Murder Most Foul
Saturday, February 1, 2025
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Agatha Christie
When people think of authors from the 1920s I don't think many people think of Agatha Christie because she was prolific for such a long time, her final book being published posthumously in 1976 a few months after her death. Hercule Poirot might be inseparable from the the Art Deco trappings of the 1920s but Christie herself has become timeless. Yet her first book featuring the Belgian detective, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920 and she went on to publish ten more books during this decade. From an early age it was clear Christie was a voracious reader and budding writer. Her mother, due to some whim, decided that Agatha wasn't to learn to read or write until she was eight. Agatha taught herself at age four. By age ten she had written her first poem, "The Cowslip," which is so beautiful and elegant it's hard to imagine a girl of only ten writing it. By age eleven her father died and she viewed it as the end of her childhood. What came next was marriage and war. Two things that would forever change her.
On Christmas Eve, 1914 she married Archie Christie while he was home on leave. To do her patriotic duty she worked first as a nurse and then as a dispenser, which is where she learned all about medicine, and more importantly, about poisons. No one could ever fault her writing for getting these details wrong due to her experience. During the war in 1916 she wrote her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, being inspired by her work in the dispensary and the Belgian refugees she encountered in the hospital. But before she would see it published the war would end and she would have a child. The twenties also brought about the death of her mother and her divorce, which lead to her own mysterious disappearance in 1926 that was never explained and had the country in an uproar. Whether the public thought it a publicity stunt or not, one thing was clear, they needed Agatha Christie and her books. Lucky for them she wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short-story collections in total that have sold over two billion copies, an amount surpassed only by the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare.
Friday, June 24, 2016
Mystery
To me a good mystery isn't just a genre, but the key building block to ALL stories. What better driving force for any narrative than a question that begs answering? It doesn't have to be a true "whodunit" with a murderer caught at the end of the day, but all books should have some "mystery" to them. So what makes a book labelled a "mystery" actually one? Especially considering my weird take on the need of all books to have this driving force? Well, personally, it's that there is a murder. The more complex, the more convoluted, the more devious, the better. If I was said to have any kind of weird superhuman abilities it would be that I'm really good at solving crimes, of the televisual and written variety. Therefore I really like my mysteries to try to trick me. But more than that, the crime shouldn't get in the way of good character development. There has to be a balance between finding the killer and wanting the detective to succeed. All while making the book stick to your hand so that you can't set it down until the very last page. I remember some of the first "adult" books I read were mysteries. Of course they happened to be Lilian Jackson Braun's "Cat Who" books, but they are still a staple of the mystery genre, if at the cozy end of the spectrum. But that's what is wonderful about mysteries! They have all these subgenres from cozy to true crime. From books for those who like the mystery but can't handle the darkness of humanity, to those who love it. Personally, I love it all!
