Secrets of the Notebooks!

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!

The Secret Notebooks

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:   Rats. I didn't take a photo. But you should have seen John Curran hold the Malice Domestic audience captive with his stories about our goddess and mentor Agatha Christie. He got exclusive access to ALL her notes and notebooks and letters--stayed at her house, Greenway House, and was the very first person to see it all. Can you imagine? What a cache of treasures! And his stories are mesmerizing!

   So of course we had to invite the world's expert on Agatha to come chat at Jungle Red. (And we're giving away a copy of his first book--and a new one! Just answer one little question--see below!)

 

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Okay, John. How did this all happen??

JOHN CURRAN:  I have been reading Christie all my life and although I moved on to read lots of other writers I kept returning to Christie as she was/is the greatest exponent ever of the classical detective novel. For some years I edited an Agatha Christie Newsletter and later wrote an online version of it where I reviewed Christie plays and films and new editions of her books.

In 2004 I visited Calgary in Canada to see Chimneys, a play written by Christie in 1930 and never previously performed. There I met her grandson, Mathew, and he invited me to visit Greenway House, his grandmother’s home since 1938. When I read the Notebooks, which were stored there, I asked his permission to write a book about them and he immediately agreed.

HANK: Yikes. That is—amazing.

JOHN:  Yes!  So now, two books later, I hope I have contributed something to Christie scholarship with a glimpse into how she some of the best detective of all time. Mathew and I are also working to establish an Archive of Agatha Christie’s papers for future generations of scholars.

HANK: I keep envisioning you, discovering those treasures. Tell us more!

JOHN:The biggest surprise was how disorganised they were. I had assumed the plotting would be very ordered (as her books are) but the notes that go to make up any of her titles can be scattered over half-a-dozen Notebooks. And there are very few dates included. And the handwriting was very difficult to decipher.

The other big surprise, considering the number of books she wrote, was the number of plot ideas that she scribbled down but never used. I have included many of these in my two books.

Finding the short stories was an added bonus.  It was an unbelievably exciting event for an aficionado to sit in the author’s own home and read a typescript that no-one had even seen for over 60 years. It was the first ‘new’ Agatha Christie since I read Sleeping Murder in 1976. And finding the notes for them in the Notebooks made it even better. I feel very privileged to have been able to bring them to her legions of fans.

HANK: So this must have been a huge job! Were there any obstacles? Other than the obvious?

JOHN: Without doubt the biggest problem was the handwriting especially for the years between 1930 and the mid-50s.

HANK: Uh, oh. Lucky no one is gonna care about MY notebooks… Really?

JOHN: Yes, it took me about 8 months to decipher those notes and then to transcribe them into legible documents, one file for each Notebook. Of course, it must be remembered that no-one other than Agatha Christie was ever meant to read the Notebooks! When it came to deciding which notes would be included and which left out there were difficult choices to be made. I hope I made the right ones...

HANK: But wait, there’s more?   You’re writing a doctoral thesis on Christie?

JOHN: It will deal with the Golden Age of detective fiction between the Wars when Christie and her contemporaries were at the height of their considerable powers.  Apart from the literature itself it will also look at the social conditions that fostered its growth.

HANK: Let’s go back to the beginning. What was the first Christie book you read? Do you remember?

JOHN: I read my first Christie, Peril at End House, while I was at school and I still consider it one of her best – a very clever, totally fair detective story with a very simple plot device. After that I was hooked! And have remained so ever since. 

HANK: So, what do you think is the secret of Agatha Christie? Why does she continue to attract readers?

JOHN: I think it is a combination of a few factors and this combination has never been matched:

·                    Her writing is straightforward and readable and her books are seldom more than 200 pages.

·                    She tells a story that seems complicated but is quite simple when we get the explanation.

·                    People love a puzzle and she gives us all the clues we need to solve the puzzle but we (nearly!) always fail to spot the vital piece of information that makes everything clear.

·                    She can be enjoyed by grandparents and grandchildren – and there are very few writers of whom you can say that.

·                    And, of course, she now has enormous nostalgia value. Which is why updating her stories is a disastrously bad idea.

HANK: I almost burst into tears, winning the Agatha. (Didn't you? The...synchronicity?) (Look how surprised Jonathan is!) What do you see as her legacy to detective fiction?

JOHN:  Her influence is enormous; almost every crime writer today owes her some debt of gratitude. Although the type of story she wrote – the classical detective story –  has almost disappeared today, she also experimented throughout her career – the historical crime story (Death Comes as the End 1945), the serial killer (The ABC Murders 1935), murder in retrospect (Five Little Pigs 1943), murder abroad (Death on the Nile 1937), the psychological crime novel (Endless Night 1967). She wrote detective fiction better, for longer and more often than any other writer; and she made it seem so easy. Although many writers criticize her nowadays, nobody would object to having her fame – or her sales!

HANK:  Maybe unfair, but which Christie novel (or novels) is your favorite and why?

JOHN: My overall favourite is Five Little Pigs (Murder in Retrospect) – a brilliantly clever formal detective story as well as a novel with huge emotional impact. And the story-telling technique – five separate accounts of one day – is masterly. But very close to it are And Then There Were None, her most thrilling novel; Murder on the Orient Express with its wonderfully original solution; and Endless Night, a dark and brooding novel unlike anything else she wrote with a stunning surprise ending. 

HANK: Can’t resist. Who is your favorite Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple?

JOHN: Oh, certainly, it’s…

HANK:  Oh wait--we’re out of time! Come back Saturday for John’s answer--and the Reds will include our recommended summer reads!  And today a lucky commenter will win a copy of  Secret Notebooks!

John will try to come chat--he's in a different time zone! But meanwhile--what's your favorite Agatha? Or your best Agatha experience? Do you remember your first? 

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John Curran’s Edgar-nominated Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks (2010) won the 2011 Agatha, Anthony and Macavity Awards and his Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making (2011) was nominated for the 2012 Edgar and the Agatha awards. Both books examined the 73 notebooks used throughout her life by Agatha Christie in the creation of her immortal stories. A life-long crime-fiction enthusiast, he is currently writing a PhD thesis on Christie and The Golden Age of Detection at Trinity College, Dublin where he lives.