Killing time with Agatha Christie | Hacker News Reader

Killing time with Agatha Christie

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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 awash in dopamine/adrenaline (okay maybe that's a little exaggerated, but these books really do have good payoffs).

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.

My recollection is that the murderer there isn't really convinced he committed a perfect crime but frequently is panicked and pushed to extremes by suspicion that he's being toyed with (and in particular, the detective was intentionally making him ride a roller coaster of more or less suspicion of this)?

I wonder how much Colombo is influenced by this. I always thought of Columba as an upside mystery... everyone knows who did it, you just don’t know how it will get proven.

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.

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"? :-)

I finally looked up the book in my history. Looks like I have a collection just called Miss Marple. Description confirms it is mainly the story you mention. Fun book.

I would recommend some of the lesser known ones (short stories):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Harley_Quin

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

Standard Ebooks is on the front page at the moment, but unfortunately doesn't have these titles. Would you particularly recommend any of the five they do have:

- Poirot Investigates

- The Secret Adversary

- The Man in the Brown Suit

- The Murder on the Links

- The Mysterious Affair at Styles

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/agatha-christie

Agatha Christie spans the current US public domain limit, so they’re gradually coming in public domain every year.

> 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.

But it works best if you first read a few of the others, like the ones mentioned above, or the Miss Marple books The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, A Pocket Full of Rye, or They Do It with Mirrors.

- Murder on the Nile with the bonus that a beautiful-looking movie version is soon to be released.

I'm not sure I'm on board with Kenneth Branagh's 'Action Poirot' - The bridge scenes in Orient Express were decidedly not in character.

No such thing. Everyone knows the only true Poirot is David Suchet.

You sir, are 100% correct. (Are we allowed to talk about Peter Ustinov?)

Unpopular opinion, I've never liked Poirot. Christie's detectives get on my nerves and I like her stand-alones better.

Anyone who likes golden-age mysteries should check out John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson. Wonderful plots with twist and turns and much more entertaining detectives. Try "The Three Coffins" and see what you think.

My favourites are The Unexpected Guest, which is a play of hers that's been novelised and Crooked House, which I read when I was probably too young for it and which fascinated me for a loooong time.

There's also a BBC Miniseries for And Then There Were None which is fantastic.

And three were recently turned into streaming series. Great stuff!

Her memoirs/autobiography are really interesting.

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 sympathize that sometimes I feel like I want some time back from something I have read? Yes. But do I truly know what is a good use of my own time? Probably not.

Take this article, as an example. I find the conceit in it wholly unwarranted and it casts scepticism in how I read the rest of it. That said, it does have me thinking on it. And while I can't help the lyrics, "a dangerous past time, I know" from entering my head, I have a suspicion that is a great use of my 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?!

Meanwhile, Tolkien only wrote Lord of the Rings to create a world for the constructed languages he liked to make up for fun. The latter of which he was a little ashamed of and considered a self-indulgent waste of time. But look what that lead to.

Or as Lindsey Ellis recently put it in a YouTube video on that subject: "Don't be ashamed of that 'secret vice.' Post that cringe!"

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFlyQk_uVAI

I'm reminded of Sturgeon's Law [1].

And of something I heard Brandon Sanderson say once, about how absurd it is to belittle someone for liking some genre or another: he compared genres to food, and said it's equally absurd to belittle someone for liking or not liking seafood, or some flavor of ice cream, łs.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

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.

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.

Right, the attack wasn't against Agatha Christie, but on crime fiction as a genre. Called out these as an exception to the genre bring a waste of time.

My assertion is to drop that stance entirely. It turns what could be a normal compliment into a backhand one. And sets a negative tone for reading the rest.

I gather you're getting that from this single sentence:

> Quite apart from the pleasure she gives, reading her is not entirely a waste of time.

But let's look at the paragraph:

> I am a great admirer of Mrs. Christie. I enjoy her irony, and she sometimes reveals herself to be an acute psychologist. Quite apart from the pleasure she gives, reading her is not entirely a waste of time. She conveys to the reader the impression of enjoying the human comedy without bitterness or rancor, and thereby acts as an antidote to our resentment of the imperfections of the world and existence. There is also something deeply comforting about her fairy tales in which evil suddenly erupts into a pleasantly settled world only to be quickly defeated and for order to be restored. The world is not really like this, of course, and no one imagines that it is, but which of us never needs imaginative escape from reality?

That's an entirely complementary paragraph unless you read "not entirely a waste of time" to mean that it is somewhat a waste of time. But the author is clearly using "not entirely" ironically, iow, that reading Christie is not at all a waste of time.

The piece opens by declaring itself "an essay on the transcendent meaning and value of crime novels."

I see no attack on crime fiction in this piece.

That is the line. And I still fail to read it as anything other than a backhand compliment. Drop that one sentence, and the paragraph is far stronger.

Ah, well, I read it as the opposite of a backhanded compliment, if there's a name for such a thing. It's a complement disguised as criticism.

That is a more charitable read. I think I can see how you mean it. I will make an effort to read that tone in the future.

This reminds me of this TV series I watched a few episodes of, about a monk that solves crimes. Surprisingly good.

Mystery!: Cadfael https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108717/

There's another TV series about a monk that solves crimes as well: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312172/

Cadfael was a series of (quite good, although aimed at younger readers) books before it was a TV series.

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

The BBC radio dramas are highly recommended:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercule_Poirot_(radio_series)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Marple_(radio_series)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b03js5pl

So who is your favorite Agatha Christie detective? Hercule Poirot? Miss Marple? Tommy & Tuppence? Colonel Rice? Or someone else?

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