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If I were grilled about Agatha Christie
Now, Mrs.–erm–
Sawatdeeka. Just call me Sawatdeeka.
Okay. Now, Sawatdeeka (however you pronounce that), how long have you known the subject?
My mom introduced me to Agatha Christie mysteries when I was a young woman, thirty years ago. She recommended their “cozy” British atmosphere more than the mystery plot. So I read a number of Christie’s stories, including popular ones like Murder on the Orient Express.
What was your experience with Dame Agatha Christie?
Well, I was always a bit impatient to get the mystery unraveled, and not invested in the atmosphere or the characters. I did enjoy And Then There Were None. Eight people invited to an island getting killed off one by one–that’s a great concept for a story, and I think Christie executed it well.
She almost always managed to surprise me with the identity of the murderer. I didn’t know how she did that, but I think I have a better idea now. I’ve assumed these were well-written mysteries, given their popularity and the fact that my mom read them. However, I’m not so sure lately, since I’ve gotten back into them.
How did you first get reacquainted?
A few years ago, Chirp Books was offering audio versions of Murder on the Links and Murder on the Orient Express together at a deep discount. I had a mixed experience coming back to Christie. The narration by actors from Downton Abbey was outstanding. But in spite of the splendid readings, the stories seemed too dense and a little dry for audio. I thought Murder on the Links was a throwaway title, that it must have been unpopular, which is why it was on clearance, so to speak. Orient Express was okay. I vaguely remembered getting into it, decades ago. More recently, I’ve grabbed a couple Kindle titles that were on sale.
How do you find the mysteries now?
[Sawatdeeka clears her throat nervously and looks away for a moment.] I find Christie to be a mediocre writer, maybe an underachiever, in a rush to publication. Three Act Tragedy (originally Murder in Three Acts), a recently purchased Kindle deal, was a mess. Besides the lifeless title–and why publishers opted for a duller title later on is beyond me–there are unresolved plot threads, a lame stunt by Poirot, bland characters, and a dragging story. Poirot didn’t really even matter this time. Instead, a yawner of a vaguely drawn character, Mr. Satterthwaite, and his actor buddy go around questioning suspects. They took forever to get around to their investigation and pick up the pace in this uneven tale. To sum up: it was sloppy. Online research said that this was a serial novel. She should have picked up the magazine and read each of her latest installments before continuing.
In this case, I decided I’d think hard about the details and solve the mystery. And I did predict a couple of key parts of her resolution, despite being distracted by a couple of admittedly clever red herrings. I leveraged my experience of having read her in the past, picking up tricks such as not dismissing the possibility a main character, someone in the foreground, did the evil deed. The author was also over the top with a character’s profile, so I could apply that to one of her riddles. And in the heart of her story, she dropped a stunning hint to which she never returned.
Right now I’m reading a Miss Marple story, A Pocket Full of Rye. While far more charming and cohesive than Three Act Tragedy, one can see that Christie needs an editor to rid her of the self-conscious, overwritten phrases. To invent an example—phrases such as “ran hastily” can be both meaningless and distracting. She’s tough on her female characters, not restraining her pen to describe a woman as unattractive and not very bright. I suppose there are unflattering portrayals of men in the books, too. So far, the setting is vivid, the characters are somewhat interesting, the plot more intriguing than in the last book, and Inspector Neele is a gem.
Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot?
I’m not sure. I haven’t read enough of them lately to decide. But I will tell you that conceited Poirot in Three Act Tragedy grated enough that one could wish he’d quaffed the poisoned drink early in the story. Miss Marple in Pocket Full of Rye has so far been appealing and clever.
Anything else to add about this popular mystery writer?
For an author writing in the thirties, pre-World War Two, and in a world populated by readers who remembered the 1880s, Christie’s voice is modern and accessible to today’s readers. She even throws in some off-color “adult” comments from her characters that would have me dating her books in the ’60s or ’70s if I didn’t know better. Her longevity tells me how much Western culture and popular writing had evolved by the time Christie was dropping her detective stories for eager audiences. In two decades, we’d given up our floor-length dresses and quaint, more reserved stories in exchange for shorts, sleeveless tops, and the latest beach read.
Part of her success, perhaps, was her productivity, her ability to crank out the books. If she’d only come out with five of them, my guess is that they wouldn’t have gained as much traction. But her stories came out regularly and perhaps they were everywhere, flooding the market. Eventually, with 66 detective novels on the shelves, the skeptic would stop resisting and pick up a title or two.
Through Poirot’s dissection of a character’s cold-hearted murder in her 1934 Three Act Tragedy, Christie betrayed a key to her plot twists, an insight as to how she engineers the story so that the murderer ends up being a character you never would have suspected. So I’m on to you, Dame Agatha Christie. [Sawatdeeka gives a nervous cackle.]
Christie’s novels are low-key and slow-paced enough to read at night before I fade out. I have found that if I wake up in the wee hours and fall asleep in their scenes once more, I drop into a bizarre, jumbled world where I ride trains, recognize the murderer, and interact in Agatha Christie’s worlds. Now that’s cozy.
Published in Book Reviews
For those of you that read this post in its first twenty minutes of life, I want you to know it’s now been edited and I hope streamlined, less clunky in certain places.
I have never read her books. I know Christie only from my watching the Marple and Poirot series this past winter.
It has occurred to me as I watched these many stories that her stories were very popular. The casts of these series were really star filled. I was surprised at how many of them I recognized from more prominent roles. They must have grown up reading these stories, and when the BBC or ITV called, they were happy to be in the series or movies. Perhaps just for the sheer fun of it.
I think the appeal of her stories was probably in the research she did in murder methods and the plot lines. She gave readers a lot of information, and that is always welcome to readers. It’s the same appeal that Melville’s Moby-Dick and Tom Clancy’s Cold War books had. :)
I gather from what you’ve written that her sets and character descriptions were tedious. I think the wonderful trains and boats and scenery in the movie and television productions made up for some of that. A couple of pictures are worth a few thousand words.
And who doesn’t love the English countryside and the wonderful trains and train stations. :) And the gardens! Always beautiful gardens to see in the BBC and ITV productions. :) :)
Yes, I was going to say something about this. Because I think there’s some accuracy in the poisons she describes, and I wonder if she gave readers ideas. She’ll talk about the poison’s convenience, it’s original source, how long it takes to work, etc.
I’m kind of interested in watching some of these. I just found an inexplicably free and possibly high-quality version offered online here. The visual medium might be more vivid, and yes, bypass her sometimes awkward character profiles.
Yep, I could see that.
Sigh. Medicine for the winter doldrums.
I read a couple of Christie’s novels, don’t remember which, and was not impressed. I really like Dorothy Sayers, though. I had never read any Nero Wolfe (Rex Stout), so I got a couple from the library. The stories were ok, but the character of Wolfe was so pretentious that it was off-putting, and I am not interested in reading more.
If you like English mysteries I would suggest the Masie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. Nice strong female character. Or if you like your detectives a little weaker, Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver series is fun too.
My mom highly recommends those.
Thanks for the leads! I’m not a huge mystery fan, but I do like good writing.
I read several of her novels in my late high school/early college years. I got very good at picking out the right culprit, but I almost always got the motive completely wrong.
I remember being downright angry when I got to the end of Orient Express!
The late 1950s/early 1960s British film adaptations of her novels starring Margaret Rutherford are a hoot. They show up on TCM from time to time.
I rather like Joan Hickson’s Miss Marple although Agatha Christie often ends her stories with some group talking over the mystery and her solution, which sometimes I admit will go right over my head. Still, I enjoy the watching.
Did you have a system?
No. I guess I was just smart enough to figure out the who, but too dumb to figure out the why.
However, I do have a system for the TV Show Law & Order that’s about 95% accurate. If you recognize the actor who’s involved in the investigation, they’re the one who did it. Every once in a while they’d throw a curveball and they’d be the innocent victim, but my system is the way to bet.
Ha, ha! That’s funny.
An excellent post.
I attribute my lifelong enthusiasm for murder mysteries to reading my parents’ collection at a young age, and the one I remember best is their copy of the green Penguin edition of Ten Little [REDACTED], the original title of the story that later experienced two renamings, first to Ten Little Indians and then to And Then There Were None. Wikipedia provides a history:
As for the quality of her writing, I watched only last week on the streaming service Kanopy, Icons Of Our Time: Agatha Christie, a documentary which “introduces viewers to new fields of scientific enquiry using sophisticated computer analysis of Christie’s every written word, her sentence structure, story arcs, poisons used, red herrings, clues and so on.” It’s enlightening and only 50 minutes long, so I recommend it. If you’re in the US and your local library subscribes to the service, you can get free access to Kanopy; all you need is a library card.
I am surprised to find historical facts redacted on Ricochet, perhaps automatically by a bot, and not only in a user contribution but in a passage quoted from a reference work. The book had the title it did. Ain’t nothing can change that, so why attempt to conceal it?
That sounds very interesting!
I would assume it’s part of today’s cancel culture that a person or an organization doesn’t want the possibility of being quoted as having the word on their page.
A teacher in the US was disciplined (or fired, can’t remember which) because in teaching an American history course she read a quote that had the word “[REDACTED]” in it to illustrate a point. Note that @yarob
There is a profanity filter that automatically redacts words that are in a list.
We’ve debated the words included on this short list over the years, and the redacted word in Christie’s book title is one I completely support being redacted no matter where it appears, including Shakespeare and Huckleberry Finn.
The history of that word is unique in the English language. The word was a threat in and of itself. Every editor I have ever known feels as I do about it. I don’t want to see it or be around it. And frankly, it has such a super charged connotation that it blows up whatever sentence or title it appears in anyway.
It is unique, and it evokes a unique reaction in people, and it needs a unique status in our usage sensibilities.
It’s just the way it is.
@marcin , I have to agree here. I don’t see any reason to use this word. I’ve learned that it’s popular amongst the youth still, especially young men. When my younger daughter puts on earphones to interact with Elder Scrolls players online, the n-word gets slung around. I’m guessing these are 14-year-olds enjoying their independence and lack of supervision in this crass way.
I could see how English teachers could struggle with how to approach reading Huck Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird. Interesting how people believe passionately in one side or the other. As with other issues, I’m more with Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof when he says, “You are also right!”
I don’t agree at all.
You would mutilate dictionaries to delete the word and pretend not only that it doesn’t exist, but that it has never existed? Encyclopedias (Wikipedia has an entry for it)? Transcripts of court cases in which use of the word is part of the evidence? Rewriting Shakespeare, Twain, and every other author whose work it appears in? It’s a nasty word, one of the worst, but changing our civilization to avoid it? Over the top, I suggest.
I suppose there has been a backlash over time to the prohibition against that word’s use. I think that’s unfortunate.
I hope the Ricochet editors stick to their guns on this. Publishers want to attract the best writers they can, and neither the good writers nor their editors want to be associated with publications or websites that tolerate the use of that word.
I never suggested any of that.
The word most certainly exists in all its ugliness. I’m not erasing history.
But the word was the history itself in this unique case. And it does damage wherever it appears. That is how editors see it.
I think in quoted contexts, for example, in The Riverside Shakespeare where it appears in the fullness of its original context, it should stay with an editorial note of apology. I think it should stay in Huck Finn but appear as ****. I think Huck Finn is the most important book teenagers can read because it deals with a teenager dealing with an angry awful adults. Kids need to read this book. I’ve seen it banned by the Left for teenager because of the use of this word, and that’s really sad. The book could be edited to replace that word with asterisks.
Editing is an art. Editors know what they are doing in handling this word’s appearance in written copy.
On a website like this, it should be banned because it’s not necessary, it’s being used for shock value only, and it would drive away some people we would like to have here as writers or members.
I think David Suchet as Poirot was brilliant.
I never thought as highly of Miss Marple. Agatha really disliked Poirot but kept writing his stories because he was so popular.
I read a lot of Agatha’s books in junior high (in the seventies) and I enjoyed them. One thing I got out of her books is that there was apparently a very common sort of person in Britain that had money and nothing to do, as well as people who no longer had money and, instead of getting jobs, they lived on someone else’s dole as though it were natural. It wasn’t shameful to be unemployed. It was shameful to be in a family that was no longer wealthy.
And then the people who worked (other than doctors and lawyers who barely worked) were considered barely human or members of society.
It really didn’t make me think well of Brits.
Wow! It must have been the tail end of the aristocracy. I don’t get the attitude of looking down on people who work. Such a different time and place. Those working people made their lifestyles possible and kept everything going. Bums.
I think in actuality, it was Christie’s view of the world rather than anything approaching reality.
I’ve read some of Christie’s novels and enjoyed them greatly.
Speaking of Miss Marple, there’s no question to me that Magaret Rutherford was the definitive Marple. She only did four Marple movies (we have all four on DVD), but each one was fun and memorable. And the theme music is an earworm that lasts for days . . .
Joan Hickson. She resembled my grandma.
“Those cookies didn’t just disappear on their own, young man.”
That looks like it could be Miss Marple! You can see the shrewdness behind the sweet face.
I have liked Joan Hickson the best too. :)
Whom ever the detectives are interrogating at a quarter to the hour is the perp. Also works on Castle.
I decided to read all the Christies in order as I do think she is important in the mystery world. Some books and stories were better than others (obviously). Poirot is definitely vain but then has much to be vain about. He does use his little grey cells better than many others. Miss Marple reflects Christie’s view of humanity. Some would say dark but I think she recognized evil and that people do evil. All wrapped up in a little old lady from a small village. All in all I would say if you like mysteries you should read at least the better known books. By the way, Christie liked the Gamadge books by (American) Elizabeth Daly. Very good.
What would you say are the top three Agatha Christie books?
Also, I had not heard about the Gamadge books. Thanks for the recommendation!