HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I
know, it wasn’t fair. When last we left the wonderful John Curran—knower of all
knowledge about Agatha Christie, the first person privy to her secret notebooks
and the author of two award-winning non-fiction books about the Queen of
Mystery (Secret Notebooks' now out in paperback!)-- I had just asked about his favorite Poirot
and Miss Marple, and then, evil me, I said we were out of time. So, now we have
more time!
And John has revealed he will come
visit today to tell us some brand new Agatha info---our eyes only. Got to love
it.
(And hey—let’s give away another copy of the Secret Notebooks! (Our last
winner was Susan Elizabeth. And the winner of Meg Gardiner’s RANSOM RIVER is: Lexie’s
Mom. And the winner of the ARC of THE OTHER WOMAN is: Margarete. Email me with
your address, okay?)
And now:
HANK: Who is your favorite Hercule Poirot and Miss
Marple?
JOHN:
The best Miss Marple ever was, and remains, Joan Hickson, who, thankfully,
filmed all of the novels for BBC television. Actresses, either before and since,
never captured the essence of Miss Marple as she did. Some of them have been
completely unsuitable and I completely disapprove of the latest idea of
‘inserting’ Miss Marple into books in which she never appeared. 
And the best Poirot is,
undoubtedly, David Suchet. Later this year he will embark on the last five
titles to be filmed and then he will have completed the entire Cases of Hercule
Poirot! Although some of the adaptations have not been good (Appointment with Death, The Murder of Roger
Ackroyd), overall the standard over the last 20 years has been remarkably
high. It will be a remarkable achievement when he finishes the last film.
HANK: We’ve all seen The Mousetrap. (Again and again. And
anytime anyone has tickets, invite me, okay?) But of course there were other plays.
JOHN: Agatha Christie is the only crime-writer to
achieve equal success and fame as a playwright as well as a novelist and
short-story writer. Although her first Poirot play, Black Coffee (1930), is not very impressive she enjoyed writing
scripts and her first big success on the stage was And Then There Were None in 1943. But she wanted more control over
what happened to her books (she was very unhappy with what adapters did to, for
instance, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd)
so she adapted The Hollow, in 1951,
herself. And then she wrote original plays - in the 1950s she wrote The Unexpected Guest, Spider’s Web and Verdict directly for the stage and
adapted The Mousetrap and Witness for the Prosecution. 
HANK: I could watch that a million
times. It’s always a surprise, and always wonderful. Charles Laughton, I mean,
how perfect. All this was happening at the same time?
JOHN: Yes! During this period she
had three plays running simultaneously in London’s West End, a record for a
female playwright that stands to this day. In 1961 three one-act plays, under
the title, Rule of Three was her last
success; the final play she wrote, Fiddler’s
Three, was not considered good enough
to reach the West End. The Mousetrap
has now been running for almost 60 years and seems likely to run forever. I
hope to write about her career as a playwright in my next book in two years
time.
HANK: And of course you’ll
be here to tell us all about it! Do you read modern crime fiction? (How do you
even have time?) Who are your favorites among living writers?
JOHN: Yes, I read and enjoy a lot
of modern crime fiction although my main interest is in the writers of the
Golden Age – Christie and her contemporaries, Dickson Carr, Sayers, Queen,
Marsh etc. I greatly admire P. D. James and Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine; the
American writer Charles Todd, whose books are set in the England of Christie –
just after the First World War; Robert Goddard, who creates wonderfully
complicated plots; the novels of Colin Dexter, who has now, sadly, retired; the
earlier titles of Val McDermid before they became too gory; and Laura Wilson
who sets her books during World War II.
HANK: If you could ask Agatha Christie a question
what would it be?
JOHN: My problem would be keeping it to only one!
It would have to be ‘How did you do it? How did you, a woman with no formal
education and no background in writing become the biggest-selling, and most
translated, writer in history?’ And I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to
answer me. She would probably look
amused and say ‘I really don’t know!’
HANK: SO Reds, John will be here to discuss…what’s
your favorite Christie play? Or movie? We still haven’t decided who should play Tommy
in the Tommy & Tuppence movie—and hey, wasn’t John going to give us the scoop
on that. Oh, wait, he said he couldn’t. Shall we keep trying? Meanwhile, shall
we cast Tuppence? And who was the young actress who was threatening to play Miss
Marple?
And John also promises some big news.
Remember, we’re giving away a copy
of SECRET NOTEBOOKS!
