Agatha Christie Re-Reading Project #1: First four

My Agatha Christie re-reading project is underway with a bullet! 

I started off with Christie's most famous and best-selling book of her career, 1939's stand-alone novel And Then There Were None, inspired by having just seen the stageplay. I then moved on to the two books that introduced her two main detectives - her debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920, Hercule Poirot) and, from a decade later, Miss Marple's entree in The Murder at the Vicarage (1930). 

I was fully intending to continue in an orderly fashion, but a country town secondhand bookshop we visited on weekend away was sporting a hardcover set of Christies, which included one of the few Christie books I read 40 years ago from the library but have never owned or subsequently re-read - and, delight of delights, *I couldn't remember the ending*. So of course I bought it, and Three Act Tragedy zoomed up the reading list with a bullet, despite being well down chronologically on the Poirot list :-)

I have given my thoughts below on each of these four novels. With all of these notes, I am going to be very careful not to spoil, in case anyone has not yet read them (Christie books, like all puzzle mysteries, are so much better on first reading if you don't know the solution in advance). For this reason, I say relatively little about the plots, and the notes are briefer than they would be with a full review. Hopefully they give a flavour though.

And Then There Were None, originally published under two different and no longer acceptable titles (one in the US, one in the UK / Europe), is deservedly one of Christie's most famous and widely read novels. Written in 1939, it shows the writer at the height of her powers - the early clunkiness / awkwardness is gone, and her spare, compelling style is matched with incredible plotting and puzzle-setting skills. 

The action of this book takes place on Soldier Island, a fictitious island off the coast of Devon. Ten individuals have been lured to the island by various devices, by its new owner, a mysterious figure named U.N Owen. From that base, Christie rolls out a tense, dark and almost thriller-esque plot that usually has first-time readers gasping at the end, and re-readers still transfixed by the unrelenting beats of the action.

I first read this book when I was 16, and was blown away by it then. Re-reading it now, I noticed more of its flaws (it definitely has some) and was much more alive to its casual (of its time, but no less jarring) ethnocentrism and snobbery, especially with regard to the stereotypes employed for Jewish people, the working (servant) class, and "colonials". Christie never quite falls into the "only white middle class lives matter" calumny- she indeed judges very harshly a character in this book who justifies his abandonment of his local guides on an African trip by suggesting that their lives were unimportant because they were only "natives". It's more that it is continuously apparent that while Christie believes all people are people and their lives matter *to them*, the only lives she is remotely interested in are white English middle-class ones.

Nonetheless, even being alert to these issues, it is still a cracking book, and has endured over time. I give this one 8.5/10. If you are new to Christie and want to dip your toe, this is a great place to start if you are ok with (non-gory) grim.

This is Christie's debut novel, and the first introduction to her greatest protagonist, the Belgian detective with the exquisite moustaches - Hercule Poirot. 

The plot of this book is clever, and uses a device that Christie will go on to employ repeatedly (and refine from the prototype she uses in this first book). From this very first outing, Christie was outstanding at seizing and holding a reader's attention, and moving the plot along at a compelling clip.

It's also chock full of stereotypes - every character in it except for Captain Hastings (the narrator - effectively Poirot's Dr Watson) and Poirot himself are merely ciphers. There's also a large helping of xenophobia, in a way that is very much of its time but still jarring to a modern reader. This time, both white Germans and English Jews get heavily sniffed at, albeit Germans much more so, and Belgians are represented as plucky but faintly ridiculous. My edition was printed in 1974 and actually includes two words that would absolutely not be printed now, which are not used as insults (or indeed directed at anyone) but rather just casually thrown in to the discussion like it's totally normal (which, I suppose, it was in 1920, although it's a trifle surprising they made the cut in 1974).

Because it is an establishment novel, of both her style and of Poirot (who will go on to be much more complex than he is in this book), it would be hard to claim this as her top work, but I still enjoyed re-reading it. 6.5/10 for me.

The Murder at the Vicarage is the first novel featuring Christie's other main detective, Miss Jane Marple. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster in a quintessential English country village, St Mary Mead, who is unusually good at solving puzzles, based on her lifetime of close (some might say nosey) observation of everyday life with all its foibles. As she herself says, "“There is a great deal of wickedness in village life."

The plot of this one is pretty good - by the time Christie wrote it (1930) she had had a full decade to work out the kinks in her written style and also to polish the art of the red herring and the twist-reveal. It also features a murder victim who is a detestable human being cordially hated by all, which tends to make these more enjoyable to read (there is little to no danger of over-sympathising with the victim).

Christie's narrative decision to have the local vicar narrate this story works quite well, although it does mean that Miss Marple herself gets relatively little page space and thus no significant character development. I suspect Christie wasn't quite sure when writing this if she wanted Miss Marple to be a series detective, or if the format was going to work. Certainly, the Miss Marple who emerges in these pages is vaguer, fluffier and less interesting than the character who dominates later novels.

Nonetheless, it's a strong series start, a great fun book, and (probably because of its rural English setting) less afflicted with Christie's unceasing aspersions against non-English non-middle class people (the only character who gets a stereotyped sniff here is Mary, the vicarage's incompetent and belligerent maid). 7.5/10 for me. 

The tenth Poirot novel, this is, frankly, not one of Christie's better efforts, although it is still very enjoyable to read. While Poirot is the detective and the solver of the crime, he is somewhat sidelined in the action of the book, which definitely made it less fun for me.

The central figure of the book is Sir Charles Cartwright, a retired stage actor in his 50s. The action commences with the poisoning murder of an elderly clergyman at a house party he is holding, and goes on from there.

Although I had genuinely forgotten the solution to this one, I did work it out quite a long way before the end. Christie reuses devices she has used before and that are pretty easily recognisable to readers who have read a lot of puzzle mysteries. I wouldn't go so far as to say it is paint-by-numbers, but it is relatively formulaic.

Overall, fun, but not a stunner. 6/10.

RUNNING LIST

Poirot books targeted (highlighted when read):

1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920): 6.5/10
2. The Murder on the Links (1923)
3. Poirot Investigates (1924, ss)
4. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
5. The Big Four (1927)
6. The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)
7. Peril at End House (1932)
8. Lord Edgware Dies (1933) 
9. Murder on the Orient Express (1934) 
10. Three Act Tragedy (1935) : 6/10
11. Death in the Clouds (1935)
12. The A.B.C. Murders (1936) 
13. Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
14. Cards on the Table (1936)
15. Murder in the Mews (1937, ss) 
16. Dumb Witness (1937) 
17. Death on the Nile (1937) 
18. Appointment with Death (1938)
19. Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938) 
20. Sad Cypress (1940)
21. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940) 
22. Evil Under the Sun (1941)
23. Five Little Pigs (1942) 
24. The Hollow (1946) 
25. The Labours of Hercules (1947, ss)
26. Taken at the Flood (1948) 
27. Mrs McGinty's Dead (1952)
28. After the Funeral (1953) 
29. Hickory Dickory Dock (1955)
30. Dead Man's Folly (1956)
31. Cat Among the Pigeons (1959)
32. The Clocks (1963)
33. Third Girl (1966)
34. Hallowe'en Party (1969)
35. Elephants Can Remember (1972)
36. Poirot's Early Cases (1974, ss)
37. Curtain (written about 1940, published 1975) 

Miss Marple books targeted (highlighted when read):

1. The Murder at the Vicarage (1930, Novel): 7.5/10
2. The Thirteen Problems (1932, short story collection featuring Miss Marple, also published as The Tuesday Club Murders)
3. The Body in the Library (1942, Novel)
4. The Moving Finger (1943, Novel)
5. A Murder Is Announced (1950, Novel)
6. They Do It with Mirrors (1952, Novel) – also published in the United States as Murder With Mirrors
7. A Pocket Full of Rye (1953, Novel)
8. 4.50 from Paddington (1957, Novel) – also published in the United States as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!
9. The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1962, Novel)
10. A Caribbean Mystery (1964, Novel)
11. At Bertram's Hotel (1965, Novel)
12. Nemesis (1971, Novel)
13. Sleeping Murder (1976, Novel)

Tommy and Tuppence and stand-alone books targeted (highlighted when read):

1. And Then There Were None (1939): 8.5/10
2. The Pale Horse (1961)
3. The Secret Adversary (1922 novel)
4. Partners in Crime (1929 short story collection)
5. N or M? (1941 novel)
6. By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968 novel)
7. Postern of Fate (1973 novel)