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Killing time with Agatha Christie
- umvi 6y agoFor anyone who has never read Agatha Christie, I highly recommend the following: - And Then There Were None - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Murder on the Orient Express - The A.B.C. Murders The books are usually "slow burns", meaning they slowly build up to the big reveal at the end of the book. Agatha Christie is the master of making great payoffs though, so despite the initial slog, by the last page you are usually awash in dopamine/adrenaline (okay maybe that's a little exaggerated, but these books really do have good payoffs).
- taeric 6y agoIn addition to these, there is a great collection of Marple stories where each chapter is a guest trying to trick her with a story. I can't remember the name of it, but it is very good. For the ones you listed, too, there are great audio versions. Dan Stevens did a very good job on the ones he read, to my ears.
- pdevr 6y agoI say "The Thirteen Problems" (because I bought it while I was outside the US), you say (hazarding a guess that you are in the USA) "The Tuesday Club Murders"? :-)
- taeric 6y agoI finally looked up the book in my history. Looks like I have a collection just called Miss Marple. Description confirms it is mainly the story you mention. Fun book.
- snarf21 6y agoAnd three were recently turned into streaming series. Great stuff!
- nineplay 6y ago- Murder on the Nile with the bonus that a beautiful-looking movie version is soon to be released.
- Jaruzel 6y agoI'm not sure I'm on board with Kenneth Branagh's 'Action Poirot' - The bridge scenes in Orient Express were decidedly not in character.
- mnw21cam 6y agoNo such thing. Everyone knows the only true Poirot is David Suchet.
- Jaruzel 6y agoYou sir, are 100% correct. (Are we allowed to talk about Peter Ustinov?)
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- nineplay 6y agoUnpopular opinion, I've never liked Poirot. Christie's detectives get on my nerves and I like her stand-alones better. Anyone who likes golden-age mysteries should check out John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson. Wonderful plots with twist and turns and much more entertaining detectives. Try "The Three Coffins" and see what you think.
- Jaruzel 6y agoIt also has to be said, that Christie created the 'reveal monologue' where the detective gets everyone in a room, and then dissects the murder and clues until the killer is unmasked. Without her, all crime writers that came later would write very different stories.
- ldjb 6y agoInterestingly, in the case of And Then There Were None, the novel was originally published without its solution. Christine's intention was that the reader would use the clues scattered throughout the book to work out who the culprit was. Indeed, like many other works from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, the mystery is entirely solvable from those clues. Christie ultimately added an epilogue to subsequent editions, which explains the mystery. In a sense, it's nice to have confirmation of what the solution is, but at the same time I like the idea that a mystery story doesn't necessarily need to include a solution.
- lqet 6y agoIn Dostoyevski Crime and Punishment, there is a similar 'reveal' monologue with an extremely interesting twist (spoiler alert): the narrator knows the murderer, the reader knows the murderer, the detective knows the murderer, the reader knows that the detective knows the murderer - but the murderer, a naive student who is convinced he is the Übermensch and committed a perfect crime, is unaware that everyone knows he did it. It's both an extremely tragic and extremely funny scene: at one point they have a lengthy conversation where both of them "try" to find out who the real murder is, and the student, thinking he is helping the dumb detective with his superior mind, suggests one murderer after the other, one theory after another. The detective dismisses them all. Finally, the student grows frustrated and blurts out: "Then who is the murderer?". And the detective just answers: "The murderer? Why, you are, of course!". The silence that follows is one of the best moments in literature and a testament to Dostoyevski's genius regarding character development. Of course, as many people know, that scene and in particular that seemingly clueless but extremely clever 19th century St. Petersburg detective inspired the Columbo series, which repeated this particular kind of "reveal dialogue" in basically every episode.
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- notRobot 6y agoMy favourites are The Unexpected Guest, which is a play of hers that's been novelised and Crooked House, which I read when I was probably too young for it and which fascinated me for a loooong time.
- jaclaz 6y agoI would recommend some of the lesser known ones (short stories): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Harley_Quin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Harley_Quin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Mr_Quin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Mr_Quin
- dmitryminkovsky 6y agoHer memoirs/autobiography are really interesting.
- lqet 6y ago> The Murder of Roger Ackroyd A great book, I definitely did not see the ending coming until 2 or 3 paragraphs before the twist. > The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is the supreme, the ultimate detective novel. It rests upon the most elegant of all twists. -- Laura Thompson, partial quote because of spoilers.
- tgv 6y agoBut it works best if you first read a few of the others, like the ones mentioned above, or the Miss Marple books The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, A Pocket Full of Rye, or They Do It with Mirrors.
- Symbiote 6y agoStandard Ebooks is on the front page at the moment, but unfortunately doesn't have these titles. Would you particularly recommend any of the five they do have: - Poirot Investigates - The Secret Adversary - The Man in the Brown Suit - The Murder on the Links - The Mysterious Affair at Styles https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/agatha-christie https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/agatha-christie
- robin_reala 6y agoAgatha Christie spans the current US public domain limit, so they’re gradually coming in public domain every year.
- commonturtle 6y agoThere's also a BBC Miniseries for And Then There Were None which is fantastic.
- pierrebai 6y agoThis essay seems (I didn't read it fully due to the point I'm making) more a vehicle for the author's desire to display his culture and life than anything about Agatha Christie.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoThis reminds me of this TV series I watched a few episodes of, about a monk that solves crimes. Surprisingly good. Mystery!: Cadfael https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108717/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108717/
- taeric 6y agoThis essay's main accusation at crime fiction, captured in the callout that these particular books are "not entirely a waste of time", is kind of insulting. Does anyone actually know the parts of reading that make a book a non-waste of time? This is the kind of arrogance in criticism that would lead parents to be ashamed that their kids are reading Pokemon fan fiction. Heaven help you if they are writing it?! Do I sympathize that sometimes I feel like I want some time back from something I have read? Yes. But do I truly know what is a good use of my own time? Probably not. Take this article, as an example. I find the conceit in it wholly unwarranted and it casts scepticism in how I read the rest of it. That said, it does have me thinking on it. And while I can't help the lyrics, "a dangerous past time, I know" from entering my head, I have a suspicion that is a great use of my time.
- vanderZwan 6y ago> This is the kind of arrogance in criticism that would lead parents to be ashamed that their kids are reading Pokemon fan fiction. Heaven help you if they are writing it?! Meanwhile, Tolkien only wrote Lord of the Rings to create a world for the constructed languages he liked to make up for fun. The latter of which he was a little ashamed of and considered a self-indulgent waste of time. But look what that lead to. Or as Lindsey Ellis recently put it in a YouTube video on that subject: "Don't be ashamed of that 'secret vice.' Post that cringe!" [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFlyQk_uVAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFlyQk_uVAI
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- billfruit 6y agoYes, but with so much material out there to read, it is good to have at least some vague indication of the worth of a work. Also writers of crime fiction often have themselves question ed the worth of much of the production, see Raymond Chandler's Essay "The Simple Art of Murder'. Why should we read Christie when we could rather read Graham Greene sounds like an interesting question to me
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- pdevr 6y agoSo who is your favorite Agatha Christie detective? Hercule Poirot? Miss Marple? Tommy & Tuppence? Colonel Rice? Or someone else?
- magicpockets 6y agoThe BBC radio dramas are highly recommended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercule_Poirot_(radio_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercule_Poirot_(radio_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Marple_(radio_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Marple_(radio_series) https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b03js5pl https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b03js5pl