Right now, I'm reading books to review elsewhere and lot of Agatha Christie -- Murder in the Vicarage, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Crooked House, and several others.
(1) She's uneven. Murder at the Vicarage and Crooked House were both very good. Towards Zero was okay, with a nice twist, and then a rushed and somewhat unbelievable ending. Though I did enjoy it when the detective pushed a suspect overboard to see if he could swim. That was pretty funny. And Then There Were None was tedious, besides featuring some blatant racism. I'm trying to track whether the earlier work is better or the later work is, but so far I'm not seeing a pattern. I guess sometimes she had good ideas and sometimes she didn't? Maybe she had deadlines and had to put out substandard work on occasion.
(2) There's casual racism and casual sexism throughout the work, usually by characters we aren't supposed to think of as reliable narrators, but sometimes by those we are. I guess know this going into the books, if you're planning to read them?
(3) Miss Marple is a lot of fun. Kind of like Columbo, frankly, if you know that TV character. Everyone expects her to be dithery and inept, but she's extremely ept. Of all her reoccurring characters, Miss Marple is my favorite. Murder at the Vicarage is the first book she's in, and one of the best by Christie I've read so far. The other characters are Hercule Poirot, Tommy and Tuppence, and a few others. I've only read one with Inspector Battle in it, so far; and half of one with Tommy and Tuppence. I really disliked that one, The Secret Adversary; but it was one of Christie's first books. Maybe Tommy and Tuppence get less annoying later.
(4) She reminds me of Angela Thirkell, a bit. Same class issues, same ability to create that between-the-wars culture which is so much fun to read about. (So far I've only read the books that were written from 1921 through the the 40s.) Dorothy Sayers is better, and less racist. Still, there are dozens left I haven't read at our library, so I'll probably keep reading.
They're lightweight reading, which is something I need from time to time.
2 comments:
Clothes in Books (https://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/) has been posting on Christie lately, trying to review every book including the duds, if you want to compare her reactions to yours, or get content warnings in advance.
Oh, nice! Thank you!
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