Understanding Agatha

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.