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Killing time with Agatha Christie

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Re: Killing time with Agatha Christie

#21

Post by billfruit »

taeric wrote: post #9

This essay's main accusation at crime fiction, captured in the callout that these particular books are "not entirely a waste of time", is kind of insulting. Does anyone actually know the parts of reading that make a book a non-waste of time? This is the kind of arrogance in criticism that would lead parents to be ashamed that their kids are reading Pokemon fan fiction. Heaven help you if they are writing it?! Do I sy…

Yes, but with so much material out there to read, it is good to have at least some vague indication of the worth of a work.

Also writers of crime fiction often have themselves question ed the worth of much of the production, see Raymond Chandler's Essay "The Simple Art of Murder'.

Why should we read Christie when we could rather read Graham Greene sounds like an interesting question to me

Re: Killing time with Agatha Christie

#22

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

umvi wrote: post #2

For anyone who has never read Agatha Christie, I highly recommend the following: - And Then There Were None - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Murder on the Orient Express - The A.B.C. Murders The books are usually "slow burns", meaning they slowly build up to the big reveal at the end of the book. Agatha Christie is the master of making great payoffs though, so despite the initial slog, by the last page you are usually…

Her memoirs/autobiography are really interesting.

Re: Killing time with Agatha Christie

#23

Post by pdevr »

taeric wrote: post #3
umvi wrote: post #2

For anyone who has never read Agatha Christie, I highly recommend the following: - And Then There Were None - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Murder on the Orient Express - The A.B.C. Murders The books are usually "slow burns", meaning they slowly build up to the big reveal at the end of the book. Agatha Christie is the master of making great payoffs though, so despite the initial slog, by the last page you are usually…

In addition to these, there is a great collection of Marple stories where each chapter is a guest trying to trick her with a story. I can't remember the name of it, but it is very good. For the ones you listed, too, there are great audio versions. Dan Stevens did a very good job on the ones he read, to my ears.

I say "The Thirteen Problems" (because I bought it while I was outside the US), you say (hazarding a guess that you are in the USA) "The Tuesday Club Murders"? :-)

Re: Killing time with Agatha Christie

#25

Post by taeric »

billfruit wrote: post #21
taeric wrote: post #9

This essay's main accusation at crime fiction, captured in the callout that these particular books are "not entirely a waste of time", is kind of insulting. Does anyone actually know the parts of reading that make a book a non-waste of time? This is the kind of arrogance in criticism that would lead parents to be ashamed that their kids are reading Pokemon fan fiction. Heaven help you if they are writing it?! Do I sy…

Yes, but with so much material out there to read, it is good to have at least some vague indication of the worth of a work. Also writers of crime fiction often have themselves question ed the worth of much of the production, see Raymond Chandler's Essay "The Simple Art of Murder'. Why should we read Christie when we could rather read Graham Greene sounds like an interesting question to me

My assertion is there is no global ranking of value. The answer to the question is interesting; but as much for how personal the answer is than anything else.

Re: Killing time with Agatha Christie

#26

Post by ldjb »

Jaruzel wrote: post #13
umvi wrote: post #2

For anyone who has never read Agatha Christie, I highly recommend the following: - And Then There Were None - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Murder on the Orient Express - The A.B.C. Murders The books are usually "slow burns", meaning they slowly build up to the big reveal at the end of the book. Agatha Christie is the master of making great payoffs though, so despite the initial slog, by the last page you are usually…

It also has to be said, that Christie created the 'reveal monologue' where the detective gets everyone in a room, and then dissects the murder and clues until the killer is unmasked. Without her, all crime writers that came later would write very different stories.

Interestingly, in the case of And Then There Were None, the novel was originally published without its solution.

Christine's intention was that the reader would use the clues scattered throughout the book to work out who the culprit was. Indeed, like many other works from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, the mystery is entirely solvable from those clues.

Christie ultimately added an epilogue to subsequent editions, which explains the mystery. In a sense, it's nice to have confirmation of what the solution is, but at the same time I like the idea that a mystery story doesn't necessarily need to include a solution.

Re: Killing time with Agatha Christie

#27

Post by lqet »

umvi wrote: post #2

For anyone who has never read Agatha Christie, I highly recommend the following: - And Then There Were None - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Murder on the Orient Express - The A.B.C. Murders The books are usually "slow burns", meaning they slowly build up to the big reveal at the end of the book. Agatha Christie is the master of making great payoffs though, so despite the initial slog, by the last page you are usually…

> The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

A great book, I definitely did not see the ending coming until 2 or 3 paragraphs before the twist.

> The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is the supreme, the ultimate detective novel. It rests upon the most elegant of all twists.

-- Laura Thompson, partial quote because of spoilers.

Re: Killing time with Agatha Christie

#28

Post by js2 »

taeric wrote: post #9

This essay's main accusation at crime fiction, captured in the callout that these particular books are "not entirely a waste of time", is kind of insulting. Does anyone actually know the parts of reading that make a book a non-waste of time? This is the kind of arrogance in criticism that would lead parents to be ashamed that their kids are reading Pokemon fan fiction. Heaven help you if they are writing it?! Do I sy…

The author is being ironic and having a laugh at himself. He does not think reading Agatha Christie is a waste of time at all. At worst, he considers it a guilty pleasure.

Re: Killing time with Agatha Christie

#29

Post by js2 »

mnw21cam wrote: post #8
pierrebai wrote: post #5

This essay seems (I didn't read it fully due to the point I'm making) more a vehicle for the author's desire to display his culture and life than anything about Agatha Christie.

I'm guessing it isn't that Anthony Daniels.

It isn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Dalrymple

Re: Killing time with Agatha Christie

#30

Post by lqet »

Jaruzel wrote: post #13
umvi wrote: post #2

For anyone who has never read Agatha Christie, I highly recommend the following: - And Then There Were None - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Murder on the Orient Express - The A.B.C. Murders The books are usually "slow burns", meaning they slowly build up to the big reveal at the end of the book. Agatha Christie is the master of making great payoffs though, so despite the initial slog, by the last page you are usually…

It also has to be said, that Christie created the 'reveal monologue' where the detective gets everyone in a room, and then dissects the murder and clues until the killer is unmasked. Without her, all crime writers that came later would write very different stories.

In Dostoyevski Crime and Punishment, there is a similar 'reveal' monologue with an extremely interesting twist (spoiler alert): the narrator knows the murderer, the reader knows the murderer, the detective knows the murderer, the reader knows that the detective knows the murderer - but the murderer, a naive student who is convinced he is the Übermensch and committed a perfect crime, is unaware that everyone knows he did it. It's both an extremely tragic and extremely funny scene: at one point they have a lengthy conversation where both of them "try" to find out who the real murder is, and the student, thinking he is helping the dumb detective with his superior mind, suggests one murderer after the other, one theory after another. The detective dismisses them all. Finally, the student grows frustrated and blurts out: "Then who is the murderer?". And the detective just answers: "The murderer? Why, you are, of course!". The silence that follows is one of the best moments in literature and a testament to Dostoyevski's genius regarding character development.

Of course, as many people know, that scene and in particular that seemingly clueless but extremely clever 19th century St. Petersburg detective inspired the Columbo series, which repeated this particular kind of "reveal dialogue" in basically every episode.

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