Defending Agatha Christie

A dear friend of mine is no fan of
Agatha Christie (1890-1976). He and I are both delighted by
Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) and
her creation Lord Peter Wimsey. We have discussed them for many years. But the
charm of Dame Agatha and her most famous detective, Hercule Poirot, eludes him.
This defense is to present what I have come to like in Agatha Christie’s mystery books.

My mother used to read Agatha Christie to go to sleep every night. Several years ago,
she passed on to me her extensive and tattered collection of luridly-covered paperbacks.
Some of these books are in such poor condition that I have to carry them in plastic zip
bags to keep the pages in order. I recently read or re-read about a dozen of them.

I am quite ready to admit that Agatha Christie could write a really bad book. My choice
for her worst is The Big Four (1927), which has something in it to offend
everyone. Even the cover below is grotesque. Thankfully (and unusually for one of
the best-selling authors of all time), The Big Four does not seem to be print
any more.

Also, it is easy to dislike Hercule Poirot. Even his creator found him difficult. The
Wikipedia article on
Agatha Christie reports that “…by the end of the 1930s, Christie confided to her
diary that she was finding Poirot ‘insufferable’, and by the 1960s she felt that he was
an ‘an ego-centric creep'”.
Christie wrote a version of herself into several of her stories in the person
of mystery writer and apple-lover Ariadne Oliver. Here is Mrs. Oliver on the subject
of her own detective:

“How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man? I must have been mad! Why
a Finn when I know nothing about Finland? Why a vegetarian? Why all the idiotic
mannerisms he’s got? These things just happen. You try something – and
people seem to like it – and then you go on – and before you know where you are,
you’ve got someone like that maddening Sven Hjerson tied to you for life. And
people even write and say how fond you must be of him. Fond of him? If I met that
bony gangling vegetable eating Finn in real life, I’d do a better murder than any
I’ve ever invented.” (from Chapter 14 of Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, 1952)

However, at her best, Agatha Christie could write very well, even laboring under
the burden of the Belgian Poirot’s extensive and irritating mannerisms. Here is
Colin Lamb, the hero of The Clocks (1963), describing a bookshop:

“I sidled through the doorway. It was necessary to sidle, since precariously
arranged books impinged more and more every day on the passageway from the street.
Inside, it was clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way
about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat,
breeding and multiplying and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.
The distance between bookshelves was so narrow that you could only get along
with great difficulty. There were piles of books perched on every shelf or
table. On a stool in the corner, hemmed in by books, was an old man in a pork-pie
hat with a large flat face like a stuffed fish. He had the air of one who has
given up an unequal struggle. He had attempted to master the books but the
books had obviously succeeded in mastering him. He was a kind of King Canute
of the book world, retreating before the advancing book tide. If he ordered
it to retreat, it would have been with the hopeless certainty that it would
not do so.”

Part of Agatha Christie’s charm for me is her self-awareness. Just as she
mocks herself and her detective in the forms of Ariadne Oliver and Sven Hjerson,
from time to time, Agatha Christie’s stories quietly make fun of themselves. Here
is Dr. James Sheppard in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) interacting with
a police inspector considering a recent corpse:

“‘There’s not going to be much mystery about this crime. Take a look at
the hilt of that dagger.’ I took the look. ‘I dare say they’re not apparent
to you, but I can see them clearly enough.’ He lowered his voice.
‘Fingerprints!’ He stood a off a few steps to judge of his effect.
‘Yes,’ I said mildly. ‘I guessed that.’ I do not see why I should be supposed
to be totally devoid of intelligence. After all, I read detective stories, and
the newspapers, and am a man of quite average ability. If there had been toe
marks on the dagger handle, now, that would have been quite a different thing.
I would then have registered any amount of surprise and awe. I think the
inspector was annoyed with me for declining to get thrilled.”

Similarly, in “Three Blind Mice” (1950), Sergeant Trotter says: “‘It’s all very
well Mr. Paravicini mentioning last chapters and speaking as though this was
a mystery thriller,’ he said. ‘This is real. This is happening.'”

(This is surely an ironic statement from a detective in a mystery thriller.)

The best of Agatha Christie shows this willingness to step back and smile. Christie
often has Captain Hastings or a counterpart there to criticize the great Hercule
Poirot about obsessive method, self-importance, and personal vanity. She has
written stories in which the narrator is the murderer (but the reader does
not get told this until the last page). Just as
Lord Peter is able to mock his famously-educated and oft-quoting self when in
Gaudy Night (1935), Sayers writes him as saying “A facility for quotation
covers the absence of original thought,” Christie at her best has a light and
self-observant touch.

Below are cover photos of some Christie mysteries I have been reading lately.
Since Agatha Christie’s books were written over a period of fifty years and
appeared in many editions, these covers give
some idea of the tastes of the times in which they were published.

1928 edition

1950 edition

1955 editions

1959 editions

1962 editions

1963 editions

1963-1964 editions

1965 editions

1969 editions

1970-1971 editions

1975 editions

1975-1978 editions

Two End House Edition Covers

Two Sad Cypress Edition Covers

Images Copyright 2007 by Katy Dickinson