In Death on the Nile, Poirot warns Jackie de Bellefort, “Do not open your heart to evil. How are her books able to be, simultaneously, simple enough that 12-year-olds can love them, yet complex enough to pose an impossible challenge to a bright adult mind? They’re light and jolly and fun to read, but also constantly aware of the dangerous lure of evil. Who burned the paper, and why? When we no longer care about the answers to these small questions of human action and motivation, we’ve lost interest in people and in life, and should probably give up writing and reading novels altogether.Īs a passionate Christie fan, I could explore her novels all day long, on every possible level, but there’s also a strong element of magic to her brilliance that defies analysis. And yes, these clues might involve a piece of charred paper.
![what happened to agatha christie what happened to agatha christie](https://agathachristie.imgix.net/hcus-paperback/Jacket_USKillingsatKHill.jpg)
These hint at the real nature of the murderer, or of a person whose disposition renders them incapable of murder, and they are essential clues: if the reader spots them and interprets them correctly, she stands a chance of solving the mystery. Meanwhile, the third dimension – the maskless true self – emerges in the tiniest of glimpses. The third dimension of a Christie character remains hidden for much of the novel, while that person presents himself superficially as he would like to be perceived: as a type, a glossy surface designed for public consumption and approval. Christie has been criticised for two-dimensional characterisation, but this, again, is inaccurate. Her characters are properly, realistically three-dimensional – which doesn’t mean what many seem to think. Without plot, there is no reliable access to character Christie understood this. That’s why solving the puzzle feels so urgent, and why plot always takes centre stage in a Christie novel – because how else are we truly to know who a person is until it has been revealed what he has done, and tried to hide, and why? Christie knew detail mattered she knew that those who ignore the apparently minor have little or no chance of understanding greater truths. What Chandler failed to understand about Christie’s artistic project was that all these seemingly trivial details – the charred paper, the timetables, the plant on the windowsill – are vital. Surely anyone who doesn’t care about puzzles or mysteries should write in a different genre: letters of apology to greater writers than oneself that one has unfairly maligned, perhaps. Chandler described the crime cases in his own novels as “a perfunctory mystery element dropped in like the olive in a martini”.
![what happened to agatha christie what happened to agatha christie](https://cdn.icepop.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/24-Agatha-Christie-Disappearance-Bettmann-Getty-Images.jpg)
Only a half-wit could guess it.” He dismissed the British golden age detective novel as “futzing around with timetables and bits of charred paper and who trampled the jolly old flowering arbutus under the library window”. So why are so many determined to underrate Christie? Raymond Chandler sneered that a Hercule Poirot mystery was “guaranteed to knock the keenest mind for a loop.
![what happened to agatha christie what happened to agatha christie](http://www.veranijveld.com/uploads/2/8/8/6/28865979/published/95-verdwijning-agatha-christie-in-1926_1.jpg)
While immersed in a Christie mystery, you might not notice the wisdom sprinkled throughout the pages because you’re having too much fun, growling with frustration because you’d love to be able to guess the solution but can’t. Each of her novels demonstrates a profound understanding of people – how they think, feel and behave – all delivered in her crisp, elegant, addictively readable style. Christie’s books are so much more than great puzzles.
![what happened to agatha christie what happened to agatha christie](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2014/11/04/17/pg-29-christie-1-getty.jpg)
As I hope the above quote proves, it is a charge that’s grossly unfair. That’s the vicar’s wife speaking, at the beginning of The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie, a writer too often dismissed as merely a brilliant plotter of mysteries. I make you frightfully uncomfortable and stir you up the wrong way the whole time, and yet you adore me madly.” It’s so much nicer to be a secret and delightful sin to anybody than to be a feather in his cap. But I’m everything you most dislike and disapprove of, and yet you couldn’t withstand me! My vanity couldn’t hold out against that. “Agreeing to marry you made me feel so powerful … The other suitors thought me simply wonderful, and, of course, it would have been very nice for them to have me. Christie is consistently dismissed as merely a brilliant plotter of mysteries.