Agatha Christie

                                    

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The very first Agatha Christie book I ever read had languished in ‘the front room’ for ages before I took any notice of it. As this room was kept in a state of immaculate and chilly readiness for special occasions such as Christmas, I rarely ventured in, but on that particular day I had just finished my latest Famous Five book and was desperate for something else to read. I was eleven years old at the time and possessed of an unquenchable thirst for reading.

The glass-fronted bookcase that housed my parents’ books was a last resort. How could I have known that it contained a slim volume that bore within its pages the seeds of an incurable addiction? ‘Three Act Tragedy – with a murder in each act’ proclaimed the blurb.’

I selected it without any great expectation of enjoyment, read it within two days and was irrevocably hooked.

Since then I have read many crime novels by many different authors but none have affected my heart, mind and psyche as has Christie. Agatha’s brilliant story telling is the yardstick by which other murder mysteries are measured and almost inevitably found to fall short.

              

Christie Novels:

For sheer intricacy of plot an Agatha Christie novel is quite simply matchless. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is often, perhaps justifiably, quoted as her masterpiece. But consider Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, –I defy anyone not to be astonished at that particular denouement.

Murder on the Orient Express has been filmed so often and seen by so many people, that the ending may have lost some of its ‘wow’ factor, but when I read it for the first time I was, quite literally, flabbergasted.

And how about Christie’s perhaps most chilling novel which we nowadays call And Then There Were None – absolutely astounding!

Agatha Christie's Detectives:

But there is another factor, which makes Agatha Christie unique amongst crime writers. She created not one famous and infallible detective, but two!

The Belgian Hercule Poirot – precise, dapper and conceited; and Miss Marple, quintessentially English, harmlessly inquisitive and prone to self-deprecation. Two apparently completely different personalities.

However, I believe that it is possible to identify many points of similarity, the most obvious one being that they are both introduced to the reader as elderly people.

It is interesting to speculate on the reason for this. The Murder at the Vicarage, Miss Marple’s first case, was published in 1930, ten years after we were introduced to Hercule Poirot in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

Given the already enduring nature of Poirot’s appeal, one might have supposed that Agatha would have realised the problems caused by beginning her characters’ careers in the autumn of their lives! Both Poirot and Miss Marple lived to unfeasibly ripe old ages – but who cares? One can only thank heaven that she held back ‘Curtain – Poirot’s Last Case’ for so many years or the world would have been denied many more instances of his brilliance.

                        

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, on the other hand, start life in The Secret Adversary published 1922 as bright young things, are found to be middle-aged in N or M published 1941 and by the time By the Pricking of My Thumbs is published in 1968, are reintroduced to us as decidedly elderly. Interesting!

Christie, of course, also wrote several crime/adventure stories, which featured none of the above characters – the previously mentioned And Then There Were None is a case in point.

On this web site I want to explore all the points mentioned above and many, many more.

What is the secret of her appeal? The most published writer since Shakespeare – why?

How is that this woman from the leisured middle class had such a universal following?

I once heard a discussion on an Arts Programme where one contributor said of Agatha Christie disparagingly ‘She doesn’t write about people who live in council houses.’ ‘No’ someone replied, ‘But she’s read by people in council houses.’

And there can’t be many homes that have not had an Agatha Christie book on their bookshelves at some time or another.

Just like the one in my mum’s front room.

Listen To The Great Lady Herself:

The following links come courtesy of two interviews Agatha Christie gave to the BBC. The first is a short extract from 1955 where she talks about why she started writing. The second extract is from 1962 and relates to the tenth anniversary of the mousetrap. To listen To the clips you will need to have a program called RealPlayer installed on your computer (most have as standard). If you don't have RealPlayer you can download it for free by Clicking Here

Click Here To Listen To The 1955 Interview

Click Here To Listen To The 1962 Interview

(Photo Credit: Michael Mistretta)

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Interested In Psychology, Forensics and The Criminal Mind?

Agatha Christie was! Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple were profiling criminals long before the FBI. To find out more about these fascinating topics just visit these free and comprehensive websites.

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All About Forensic Psychology

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by Madeleine Tiktin
(Larchmont, N.Y. U.S.A.)

Is or are there any Agatha Christie books wherein both Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot appear?

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If I had to choose between a set of Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot books, given that I was about to be marooned on that famous desert island, which Agatha Christie detective would I take?

Well I love them both, and it would be a hard decision, but it would probably be Hercule Poirot?s adventures I would want to read under a shady palm tree.

They are both wonderful Agatha Christie creations, but there is more humour in both Hercule Poirot's personality and many of the stories in which he appears.

We can, and do, admire miss Jane Marple, but she doesn?t make us laugh. She has a brilliant mind and a fascinating way of recalling incidents that have occurred in St Mary Mead, and by comparing them to what is happening at the moment, reaching the correct solution. She has few, if any, foibles of the kind that characterise Poirot.

Miss Marple is an intelligent, refined, kindly middle-aged spinster who loves her garden, and that is about as much as we know of her. Oh, and she knits a lot!

Hercule Poirot with his obsession for order and method, his outrageous mustache and his inflated ego could, without skillful handling, have become a preposterous figure. And we do laugh at his eccentricities, but never unkindly and without ever losing our respect for him.

Even when he is at his most conceited, not hesitating to tell anyone who will listen that he is the greatest detective who ever lived, I detect a twinkle in his eye ? if people choose to think that he can?t possibly be as clever as he thinks he is, well, so much the better!

In my opinion, it is these very idiosyncrasies that give Hercule Poirot the edge over Miss Marple as far as ?readability? is concerned.

Having said that, I utterly reject the criticism that Agatha Christie?s characters are one dimensional. I believe the lack of extraneous personal data is deliberate. She tell us what we need to know about the character, and then concentrates on blowing our minds with her devious plots.

To give her main characters tortuous love lives or tempestuous family relationships would only have detracted from her main object, which is to baffle and entertain.

Similarities:

As I said elsewhere on the website, there are similarities between miss Marple and Hercule Poirot.

They are both elderly, they are both unmarried, neither of them has any real family ties (yes, I know Miss Marple?s nephew Raymond occasionally puts in an appearance, but he hardly counts as close family.)

I think it is the absence of emotional baggage that helps concentrates their minds on their real raison d?etre, that is the solving of crimes. And they both use psychology - or to put it another way, a knowledge of human nature ? to help unmask the guilty party.

Of course, they are adept at spotting clues and making sense of them, but it is often the personality of the different suspects that helps provide the final piece of the jigsaw.

Miss Marple has acquired her understanding of the human psyche from close observation of village life. Hercule Poirot from his wider experience of the world and his time in the Belgian Police Force, but they both believe that people basically run true to type.

Differences:

Where they do differ is in their life experiences.

Miss Marple has lived all her life in St Mary Mead. She does take one trip to the Caribbean, and visits London and friends around the country occasionally, but that is the extent of her travelling.

Apart from those times when murder rears its ugly head, she lives the quiet life in her home village.

Hercule Poirot, on the other hand, visits Egypt, and Mesopotamia and travels throughout Europe on various trains and planes. He is a gourmand and a cosmopolitan ? he hates the country, although he did once think it might be nice to retire to a small village and grow vegetable marrows ? bad idea!

Hercule Poirot is a celebrated detective ? people actively seek him out to solve their murder cases. And he relishes his fame. Miss Marple has a much lower profile and would hate the kind of public acclaim that Poirot enjoys.

But the thing that connects them most strongly is that they both - to quote an oft repeated comment of Poirot?s ?disapprove of murder.?

And now I?ve finished writing this piece, I realise that I am really going to have to insist that they let me take both Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple with me to that desert island!

Who Would You Choose?

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A select girls? boarding school, Meadowbank, is the unusual setting for most of ?Cat Among the Pigeons? although some of the key action takes place in the fictional Middle-Eastern Kingdom of Ramat. As the story opens, a coup-etat is about to take place there and the young forward-looking prince Ali Yusuf, in fear of his life, is planning to flee the country taking with him some priceless gems.

First published in 1959, ?Cat Among the Pigeons? is part adventure story, part murder mystery and the blend works very well. The broad canvas of international diplomacy is interwoven with the narrow confines of a typically British educational institution and the result is a very satisfying read.

There are some excellent character studies in this book, particularly among the teachers and Agatha Christie explores the tensions and petty jealousies that are bound to erupt when a number of women are in close proximity for weeks on end.

Hercule Poirot makes a fairly late appearance in this book, being summoned for help by Julia Upjohn one of the pupils at Meadowbank who makes a startling discovery. (Interestingly, Julia is the niece of Maureen Summerhayes who appears in ?Mrs McGinty?s Dead.) As always, Poirot manages to link the apparently unconnected events in Ramat with the murderous happenings at Meadowbank and unmask the villain. (But not before examining a certain young lady?s knees!)

When I first read Cat Among the Pigeons and got to the end, I was annoyed with myself for not spotting the guilty party because in some ways he/she is a ?typical? Agatha Christie villain. Be that as it may, I didn?t guess whodunit so well done if you do.

For more details and/or to get hold of this Agatha Christie book, just click on the following link.

Cat Among the Pigeons (Hercule Poirot Mysteries)

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