Well today I have a burning question for you all, something
that is considered not really proper to talk about in polite crime writing circles, although it is discussed and argued
about, behind closed doors, whispers in the restroom, murmurings in the cloisters and gossip at the
vicarage.
So are you or aren’t you? Do you or don’t you?
Are you in my boat or out my boat?
Are you a devotee or a non believer?
Put simply, do you like Agatha Christie or not?
Are you with me and Sophie Hannah? We believe that Agatha is a complex narrator
of time and place, a shrewd observer of the human condition. Or are you with Lucy
Mangan, who thinks Christie is not so much as a ‘whodunit’ but an ‘idontgeddit.’
And then there is some Chandler bloke who disliked Christie. But he wrote crime books
and never put an innocent blonde in any of them so I am not listening to his opinion.
It is now a popular
pastime amongst upstarts and pipsqueaks
to ‘Christie bash’ and I will have none of it. She is often thought of as a
master plotter and little else. Stereotypical characterisation, class ridden,
often xenophobic are the criticisms flung her way.
Lucy Mangan in the Guardian reports that most of Christie’s
time was spent on plotting and that, as a writer, she found the actual 'get the words on
the paper stuff'' a bit of a chore. Lucy quotes Christie; "I think the real work is done in thinking out
the development of your story and worrying about it until it comes right,"
she once said. She began with the crime and worked backwards. "Then, when
you've got all your material together, all that remains is to find time to
write the thing."
Mmm, well I too spend
a long time plotting. Is that not what crime writers do? If I didn’t and the story didn’t pan out I’d
have to go back and redo the whole thing. I looked up what Mangan writes as a novelist
herself. Her book is called ‘Hopscotch and Handbags.’
So I think we are comparing apples and pears here. And I
think the lack of a crime writers heart is bourne out by the fact she gave up
on the book ‘ The Murder of Roger Ackroyd ‘ despite recommendations from her
friends to read it, as she would never ‘get it.’
I am sitting here looking at my book case. It holds two
books about the book ‘The murder Of Roger Ackroyd’ as that book nearly
changed/destroyed crime fiction for ever.
PD James was another non Christe-ite, objecting to her "cardboard cutout characters" and
likened her to "a literary conjuror . . . The American writer Edmund
Wilson also objected to her on the grounds that he liked murders that happened
"for a reason, rather than just to provide a body".
Well I have just listened to the Christie short story
collection, the Tuesday Night Club. ( I think that’s what it is called. Does
anybody else with Ipod and kindle devices suffer from the fact that they don’t
get an image of the cover each time they pick it up and put it down? So the
title can float past you?)
And what are the motives for murder in those stories? Love.
Avenging love. Avarice. Politics. Religion.
Yip, pretty much what crime
writers have been writing about since the year dot. The only thing she really
misses out on are serial killers, as they haven’t been thought of yet.
And reading about psychopathy nowadays, she was writing
about it back then. She just called it something else. I agree you might have to dig a big bit deeper to get to the killer’s psyche but I argue that it is still
there.
Take ‘Towards Zero’, one of my favourite Christie books. How
far back are the seeds of murderous thought sown? In Christie’s day it might appear simplistic,
but the genesis of that idea is pure ‘Criminal Minds.’ Hotch would nail Neville Strange as the unsub
I’m sure of that, but not until at least 40 minutes into the episode.
So, let’s get down and dirty. Over 4 billion (with a b, not
an m) copies of her books sold since 1920. She is THHHHEEEE most translated
author on the face of the planet.
Google gave her a logo of her own to celebrate her 120th
birthday.
The case for the defence now rests. As we cannot trust the ‘Witness
For The Prosecution.’
Caro Christie 29 05 2015
