RHYS BOWEN:
When I’m stressed, overwhelmed,
overworked, I tend to reach for a comfort read. And often those reads are an
Agatha Christie book. I have them all on my shelf. All 81 books/short story
collections that she published. I am reading one now (or rather re-reading, as
I have read them all several times): After the Funeral. Her books are short,
slight and in many ways superficial, so I’m wondering why she is so popular.
These are some observations:
1.She ever engages the reader
emotionally. We do not weep for the body in the library!
2.We have multiple points of view
so that we are not actually following one sleuth.
3.The book is presented more like
a movie: we go from scene to scene, watch different people interacting, rather
than following the journey of the sleuth until he or she solves the crime.
4.The sleuth is more vehicle than
character. We know little of his or her personal life. We never see the sleuth
battling their own demons, trying to make up for past mistakes or finding the
crime to be horribly personal. We only know that Poirot is Belgian, was in the police and, I believe
has a brother called something else classical. We don’t know of past mistakes,
loves, aspirations. We never see what traumas he overcame to escape to England
during WW1. He enjoys the company of Hastings, but is remarkably without need
of other people.
Ditto Miss Marple, although she
seems to enjoy company more. But we know nothing of her past life (although the
TV series has tried to hint at a doomed romance in WWI there is nothing of this
in the books.)
5: The books focus only on the
crime. We come across it near the beginning or at the beginning of every book
and the story is just in service of the solving of the crime. Setting and
character are merely hinted at. Houses are only described if it is important to
know why slept in which room. The part of England is only alluded to if it is
important, near the cliffs, on the bank of a river etc.
The characters are seldom
complex. Most can be summed up in one sentence:: the nosy old spinster, the
vain young actress, the not-quite-straight younger son who has charm but no
conscience.
6: The motives make sense. The
clues are clever. The puzzle is all important.(although she does occasionally
cheat, when Hercule Poirot knows something the reader can’t, or when the
narrator is the murderer and keeps that fact from us!)
7: There is a clear sense of
right v. wrong and justice being served at the end of the story.
So why are they popular? For the
very reasons quoted above. They do not touch us emotionally. They are terrific
books to read without getting involved, depressed, scared or upset. The sort of
books one can read while waiting for a flight or trying to sleep in a strange
hotel room. As I write this I notice that in her later years her books did show
more depth. Curtain, for example, shows a sympathetic Poirot facing his own
death. And BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS puts an elderly Tuppence in danger and
aware of her own limitations.
So why do I like them? Because I know what I'm going to get. I know there will be no blood and gore. I know I will not be shocked or weep for a character. It's like a pleasant afternoon tea party: satisfying but not too rich and not too long. And I have to confess, when I look at those Agatha teapots on my shelf I give her a little nod of thanks for creating a genre where I have been so happy!
How about you? Are you a Christie
fan? Do you think that the evolution of the mystery into a more complex
literary form is a good thing? Do you
like to have a sleuth whose personal life is important to the story, who
evolves through a series, who actually matters to you? Some of the letters I get
about Lady Georgie show that my readers consider her a real person, a friend.
Do you want more setting, background, local color? More of what’s going on in
the outside world?
I find that I do, most of the
time. It’s just when I’m extra tired, stressed, tense that I reach for Dame
Agatha and there is a body on the hearthrug in a small English village.
