The Case of the Discontented Soldier

Parker Pyne returns. He and Miss Lemon help out bored Major Wilbraham who since he has returned from Africa has been rather bored with life in rural England.

Major Wilbraham reluctantly pays Pyne his fee of 50 Guineas but before he knows it, he is helping out a damsel in distress and looking at a map with hidden ivory buried somewhere in Africa.

What Major Wilbraham fails to realise that Parker Pyne had a hand in all this with a scenario devised by mystery writer, Mrs Adriane Oliver.

It is nice to see some prototype characters that would pop up in Poirot books. I think Parker Pyne is an interesting person but I did think this adventure was rather run of the mill and lukewarm.

In the first episode of this short-lived television format, "The Case of the Middle-Aged Woman", we met the character of Parker Pyne and he made sure a hurt and unhappy woman - whose husband fell for a young gold-digging secretary - found back her confidence and self-esteem via a convoluted but ingenious scheme. For you see, Pyne is an "arranger" and he puts ads in the local newspapers to attract people who are unhappy with their lives. He does it again here, in "The Case of the Discontented Soldier", and thinks up a whole mysterious plot to bring back action and excitement in the dull life of an early-retired military major. The best thing I could write about both these episodes is that, with a bit of imagination, they are some sort of forerunners of films like "Ocean's Eleven" and "Now You See Me". You know, puzzled stories in which every tiniest detail eventually turns out to be planned and part of a greater set-up. Films like these require a lot of suspension of disbelief, and so does this one, but in the capable hands of dame Agatha Christie they at least also contain a large portion of down-to-earth humor.

Parker Pyne was an interesting early Christie figure, using intelligence and background to effect life transformations to all that would apply to his simple advert about happiness. It's a fabled tale with added intelligence and comes across well on those bases. We get to see Miss Lemon, whom we assume to be the future M. Poirot's faithful secretary, and mystery writer, Adriane Oliver, no less. That makes it fun for those who have read the later works first. While I agree that this Parker Pyne is not as quixotic and personable as the one from the written story, he does the job.

The good major's current life status of boredom and lack of adventure is allayed, his core need intrinsically met in a most entertaining fashion. I thought Miss Oliver justified her stereotypic methods in this by her assertions that people liked the traditional and time worn dilemmas which were employed here.

Good fun. (We trust the Major came to the realization that "a man" did not in fact "owe him 50 quid."