Killing time with Agatha Christie(newcriterion.com) |
Killing time with Agatha Christie(newcriterion.com) |
- 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).
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.
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.
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.
- Poirot Investigates
- The Secret Adversary
- The Man in the Brown Suit
- The Murder on the Links
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles
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.
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.
Mystery!: Cadfael https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108717/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercule_Poirot_(radio_series)
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!"
And of something I heard Brandon Sanderson say once, about how absurd it is to belittle someone for liking some genre or another: he compared genres to food, and said it's equally absurd to belittle someone for liking or not liking seafood, or some flavor of ice cream, łs.
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
My assertion is to drop that stance entirely. It turns what could be a normal compliment into a backhand one. And sets a negative tone for reading the rest.
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.
> Quite apart from the pleasure she gives, reading her is not entirely a waste of time.
But let's look at the paragraph:
> I am a great admirer of Mrs. Christie. I enjoy her irony, and she sometimes reveals herself to be an acute psychologist. Quite apart from the pleasure she gives, reading her is not entirely a waste of time. She conveys to the reader the impression of enjoying the human comedy without bitterness or rancor, and thereby acts as an antidote to our resentment of the imperfections of the world and existence. There is also something deeply comforting about her fairy tales in which evil suddenly erupts into a pleasantly settled world only to be quickly defeated and for order to be restored. The world is not really like this, of course, and no one imagines that it is, but which of us never needs imaginative escape from reality?
That's an entirely complementary paragraph unless you read "not entirely a waste of time" to mean that it is somewhat a waste of time. But the author is clearly using "not entirely" ironically, iow, that reading Christie is not at all a waste of time.
The piece opens by declaring itself "an essay on the transcendent meaning and value of crime novels."
I see no attack on crime fiction in this piece.