gerald is stretched to the limit!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateNov 12, 2013
    ISBN9780062302809
    The Edge: A Short Story
    Author

    Agatha Christie

    Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.

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    Reviews for The Edge

    3.5/5

    6 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      While this is, perhaps, a good book for someone else, it wasn't the best reading experience for me. I never connected with the characters and found them a bit dull. I also felt that the story was slow. The blurb on the cover is a bit misleading as to the content, and it wasn't at all what I expected when I purchased it. That said, the dystopian elements and the changes in the world governments were interesting. This is the sort of story I'd probably prefer to see done in a visual medium rather than in a written one.
    • 5/5
      I really liked this book. It is another winner from Angry Robot. I like the description of the future London, as described in this book. It was realistic and interesting to see where how the author described life and place. It is similar to our own, but different enough to make you believe it is a different time. The characters were also very interesting and interacted well with each other. The back stories of each was believable and made me want to find out what their futures were going to be. Overall this book is highly recommended, I can't wait to read the next in the series.
    • 1/5
      I’m not going to lie, I bought this book for the cover. I didn’t read the blurb, I didn’t read the first page, all of the little steps that bridge the gap between a book and my bookshelves flew out the window in the face of that cover. Knife fights! Blood! Duels! Sounds most excellent to me.When the book arrived I dared to think I had been rewarded for my rash purchase. The back blurb promised a dystopic future Britain where knife fighting had been legalised and where a giant wall had been erected around the city. Sounds very awesome, yes? At the very least it sounds finishable, and yet I barely made it half way through.Let start with the book’s main conceit: Knife fighting: it’s legal! Why? Pfft, we don’t need to know a silly little thing like that, do we? And honestly, I would have been happy with minimal explanation of why knife fighting (to the death, mind you) was legal, if we actually got to see some, you know, knife fighting. As I said, I made it to the midway point, and not once had anyone actually had a fight involving knives. There was a lot of posturing and ‘why sir, you have offended me! I demand satisfaction!’ going on, but actual knife fighting? Not so much. I’m not saying that nothing happened, but it did feel like Blackthorne (I vaguely recall that this is a well known author's alias, but can't for the life of me remember who...) completely wasted the potential of his world. Here’s this big brotherish dystopic future London, but not one of the events of the first half of the book couldn’t have taken place in a book set in current day London. What’s the point of cool futuristic setting if you don’t make the most of it? Or at least something of it?And the giant wall surrounding Britain? Maybe the back cover was referring to a metaphorical giant wall, because no mention of such was made in the book, or at least no mention that I noticed. Admittedly, I could have missed it. Blackthorne's brand of worldbuilding seems to be offhand sentences like, “oh, yes, America has three presidents now” with no explanation or follow up or, worse of all, no real evidence that it effects the characters lives in any way. Or at another point he mentions that because knife fighting is legal hardly anyone owns or uses guns any more. Um, ok? More confusingly is the therapist character (always a sign of memorable characters when they have to be referred to by their profession...), who can possibly read minds or something. Maybe? She does this thing where she talks to her patients and somehow her words just fix whatever is wrong with them, or make them think in a whole new way, like magic. She'll say something like 'you are no longer shy' and bam! no more shyness. But for all intents and purposes Blackthorne has set his book in the “real” world and there are no other hints of supernatural happenings. It’s very strange.I can accept magic therapy powers, but what I can’t accept is magic therapy powers that the author wants me to believe aren’t magic. Trying to figure it out kept pulling me out of the book. What also kept yanking me out was trying to get a handle on the moods of the characters. Scenes like this took place pretty much every time any of the character’s spoke:Josh (or John. Possibly Jake) clenched his fists, a scowl crossing his lips, “um, yeah, ok I guess,” he said.Do you see? His body language suggests angry alpha male, his words suggest meek submissive dude. The dialogue in this book was consistently like this, completely at odds with the context of the scene. It’s pretty much impossible to lose yourself in a book when your jarred out the story every couple of pages, you know?Having not finished the book, I can not say if these faults are with it the whole way through. There’s a chance the last half is one long knife fighting blood bath, but even the possibility of that wasn’t enough to let me ignore its flaws and keep forcing myself through it.
    • 4/5
      In a future not far enough away, an ex-special forces detective and a psychologist/hypnotist go in search of a missing boy, the reasons why he's missing are complex and involved and finding him will change the world.It is an intersting story, though sometimes the story does get bogged down in the gadgets to the detriment of the story.

    Book preview

    The Edge - Agatha Christie

    Contents

    The Edge

    About the Author

    The Agatha Christie Collection

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    THE EDGE

    Clare Halliwell walked down the short path that led from her cottage door to the gate. On her arm was a basket, and in the basket was a bottle of soup, some homemade jelly and a few grapes. There were not many poor people in the small village of Daymer’s End, but such as there were were assiduously looked after, and Clare was one of the most efficient of the parish workers.

    Clare Halliwell was thirty-two. She had an upright carriage, a healthy colour and nice brown eyes. She was not beautiful, but she looked fresh and pleasant and very English. Everybody liked her, and said she was a good sort. Since her mother’s death, two years ago, she had lived alone in the cottage with her dog, Rover. She kept poultry and was fond of animals and of a healthy outdoor life.

    As she unlatched the gate, a two-seater car swept past, and the driver, a girl in a red hat, waved a greeting. Clare responded, but for a moment her lips tightened. She felt that pang at her heart which always came when she saw Vivien Lee. Gerald’s wife!

    Medenham Grange, which lay just a mile outside the village, had belonged to the Lees for many generations. Sir Gerald Lee, the present owner of the Grange, was a man old for his years and considered by many stiff in manner. His pomposity really covered a good deal of shyness. He and Clare had played together as children. Later they had been friends, and a closer and dearer tie had been confidently expected by many—including, it may be said, Clare herself.

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