Brain Candy

I was flying recently and picked up two books at an airport: Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie, and Iceberg by Clive Cussler. Both of these are excellent books for reading on an airplane because they're entertaining and suspenseful, but not very deep (i.e., not "literature").

Miss Marple (first published in 1985) is a collection of twenty murder mysteries as could only be told by Agatha Christie--no matter how hard the reader tries, there is a 90+% chance that he will not be able to solve the riddle. The only slight negative about the book is that the first thirteen stories are part of "The Tuesday Club Murders" series where Miss Marple and five of her friends meet once a week for a friendly get-together where they discuss mysterious murders in which one of the participants had been directly or indirectly involved. The stories--each one about fifteen pages on average--while all different and equally unsolvable by the reader, become somehow monotone after the fifth or sixth story. Perhaps that is because the setting is the same--they're all seated in an old room with a fireplace, and the stories somehow come a cross just a little bit too English, at least to the American reader (translation: pretentious). Still, because of Agatha Christie's ingenuity in composing great mysteries, and the inclusion of other longer stories in the book, when feeling lazy, this is a very entertaining option.

Iceberg (first published in 1975) is a spy thriller with Dirk Pitt^® (the name is actually a registered trademark!; Cussler has a series of books starring that character) starring as a project director for NUMA: the National Underwater and Marine Agency. He's on a search to find out how a missing yacht, its owner on his way to meet with U.S. President, ended up being entombed in an iceberg near Iceland. The story is entertaining and for the most part the dialogue is excellent. There are a few mishaps in the narrative, but overall I'd give this book a 4/5 if you're a male and like spy thrillers. If you're a female and a first-time Clive Cussler reader, I'd direct you to a previous novel, Inca Gold.

I think the best words to describe both books are good brain candy.