Rhys Bowen: Why is Agatha Christie so beloved
Her prose is spare, her settings fundamental and her characters are largely one-dimensional. They are often summed up briefly: the ne’er-do-well son, the nosy spinster, the bitter ignored daughter, the bullying father. Hercule Poirot, her most well-known creation, is known as a caricature. We all know he’s Belgian (though behaves like a Frenchman), has a domed head, luxuriant mustaches and superior little grey cells. He’s useless and boastful.
Apart from that, we all know nothing — of his background, his loves, his losses, what makes him weep. He treats Hastings abominably, taking enjoyment of always scoring factors in opposition to mere mortals. Not probably the most likable of chaps.
However then we come to Miss Marple, Christie’s different enduring character. This girl has impressed a number of theatrical incarnations, from the hearty Margaret Rutherford to the superbly understated Joan Hickson. And now she has claimed the eye of a bunch of best-selling authors, every making an attempt her hand at a Miss Marple story in an anthology merely referred to as “Marple” (William Morrow, Sept. 13) The illustrious group consists of Kate Mosse, Val McDermid, Elly Griffith, Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware. Every writer captures Christie — and Marple — completely, whereas additionally displaying only a little bit of her personal distinctive contact. Feminist writer Naomi Alderman, as an illustration, describes one pompous male character as having a voice that “boomed from the underside of his beard.” Later he’s discovered face down in his plate of roast venison, useless of an overdose.
So, what does Marple have that Poirot hasn’t? First, she is relatable. One want to entertain Miss Marple to tea. She is possibly considered one of Christie’s few actual and fleshed-out characters: the consummate English spinster, dwelling within the typical English village, with its gossip and intrigues. Marple really represents an entire technology of ladies whose hopes of marriage have been dashed by the lack of over one million younger males on the battlefields of World Battle I. As a younger lady of fine household at the moment, she was raised to make a superb match, and never geared up for a lot else. She clearly has a wonderful mind. In different instances she might need gone on to school and had a profitable career. As an alternative, she has to content material herself along with her backyard and good works across the parish. It’s no marvel that she turns that wonderful mind and sharp powers of remark to fixing crimes.
The large benefit of an aged spinster is that she is invisible. No one thinks she is of consequence when she sits within the lobby of a grand resort along with her knitting. And so she overhears, she observes and notices small particulars that the police overlook: the bitten fingernails on the unsuitable lady, the habits that appears out of character. And he or she attracts comparisons to characters in her personal village: the glint of triumph within the eye of a swindler reminds her of the face of the choirboy when he pocketed the gathering. That smirk that no person has observed. However after all, she had.
Miss Marple might sound frail and inconsequential, however she isn’t any wimp. In reality, she demonstrates a quiet metal as when she faces a millionaire and declares, “I’m Nemesis.” And a persistence with the police that finally wears down even probably the most resistant of them. She additionally embodies what Hercule Poirot appears to lack: compassion and understanding of human weak point, coupled with a powerful sense of justice. Agatha Christie clearly understood her. Whereas Poirot was merely her model of a Holmes and Watson, a car for fixing a puzzle, Miss Marple had a function: to be an individual whose process was to proper a unsuitable in her universe.
It’s attention-grabbing that Miss Marple makes her appearance in the story “The Tuesday Night Club” (later printed in “The 13 Issues”) at precisely the time Agatha Christie was going via a disaster in her personal life. Her adored husband needed a divorce. Christie staged her dramatic disappearance the 12 months earlier than this e book got here out in Royal Journal, presumably when it was being written. So possibly Miss Marple was expressing how Christie felt on the time: a lady powerless, ignored, invisible, eager for justice. Christie herself clearly had a superb mind and had been allowed to work in a pharmacy through the battle. However then, she, too, was confined to the function of housewife, caught at dwelling whereas Archie Christie flirted on the golf course. No marvel she needed a personality who would make the whole lot proper with the world.
Within the new e book “Marple,” no person has tried to indicate the sleuth as a vibrant younger lady, possibly doing one thing daring in WWI. In every story, she is as we all know her — genteel, frail, aged and clever. She does her knitting. She twinkles quite a bit, which I don’t bear in mind the true Miss Marple doing a lot. Among the tales happen in Miss Marple’s dwelling village of St. Mary Mead or in comparable English village settings, whereas some places are extra unique. Alyssa Cole takes her to New York, Jean Kwok to Hong Kong and Elly Griffiths units her pleasant piece within the south of Italy. All of the tales are amusing, intriguing, however I’ve to say that I guessed whodunit in most of them, which I actually couldn’t do in an actual Christie novel.
That’s a part of the attraction, after all — determining the assassin earlier than the tip of the e book. Another excuse Christie stays so fashionable is that her tales are safely eliminated in time and place from our actuality. Her village is the one we dream of, the place everybody is aware of everybody else, meets for tea on the vicarage or down on the pub: a spot the place one belongs. Her crimes are by no means brutal; they’re intelligent, any violence carried out off the web page, and Miss Marple generally has nice sympathy for the perpetrator. And on the finish, the whole lot is put proper. The crime solved, the assassin delivered to justice, tranquility returns to that universe. Isn’t that what all of us lengthy for proper now? A spot the place we really feel at dwelling, and secure and tranquil?
I’ve to admit that when I’m burdened, the very first thing I attain for is an Agatha Christie novel (I personal the whole lot she has written) and pray I can’t bear in mind too shortly whodunit. Allow us to hope that this new and entertaining assortment by a few of our favourite writers will hook a brand new group of readers to the formidable Miss Marple.
Rhys Bowen is the writer of two historic thriller sequence in addition to a number of historic novels, the newest of which is “The Venice Sketchbook.” A transplanted Briton, she divides her time between California and Arizona.
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