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Agatha Christie’s life rivaled the mysteries she created
- jacobkg 9y agoI first discovered Agatha Christie in middle school at a book fair. "The Alphabet Murders". The story twisted in such a way I had never experienced before. I was used to being "smarter than the author" and being able to guess where a story was headed. That experience prompted me to at least 30 of her other books and several collections of short stories. Highly Recommended!
- wand3r 9y agounpaywalled https://www.theintelligencer.com/entertainment/article/Book-World-Agatha-Christie-s-life-rivaled-the-12735983.php https://www.theintelligencer.com/entertainment/article/Book-...
- dang 9y agoThanks! We've changed to that from https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-greatest-mystery-that-agatha-christie-ever-created-was-her-own-life/2018/03/07/c856a07a-01fd-11e8-bb03-722769454f82_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-great....
- lisper 9y agoThe essential Agatha (IMHO): The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Murder on the Orient Express Curtain Can't tell you why without spoiling it though. You have to read them.
- jacobkg 9y agoI would add "And Then There Were None" Haven't actually read Curtain, I will now immediately go buy it!
- lisper 9y agoOh yeah, that one too. I didn't put it on my list because, ironically, I never read it. I saw the play when I was a kid so I never bothered to read the book.
- jjess 9y agoActually, original title by Agatha Christie was "Ten Little Niggers" [1]. I didn't read the book, but I really liked the movie [2] (there is eng subs). People in reviews say it's closest and probably best adaptation. IMO, it's excellent. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoTDsuSgPBw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoTDsuSgPBw
- armandososa 9y agoWhy the downvotes? Is this an automated flagging system for the n-word?
- dang 9y agoNo. Please don't break the site guidelines by commenting about downvotes. If you feel like a comment has been unfairly downvoted, give it a corrective upvote and move on. That's what others did in this case, and the comment now has a positive score. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- emodendroket 9y agoWhile that is true I can't see why it's relevant. You're not going to find it under that title except maybe at an antique book seller.
- baud147258 9y agoIn France, the original title is still used ("10 petits nègres"). I read the book, but I did not really enjoyed it. But it was a long time ago, I might have been to Young. Or maybe it was the style, which was very different from what I was used to at the time (mostly Ellis Peters)
- dannylandau 9y agoWhat happened to 10 little Indians (or then there were none). I guess they changed the title for political correctness, unless I'm missing something? In any case, greatest mystery novel of all time.
- lisper 9y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16547452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16547452
- dang 9y agoAlso the best selling, proving that the mass market sometimes gets art right. It's Agatha at her most brilliant, ruthless not only in story but in style. The English is as hard and bare as possible. IIRC it's almost all dialog and minimal dialog at that. But you don't notice because the story is such a drug. It stands apart from her other books by having no familiar characters and being completely sealed. A perfect idea, perfectly executed. I wonder if Nabokov ever read it.
- ghaff 9y agoIt was released in the US as And Then There Were None because the original UK title was, shall we say, significantly more offensive to a US audience than Ten Little Indians would have been. It's not exactly a case of "political correctness." Later, it went through various renaming iterations in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None
- taeric 9y agoI'll have to see curtain to my list, then. I'll second the first two. Very fun novels. Haven't seen the new movie. Guessing it is ok, but different. At best.
- ghaff 9y ago>Haven't seen the new movie. Guessing it is ok, but different. At best. I assume you mean Murder on the Orient Express? IMO, it was "OK." Perfectly serviceable and, had there not been an earlier film version, I'd have said it was perfectly fine if nothing outstanding. But I found basically nothing that I thought was better than the 70s version and a number of things that weren't as good. If I were to watch one, I'd watch the older version even today.
- ubernostrum 9y agoI watched the Branagh film on a recent flight. It's... OK, I guess. I'd recommend anyone who wants to see it read the book first. The twist is preserved, but in the film doesn't work quite as well. The basic problem (for those who are curious) is that the book takes you there through a couple iterations of Poirot interviewing the passengers, and showing exactly how he teases out each little piece of information that finally causes the truth to pop out at the end. The film, constrained by running-time concerns, can't do that, so several things that are separate and gradual revelations in the book are part of one big reveal. A lot of the fun of the book (for me, at least) is the series of small shocks as he goes through the initial set of interviews and comes away with nothing, then figures out the pieces of the puzzle, confronts other people with them in later interviews, and explains how he worked them out from previous clues. That gives the eventual solution of the murder an entirely different feel. There's also the usual amount of gratuitous deviation from the source in adding a bit of action and fiddling with characters, which also detracts a bit. The worst of it is that the moment when Poirot's solution is finally confirmed -- which is done in the book with a wonderful single sentence uttered by one passenger -- was changed entirely and became much more cruel than the book, in a way that deviates from how Christie usually presents Poirot's character.
- ghaff 9y ago
- CocaKoala 9y agoWhile I vastly prefer hardboiled fiction from Chandler and Hammett to the classic Detective Stories, "The Murder of Roger Akroyd" is a brilliant work that I highly recommend to anybody who likes mysteries or detective fiction.
- dang 9y agoOne obscure one that I remember enjoying and thinking was underrated was "Dumb Witness".
- diiaann 9y agoI think I've read every single Poirot, my favorites are: Murder on the Orient Express Death on the Nile Appointment with Death Cat Among Pigeons
- KC8ZKF 9y agoAfter you read "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", I recommend "Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" by Pierre Bayard. (spoiler alert: Please don't Google this book until you have read the Christie.) Bayard writes "revisionist readings" of popular mysteries, in which he exonerates the killers. He mixes in a fair amount of literary criticism. I have a hard time deciding how serious he is.
- epberry 9y agoLove seeing this stuff on here. Maybe this reflects poorly on my schooling but I've learned more about literature and philosophy from HN than from anywhere else.
- gajjanag 9y agoFor fans of film, essentially all of Agatha Christie's mysteries featuring the Belgian detective character Hercule Poirot have been adapted by ITV into a fantastic TV series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie's_Poirot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie's_Poirot I find it fascinating that they did this series over a span of over 24 years, with the same lead actor (David Suchet, CBE) as Hercule Poirot throughout! There is a behind the scenes interview with David Suchet reflecting upon the 24 year experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX3ITew9Mpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX3ITew9Mpw "And Then There Were None", which is one of Christie's most famous works not featuring Poirot, has been adapted by the BBC recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None_(mini....
- lobster_johnson 9y agoI think the Poirot series is superb, but some of them suffer from stretching the runtime -- the best ones are about 51 minutes long, whereas the longer ones (which includes all of the last few seasons) click in at 1 hour and 29 minutes, some of which are based on short stories, not novels. As delightful as Poirot and his mysteries are, these are also admittedly somewhat shallow, implausible puzzles that rely on acting and cozy English nostalgia to entertain, not deep characterization or touching character arcs. Stretched to two hours, there's often not enough meat to hold one's attention. David Suchet is a national treasure, though. I wish he would be in more movies and shows.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago> the longer ones (which includes all of the last few seasons) click in at 1 hour and 29 minutes, some of which are based on short stories, not novels. What matters is how much content there is in the episode. People have gotten the idea from Peter Jackson's awful, awful Hobbit movies that pages of source material are a restriction on how much movie you can make. But the problem there was that the movies were terrible, not that The Hobbit was shorter than a three-book series. Shrek is a 90 minute movie based off of a children's book of just 1,150 words. Nobody ever complained about the quality of Shrek.
- billfruit 9y agoI do wish though that there was greater space in public imagination for works of Hammett and Chandler, and writers of their ilk. I find hardly any new adaptations of their works being made these days.
- briandear 9y agoRead the Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon; heavily influenced by Chandler and one of the most spectacular detective stories ever.
- ilyagr 9y agoI highly recommend Agatha Christie's autobiography. Reading in was a happy experience for me. The descriptions of the Middle East in the early 20th century are also interesting. https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=9dQq-oVJFaUC https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=9dQq-oVJFaUC
- briandear 9y agoWhat a terribly written, yet interesting article. Have a look at this torture mascarading as a paragraph: “But derivative works and adaptations can't fully explain why Christie's work endures. A splendid biography by Laura Thompson, however, does. "Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life" was published in Britain over a decade ago and took an inexplicable amount of time to cross the pond. Yet the timing is perfect because Thompson's thorough yet readable treatment of Christie's life, in combination with artful critical context on her work, arrives at the reason for her endurance..” For a writer writing about a writer, in the Washington Post no less, one might expect quality beyond that of a high school essay. It’s just ironic because Christie was a great writer. I have yet to find literary criticism that’s actually well written. Perhaps it’s a theory, but it always seems that literary critics are really just failed real writers.
- bshimmin 9y agoI'm glad I wasn't the only person who thought this. The worst bit for me was "Christie, as Thompson details, came by such understanding through the traditional means of early hardship"... but the "hardship" then isn't explained for another three paragraphs!
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- nunodonato 9y agoI grew up with Poirot books (thanks dad!), and have always been delighted with the movies and series featuring David Suchet. He is such a great actor, there is no one else that can impersonate Poirot like he does. The new movie is just.... meh. Poirot(the character) has been holywood-ized for the masses... lost all the charm for me.
- js2 9y agoNYT did an article last year summarizing what's been adapted to screen and where to find it: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/watching/agatha-christie-adaptations-where-to-stream.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/watching/agatha-christie-...