Anyone who has ever seen a Charlie Chan movie, or played Clue, or read a detective story of the past half century will recognize the classic whodunnit scenario created by Agatha Christie. The beloved novelist was born on this day in 1890.
Though Christie’s novels sometimes have colorful settings—a Nile steamer, an archaeological dig in Mesopotamia—most of them are set in England. The corpse may be discovered in its time-honored location, the library, or it may be stuffed into the cupboard under the stairs, with the tennis racquets. As for the weapon, golden-age mystery writers exercised great ingenuity over this.
Christie created two famous detectives: Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple. Poirot, formerly a member of the Belgian police force, is retired, but he is willing, occasionally, to interest himself in a case. Poirot’s most obvious characteristic is his dandyism.
“It seems there was some scandal when his first wife was still alive! Apparently this woman, Lucky—such a name!—who I think was a cousin of his first wife, came out here and joined them. . . . And people talked a lot because they got on so well together—if you know what I mean.”“And then of course, when his wife died rather suddenly—”“I see.”
She tries to help the reader, or she pretends to. Often, the detective has a confidant, to whom, as with Holmes and Watson, he or she will summarize the findings so far. Detectives who have no one to tell things to will often make a list of the evidence for and against each suspect. By such devices, Christie keeps the readers thinking that they will be able to solve the mystery.
But, in truth, the guessing that we are asked to do is almost fruitless, because the solution to the mystery typically involves a fantastic amount of background material that we’re not privy to until the end of the book, when the detective shares it with us. Christie’s novels crawl with impostors. Letty is not really Letty; she’s Lotty, the sister of Letty. And Hattie isn’t Hattie. She’s a piece of trash from Trieste, who, with her husband, Sir George, killed Hattie and assumed her identity.
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