Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.
Today’s Medium Cool is the beginning of a series on Agatha Christie & Dorothy Sayers, hosted by our very own SiubhanDuinne.
The first photo of Dorothy L. Sayers (DLS) as a young woman, perhaps in her early 20s? She was born in 1893, so that would make it a WWI-era photo, perhaps taken when she was one of the early female students at Oxford (Somerville College).
The second photo is Agatha Christie (AC), taken around 1925. She was born in 1890, so that would make her about 35 when it was taken.
I’ll let Subaru Diane share the details, so I’ll just say that she is getting ready to teach a course on these talented female writers for an OLLI program, and she graciously agreed share some of her materials out on us. I figure we’ll be part guinea pigs – in the best possible way – and part inspiration for her class.
So if this is of interest to you, mark your calendars – 6 sessions, including tonight: 2/26, 3/12, 3/26, 4/9, 4/23, and 5/7.
Tonight will be a general discussion of the authors and their books, against the backdrop of a rapidly-changing Britain.
And with that, I’ll turn it over to our beloved Mob Enforcer.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m preparing a course which I hope to teach fairly soon (via Zoom) through Emory University’s OLLI program (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute).
So far, I haven’t come up with a catchy title for the class — suggestions welcome!! — but the subject is SOCIAL CHANGE IN 20TH-CENTURY ENGLAND AS REFLECTED IN THE DETECTIVE FICTION OF AGATHA CHRISTIE (1890-1976) AND DOROTHY L. SAYERS (1893-1957).
As we’ve seen, there are a number of classic mystery fans here among the Medium Cool Jackaltariat.
Water Girl kindly suggested that, over a series of Sunday-evening posts, two or three weeks apart, I could share some of my plans for the OLLI course with you. I hope the idea generates a few lively discussions on these two extraordinary authors and the dizzying times they lived in and chronicled in their fiction. (Narrator: Subaru Dianne is going to shamelessly pick your brains for insights and felicitous phrasing.)
There’s bound to be some overlap among them, but I’d like to explore the following themes that crop up again and again in Sayers’ and Christie’s works — one Medium Cool at a time:
- General discussion of the authors and their books, against the backdrop of a rapidly-changing Britain (tonight)
- The Lingering and Pervasive Impact of World War One
- The Changing Role of Women
- Profound Shifts in England’s Entrenched Class System
- Technology, Commerce, and Hedonism
- Empire, Immigrants, Foreigners, Racism
Sayers and Christie began their careers over a century ago, so let’s not worry about plot spoilers in these threads!
SiubhanDuinne
For the OLLI course itself, my intention is to braid three separate strands together in roughly chronological order: the changes taking place in Britain; the vicissitudes of each author’s life, both professional and personal; and the books themselves, including plot structure, character development throughout the respective canons, themes, and problematic issues (especially for readers today). I’ll be providing bibliographies, lists of key dates, etc. to students, as well as some photos and film clips.
But for these Medium Cool discussions, as always with Balloon Juice threads, we’ll go where the conversation leads us.
Really excited to see where this leads! (And big thanks to Water Girl for setting this whole thing up!)
Baud
And then there were these two.
WaterGirl
@Baud:
I can’t speak for SD, but i think that’s perfect!
SiubhanDuinne
The top picture is of Dorothy L. Sayers (DLS) as a young woman, perhaps in her early 20s? She was born in 1893, so that would make it a WWI-era photo, perhaps taken when she was one of the early female students at Oxford (Somerville College).
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Every time I tried to add a caption, WordPress wouldn’t let me keep their photos side-by-side. So I finally gave up. :-)
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
The bottom photo is Agatha Christie (AC), taken around 1925. She was born in 1890, so that would make her about 35 when it was taken.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Heh! That’s clever and quite perfect!!
Annie
What a great idea!
Re the problematic issues: one of the reasons I like golden age detective fiction is that it portrays the world as it was, not as we’d like it to be. I don’t believe a writer working now would have the same deep sense of what life was like.
Despite Sayers’ detective being a lord, I found Christie to be much more classist (is that a word?) of these two authors. She ratifies the class system and in some books is even nostalgic for it IMHO. “The Body in the Library”, for instance, drips with scorn for Ruby Keene, the young dance hostess taken up by the tycoon.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: What else would you expect from Baud?
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
Oh, no worries. Thanks for including them!
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I just added the photo information as text instead of as a caption. I just realized that since you look at BJ on a phone, your photos wouldn’t be side-by-side anyway!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
a couple of thing about social change, not quite from the actual books, I remember Christie being quoted as saying that when she was a young woman, she thought she would never be wealthy enough to own an automobile, or so poor (or… so not rich) that she couldn’t afford at least one servant
I think it was the Geraldine McEwan Miss Marple where the opened the series with a flashback that gave Miss M a history that included a lover, a young pilot killed in the Great War. IIRC the purists were angry.
Wolvesvalley
I am only half qualified to participate in these discussions, because while I have read all of Dorothy Sayers’s novels, I have read only one of Agatha Christie’s. Would you care to recommend the, say, five of Christie’s books that you think are essential for anyone to read?
SiubhanDuinne
@Annie:
That certainly is the case — for this reader, anyhow — with the four Jill Paton Walsh “continuations” of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels, written decades after Sayers abandoned him. They feel so researched :-)
Leslie
It’s been a while since I read or watched either of them. I have read relatively little Christie, for whatever reason, but have seen many adaptations, while I have read almost all of the Sayers books. I look forward to the discussion.
Re the course title, for that tried-and-true academic flavor, you want the formula Catchy Phrase: A Description of What the Course is About. So something like “Detecting Change: Social Transformation As Reflected In The Fiction Of Agatha Christie And Dorothy L. Sayers.”
Torrey
I am officially hooked.
What a great idea! You (SuibhanDuinne) are probably already familiar with a podcast called “Shedunnit” by Caroline Crampton, which covers Golden Age detective stories. For those interested in the subject but not familiar with the podcast, it’s worth checking out. She goes beyond Christie and Sayers, of course, but she does some good presentation of the context(s) of the times. She’s also got a couple of books out, neither of which I’ve read, as I only discovered the podcast within this last month.
SiubhanDuinne
@Annie:
Yes!! I agree, and I think part of the reason is that DLS really allowed her Lord Peter to grow as a person and show us (and Harriet Vane) his vulnerabilities in a way that Christie, for all her brilliance as a plotter, never did with Poirot, Marple, or even Tommy and Tuppence.
Annie
@SiubhanDuinne:
I really feel this about the Sophie Hannah versions of Poirot. Lots of the sidekick’s internal dialogue, which to me slowed up the plot. Paton Walsh — well, better than nothing.
if I could chime in with a couple of Christie recommendations:
The Mirror Crack’d — only one I ever solved before Miss Marple did.
Death on the Nile — one of the best impossible crimes I’ve ever read
Baud
@Torrey:
Another good course title, if SD is ok with copyright infringement.
raven
@Baud: Fair use
Steeplejack
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’ve been watching the Geraldine McEwan series on my local PBS station. It’s pretty good (although my favorite is the slightly astringent Joan Hickson). Have seen the first few, and there is a bit of back-story that Marple lost her lover, an Army officer, in the Great War, although I don’t remember him being said to be a pilot. Maybe that’s mentioned later.
SiubhanDuinne
@Wolvesvalley:
These wouldn’t be everyone’s choices, but:
Poirot:
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (because it’s the first) – 1920
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – 1926
Murder on the Orient Express – 1934
Death on the Nile – 1937
That’s a start. More to come.
Alison Rose
I’ve never read anything from Sayers, but as I mentioned in an earlier thread, I did start delving into Christie’s oeuvre about a year ago. I’d been hesitant because of, y’know, racism. Thankfully thus far, while there has definitely been “oops, you did a bigotry” moments in the books, it hasn’t been overpowering and I can cringe and get past it, especially since the plots have been so well constructed. Plus, I grew up watching the Poirot TV series with my mom so I’ve always had an affection for that character.
I do think it would be interesting to read Christie’s earliest written works and then some of her last to see how her writing and voice might’ve changed over time as society changed around her.
Steeplejack
@Leslie:
That’s a pretty good title. Might shorten the subtitle to take out “as reflected.”
Annie
@Torrey:
Shedunnit is great. Someone on this blog — maybe you? — mentioned it a few months ago and I’ve really been enjoying it.
evap
Great idea for a course. (By the way, I’m a professor at Emory!)
As far as I know, I have read every book Agatha Christie wrote including the “romance” books she wrote as Mary Westmacott. And I have read all the Lord Peter books, most more than once. I thought it was interesting when Sayers introduced Harriet Vine, my thought was that she wrote herself into the books because she was in love with Lord Peter.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’ve been meaning to ask how you have gotten on with Martin Edwards’s The Life of Crime. I have been taking it in small doses, because it is very dense, for lack of a better word. Almost encyclopedic, or maybe Wiki-esque. But very interesting.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
I don’t think titles can be copyrighted?
SiubhanDuinne
@Alison Rose:
Racism, anti-Semitism, and good old English xenophobia — they are all there, alas, with both Sayers and Christie, although I find some of it a tad easier to justify in DLS — she at least made some of her Jewish characters (and one memorable Black character) quite sympathetic despite the cringeworthy physical descriptions. And as often as not, the offensive language is spoken by the villain, or at least by unsavoury characters. And it sometimes even advances or informs the plot.
With Christie the racist language just sounds unnecessary and gratuitous. Makes me clench my teeth. Fortunately, there are many compensations….
SiubhanDuinne
@Leslie:
Many thanks! It’s the “catchy phrase” bit that’s been eluding me.
NanaR
Dorothy Sayres is a later in life discovery for me, and I’m already on 3rd reading of some of her books. I always find something new on each read. She’s just brilliant.
The Great War in my opinion was the great catalyst for other course topics.
Shout out for The Nine Tailors.
Torrey
@Annie:
Not me, alas, as I’ve only just discovered it myself.
SiubhanDuinne
@Torrey:
Yes, I’m so glad you mentioned the Shedunnit podcast, which I have only recently discovered myself. It promises to be a wonderful and entertaining resource.
Andrya
In terms of Lord Peter reflecting life as it was- her portrayal of Lord Peter really catches the despair, alienation, loss of faith in absolutely everything that they had believed before, that affected so many UK veterans of WW1, and which I observed first hand in my maternal grandfather.
Here is Sayers’ own take on Lord Peter being rich: In ‘How I Came to invent the Character of Lord Peter Wimsey’, Sayers wrote; ‘Lord Peter’s large income … I deliberately gave him … After all it cost me nothing and at the time I was particularly hard up and it gave me pleasure to spend his fortune for him …. When I had no money to pay my bus fare I presented him with a Daimler double six, upholstered in a style of sober magnificence’.
Also, Sayers’ “Murder Must Advertise” is the most accurate description of working in an office that I have ever read.
NotMax
Will you be touching on the real life mystery of Christie’s disappearance in the 1920s or does that fall outside the scope of the syllabus.
Another Scott
@Steeplejack: I think that’s right.
While looking for Mnemo’s book(s) on Amazon, I saw about 2 dozen books with “It’s always been you” as the title, and dozens more with a few words sprinkled in beyond that.
Cheers,
Scott.
something fabulous
Neato! My (older) brother learned to read quite young and got into adult murder mysteries away from the Hardy Boys by like 5th grade or so, and made it a project to collect *all* the Agatha Christies ever published (if i remember right, there were 72? 73?)! His interest expanded to all those British ladies of the time, so DS, and also Ngaio Marsh, and much later, Ruth Rendell. (Not the dudes, for some reason? Must ask!) So of course handy reading for me, right next door. Don’t think I read them all, but quite a few. All the Dorothys, as there were so many fewer. It’s been a while since I’ve re-read any.
Looking forward to this!
Wolvesvalley
@SiubhanDuinne: Many thanks!
I should have read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd years ago, since it is used as an example by Sayers in her lecture/essay Aristotle on Detective Fiction.
Torrey
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m also enjoying another podcast that she mentions in one of her episodes: “Words to that Effect.” The subtitle is “Stories of the Fiction that Shapes Popular Culture.” The podcaster is Conor Reid, an Irishman, and I have so far found it excellent listening. Just a few episodes in, and I’m hooked.
Brachiator
I confess that I mainly know of Sayers through movie and TV adaptations of her work. Early on I didn’t care much for Lord Peter Wimsey, though he grew on me. I always liked Harriet Vane.
I can easily see that Sayers was interested in the changing role of women, but not so much in shifts in the class system. But obviously my view here is limited by what the adaptations chose to present.
I recently skimmed a brief biography and see that her life was complicated and at times unconventional. I liked how she created spaces to support women scholars and writers.
I have read a lot of Christie, beginning as a teen and have seen countless adaptations of her work. Between Marple and Poirot, she seemed to have a wider canvass to work with.
With both authors I always would like to ask: why detective fiction?
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack:
Strictly subjective, of course: I adored Geraldine McEwen. Could watch Mapp & Lucia once a year for the rest of my life. And I loved her small, very funny, part as Princess Katherine’s attendant in the Branagh Henry V film. Just a perfect little jewel of a part.
But I just CANNOT with her as Miss Marple. Joan Hickson was created by a benevolent deity to inhabit that role, and anyone else, even Geraldine McEwen or Helen Hayes, is just a pretender.
IMHO, of course :-)
NotMax
As for a course title, She & Crumpets: The English Detective Fiction of Christie and Sayers.
columbusqueen
columbusqueen
@SiubhanDuinne: I also think DLS had much more confidence about her place in the world than Christie ever did. While Sayers’ family wasn’t rich, her father was an Anglican vicar in a time when that meant something. With her Oxford degree, DLS believes in an aristocracy of intellect & talent in her novels. Christie’s viewpoint is overly constricted by contrast, a very middle class take on social standing & its markers.
Citizen Alan
@Annie: Christie’s classism was so ingrained that the plot of at least three of her mysteries depends completely on the idea that people would not recognize a very famous person who they know well if he’s wearing a waiter’s jacket while pouring them a drink in a dimly lit room
.
kalakal
@SiubhanDuinne: I always get the impression that Christie knew her audience very well and exploited their predjudices. Particularly with regard to her Jewish characters, who are often highlighted as suspects and she uses a lot of very stereotypical description. I say exploited their prejudices because she never ( I think) actually has a Jewish villian.
This changed as the 30s drew on with the rise of the Nazis and I think her travels with Mallowan affected her as well. The Jew as figure of suspicion disappears if I remember correctly
Andrya
@Wolvesvalley:
Death Comes as the End (set in Ancient Egypt, and loosely based on actual ancient Egyptian texts)
Sad Cypress
Murder in Mesopotamia
LiminalOwl
@SiubhanDuinne: What a great course that will be! And you might inspire me to read more Christie—it’s been decades, and I think only the Poirot ones. Sayers I will always love, despite tbe flaws; in particular, I re-read the Harriet sequence every few years, and I think “Murder Must Advertise” is under-appreciated.
Would comments on the interplay with Sayers’ social and theological work be useful? I’d recommend reading “The Other Six Deadly Sins” in conjunction with “Strong Poison” et seq., and possibly “Why Work” for “Murder Must Advertise.” Most of all, “Are Women Human?” and “The Human-not-quite-human” as context for, well, your whole theme, but especially “Gaudy Night.”
(And apologies if this is all too familiar already. I got carried away.)
I have never been able to get into the Jill Paton Walsh books, although I think I remember enjoying an unrelated novel of hers in high school.
Thanks, SD. I am looking forward to the discussion.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: That’s a good one, too.
Almost Retired
What a fascinating class this will be, SiubhanDuinne.
One of the reasons I enjoy reading historic novels, – as opposed to historical fiction – is that you are very much transported to the time of the author, warts and all. You are there because the author was there, with no danger of anachronisms (like someone texting photos of the body on the Orient Express).
And Christie’s characters very much reflected her time, regardless of whether the setting was a train, a steamship or a quaint English village. But the casual anti-Semitism is, to say the least, jarring.
I’m curious as to how her writing and her characters evolved (if they did) after the war as attitudes changed. I don’t think I’ve read anything she’s written after Evil Under the Sun.
Annie
IIRC Sayers also said at some point that Wimsey had more options because he was rich. He could hire a plane to cross the Atlantic to find a letter, for instance, where Parker, working at Scotland Yard, would have to ask for the money to do that and probably wouldn’t get it anyway.
Re postwar malaise in Clouds of Witness Peter’s sister Mary feels it too — she explains that she agreed to marry Denis Cathcart and live in Paris and not bother because “anything was better than opening bazaars and meeting the Prince of Wales.”
schrodingers_cat
@Wolvesvalley: I am the exact opposite. I have read all the Christies but only one Sayers.
kalakal
@Wolvesvalley:
Mysterious Affair at Styles ( as SiubhanDuinne says it’s the first )
Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Murder in Mesopotamia
Death on the Nile
Five Little Pigs
BlueGuitarist
@SiubhanDuinne:
The only Jill Paton Walsh I’ve read is A Chance Child, long ago. In retrospect it did seem “researched,” but in a good way.
I hadn’t thought of the book or author in many years but it came to mind just yesterday with news about child labor, the subject of A Chance Child, and now people are talking about the author.
zhena gogolia
I’d like to know more about Sayers’ relationship with John Cournos, a Russian emigre who supposedly is the model for the victim in Strong Poison (if I have the title right). He translated one of my favorite writers, Fyodor Sologub.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yes, yes, yes! Joan Hickson is Marple. I went easy on the McEwan version because I didn’t want to sound like a nutter. And let’s not even talk about the Julia McKenzie ones.
That said, the production values on the McEwan series are pretty good, and, as always, I enjoy watching the repertory company actors who rotate in and out of all of the British TV series. Sophia Myles and Aidan McArdle were particularly good in Sleeping Murder last week.
Citizen Alan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I would be too. First, I any lover of Miss Marple’s died in “the War,” it was more likely to have been the Boer War than WWI. Second, such revisionism invalidates my head canon that Miss Marple was a lesbian. I’ve always felt certain that Murgatroyd and Hinchcliffe from “A Murder Is Announced” were a lesbian couple (two “spinsters” who lived on a farm together).
columbusqueen
@evap: Not so much in love with Lord Peter as Sayers writing what she knows best, namely herself. I don’t think she knew how to write a conventionally pretty woman since she wasn’t one.
Citizen Alan
@Annie: Are there any Christie mysteries in which the murderer “accidentally kills person A while trying to kill person B” without the reveal being that person A was the murderer and person B was the intended victim all along?
Torrey
On the subject of course titles, I tend to like short, sweet and more or less kind of informative-ish: How about “Christie and Sayers and the worlds they wrote”? (And yes, I am very clunky with titles. Of course, if this were an actual academic title, it would sport an annoying pun like “Christie and Sayers and the wor(l)ds they wrote.”)
“Sisters in Crime” is catchy, but it’s already the name of an organization of women detective story writers.
Sigh.
Omnes Omnibus
Just a personal take, I prefer Sayers to Christie because I like Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane and don’t really care for Marple or Poirot (okay, Poirot just flat out annoys me). There I said it.
Wyatt Salamanca
@SiubhanDuinne:
Do you know if Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers corresponded with each other or ever expressed any opinions about their respective works?
A Wikipedia article about Ngaio Marsh refers to her as one of the Queens of Crime along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham. Have you read anything by Ngaio Marsh or Margery Allingham and, if so, do you think their writing has stood the test of time?
Speaking of OLLI, here’s a list of Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes
https://www.osherfoundation.org/olli_list.html
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: Aidan McArdle is in the last Poirot with Suchet. Can’t remember the title but the one where Poirot goes over the edge.
I haven’t read a huge number of either writer’s works, but I do prefer Christie’s less pretentious style.
Citizen Alan
@Alison Rose: I really don’t remember a lot of overt racism (though I did most of my Christie reading while a kid, so a lot of it might have gone over my head). Unless you count the fact that apparently everyone in India knows how to murder people with Datura poisoning. But there was a lot of imperialist subtext to everything.
Andrya
@SiubhanDuinne: The worst racism in Christie (in my opinion) comes in the non-fiction “Come Tell Me How You Live” about life on her husband’s archaeological dig in Iraq. She obviously intended to portray the Arab characters with affection but the contempt is obvious.
There are some ugly references to Jews in Sayers work (in “Have His Carcass” Olga Kohn is “not out of the top drawer”. However I would claim that to a large extent she redeemed herself in “Whose Body” where the family of the Jewish murder victim (and the victim himself) is portrayed in a warm and positive way.
kalakal
@evap:
That was certainly a common opinion amongst all the women I knew back in England, espescially when the Lord Peter Wimsey TV series with Edward Petherbridge was running!
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack:
After our earlier discussion about it several months back, I downloaded it to my Kindle app and have dipped in, done some name and keyword searches, etc., although I confess I’ve not yet attempted to read it straight through. Excellent reference.
schrodingers_cat
@Wolvesvalley: You have to start at the beginning.
The Mysterious Affairs at Styles
The Tuesday Club Murders (short stories)
Sleeping Murder
And then there were none.
Elephants can remember
Jim, Foolish Literalist
As I recall, PD James has a few couples like that in her books
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
That will be an important discussion topic when we talk about changing roles for women — as will Sayers’ secret, out-of-wedlock son.
Leslie
@SiubhanDuinne: You’re welcome! If you do decide to use it, I agree with Steeplejack’s suggested edit at 24.
schrodingers_cat
@Annie: Its from the POV of Miss Marple, a prissy Victorian spinster. Anything else would be unbelievable.
Leslie
@SiubhanDuinne:
Absolutely agree. Christie herself said as much.
zhena gogolia
I recently read Strong Poison and Gaudy Night aloud to my husband. I wasn’t impressed with the mystery aspect of either. Christie seems to be more interested in plotting. And I got really annoyed when the exciting climax of Gaudy Night was in untranslated Latin! I do like Wimsey, though. Harriet doesn’t deserve him.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That purist would be me. I absolutely hated the TV show with Suchet and McEwan as Poirot and Marple.
M31
was thinking about WWI and Poirot/Wimsey — he’s in England as a Belgian refugee, but it otherwise doesn’t seem to have been a plot point regarding his personality, whereas Lord Peter’s ‘shell shock’ and his relationship with Bunter are keys to them both.
zhena gogolia
@Leslie: Christie died before McEwan played Marple. I like her.
Annie
Joan Hickson was the best Miss Marple, but Geraldine McEwan was such a sweetheart I Couldn’t get upset about her. Forget Julia McKenzie. And the Margaret Rutherford films were an abomination.
M31
Read an interesting article about a study of vocabulary in Christie over her life — she did suffer from Alzheimer’s at the end, and it seems to have been reflected in her vocabulary and language use in later works.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/apr/03/agatha-christie-alzheimers-research
SiubhanDuinne
@columbusqueen:
Yes indeed. Christie’s family had more money than Sayers’ — at least now and then — but there was a formlessness to AC’s childhood, in part because her beloved mother went chasing off after the latest fads (she refused to let Agatha learn to read before the age of 8 because some “expert” had decided it was harmful. Meanwhile, Dorothy was learning Latin and Greek.)
Torrey
@columbusqueen:
Um, what?
Leslie
@columbusqueen: If that first photo is of her, she’s certainly not unattractive. That mischievous half-smile might have been quite alluring.
Citizen Alan
@zhena gogolia:
I’ve read that Christie’s approach to mystery writing was to just start writing with no particular idea herself who the killer was. Then, when she was 2/3 done, she would review what she’d written, decide who was the least likely suspect, and edit what had come before so that it would have been possible for that unlikely suspect to have had the means and motive all along.
M31
pretty sure Christie hated him by the end, lol
kind of like Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, whom he actually killed (for a while, anyway)
Citizen Alan
@schrodingers_cat: Agree about McEwen, but I can’t buy anyone other than Suchet as Poirot. Ustinov was okay, but I just recoiled from both Albert Finney and Kenneth Branagh.
Steeplejack
@Wyatt Salamanca:
It has been decades, but I read many of the grande dames’ novels in stylish green Penguin paperbacks. (Wish I still had them!) I don’t remember many specifics about Ngaio Marsh’s books, but in my memory they are solid. Allingham’s hero is Albert Campion, a lightweight fop who got tedious as the series went on. Some of the books felt close to the spoof zone.
One factor with Marsh and Allingham is that their bodies of work are smaller, so there is less to “appreciate.”
SiubhanDuinne
@LiminalOwl:
Absolutely! I don’t know them backwards and forwards the way I do the mystery fiction, but I’ve noticed the same thing. The entire idea of “doing one’s proper job” (which is explicated in Gaudy Night) really permeates the entire canon. I’m hardly the first person to note that three* of the four villains/culprits in her first four LPW books betrayed their professional calling and because of that, ended up committing murder.
I’d love for you to say much more about this if you’re so inclined.
* Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, and Unnatural Death, specifically.
columbusqueen
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s the intellectual confidence of both Sayers & her two lead characters I find attractive, hence my love for Gaudy Night since reading it when I was 16. I still have my battered paperback copy I took to Oxford with me during my first stay there the summer of 1989.
WaterGirl
@columbusqueen: She’s drop-dead gorgeous in the photo up top.
JMG
My late Mom had an entire room with floor to ceiling bookshelves of mysteries — the complete Christie and Sayers among others. IMO, Murder Must Advertise is the best Wimsey.
In my American Studies major in college, had a prof who pointed out that the classic English detective is the gifted amateur — Sherlock Holmes, Wimsey, etc. The classic American detective is the lone wolf private eye — Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, etc. The classic French detective is a cop, a civil servant. I am now rereading the greatest of all French detectives, Maigret, the complete bourgeois civil servant.
Leslie
@Citizen Alan: I didn’t mind Branagh, perhaps because I’ve never seen Suchet.
schrodingers_cat
Of Christie’s detectives, Tommy and Tuppence have the worst and most credulity stretching plot lines.
columbusqueen
@WaterGirl: I agree, but she didn’t fit the beauty standards of the day & was very self-conscious as a result.
schrodingers_cat
@Citizen Alan: I prefer the books. Screen adaptations I can do without. Suchet looks the part but I didn’t like what they did to the stories.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: All the pictures I’ve seen of her are quite attractive.
Citizen Alan
@M31: The funniest thing Christie ever wrote was her self-insert Ariadne Oliver, a mystery novelist who hated her main character, Finnish detective Sven Hjerson because she picked that nationality arbitrarily but knew nothing about Finland.
M31
I agree about Allingham’s books — I got the impression they were much weaker fare than Sayers and Christie.
However, the TV series “Campion” with Peter Davidson (the 5th Dr. Who, and also one of the sons on the original All Creatures Great and Small) is a hoot, and is fun and absurd despite it’s plot holes and general weirdness. Better than the books, I thought. And the guy who plays the ‘anti-Bunter’ (thuggish and rude ex-criminal, now the valet to Campion) is perfect.
kalakal
I really like the idea of your course setting their writing against social change. I find Christie more interesting in this, in large part because her writing was over a longer period, Sayers stopped writing detective fiction by the end of the 30s I believe.
Christie had a very happy and privileged childhood that fell apart when she was about 12 ( her dad died and the family had a lot less money) and in her books theirs always a strong longing for order, for a happier (Edwardian?) past. Her murderers seem to me to often be people who’s lives have been disrupted by change for the worse and want revenge.
A very common character in her books is the spinster, who’s ordered, pre-destined worlds died in the trenches of WW1 along with their husbands & fiances
SiubhanDuinne
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Christie and Sayers knew each other. They were both active members of The Detection Club, and DLS went to bat for AC when the matter’s Murder of Roger Ackroyd came under critical attack for “unfairly tricking the reader.”
I’ve read all of Ngaio Marsh a couple of times (though not for a long time), and all of Allingham once. I tried to go back and reread her several years ago and found her style — and Campion himself — a bit grating, so I didn’t pursue.
Love Josephine Tey, too, although the bulk of her novels are post-WWII and don’t technically count as “Golden Age.”
kalakal
@M31:
The great Brian Glover, ex school teacher and professional wrestler
cvannatta
Caveat: I’m an author (though not currently of mysteries) who knows too much about authoring and not enough about either Sayers or Christie.
I admired Sayers’ work for the humanity she imbued in her detectives and the shades of gray in her murder victims. For example, Wimsey’s brilliance couldn’t help him win Vane’s love, but his vulnerability could. And Vane needed time to work through her deep sense of betrayal and learn to trust Wimsey. They became more balanced and were immersed in their milieu. To me, that emotional resonance makes them more memorable.
I admired Christie’s prolific output, fantastic plotting skills, and well-drawn, if not very accessible, characters. Her detectives were aloof observers, by circumstance or choice. That’s true of most return characters because readers like consistency. Christie may have made a conscious choice to freeze her characters so readers could pick up any book and not wonder what piece of back story they’d missed. I say “conscious choice” because she had phenomenal business savvy.
Publishers treat all authors poorly, but female authors have to put up with an infuriating amount of sneering condescension as well. Not to mention that financial law was, in the early 1900s, heavily weighted toward wealthy males. Christie beat the system by creating a literary corporation that protected her intellectual property in ways that few authors, male or female, had done at the time. And still don’t do — most authors just want to write, not get distracted by marketing, taxes, and copyright laws.
Both Sayers and Christie made indelible marks on the publishing world and helped shape it for future female authors. Now we need to work on breaking down barriers for people of color, nonbinary people, and people with experiences outside the western world that could teach us a thing or two about grace and compassion.
Citizen Alan
@schrodingers_cat: Oh yeah, they did butcher some of the plots for the Suchet series. I think that was mainly because some of those plots were so well-known that the producers thought they needed to shake things up a bit. Also, the BBC Christie mysteries often suffered from the Murder, She Wrote syndrome: The most famous guest star was the killer. I remember watching Hickson’s Pocketful of Rye and immediately knowing that Peter Davison was the killer because (a) he was the only actor I recognized and (b) facially, it appeared impossible for him to have done it.
kalakal
@schrodingers_cat: Tommy and Tuppence are awful, I love Christie’s books but Tommy and Tuppence I find very heavy going
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
The Poirot series matured as it went along, getting denser and darker. That last episode, “Curtain,” was a fitting finale. The one before, “The Labors of Hercules,” set at a grand mountaintop hotel in the Alps, was also excellent.
SiubhanDuinne
@Andrya:
And remember — Lord Peter’s friend, the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, eventually marries Rachel Levy, daughter of the Jewish financier.
FelonyGovt
I read, I believe, everything Christie wrote when I was about 12-14. The racism and even the anti-Semitism (surprising because my family was Jewish) largely went over my head; I mostly enjoyed the plotting. Found Poirot rather annoying but really liked Miss Marple, who sort of reminded me of my grandma.
When I went to London for the first time in 2010 I was really excited to see “the Edgware Road” because I remember it figuring in her work as kind of a swanky street. I was somewhat disappointed.
columbusqueen
@Torrey: Peter & Harriet’s attraction is very much an intellectual thing, as opposed to pure physical lust. Sayers strikes me as someone who was badly wounded by physical passion, giving her a deep mistrust of it & of beautiful people. I know a couple of men she was involved with were not complimentary about her looks.
Steeplejack
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That is fairly overt in the McEwan version of A Murder Is Announced.
SiubhanDuinne
@Almost Retired:
Apparently, once AC (and the world) realised just what had happened to Jews under Hitler, she did stop writing the cruel stereotypes that blemish much of her work through the War. And of course Sayers by then had stopped writing fiction entirely, and was occupied in translating Dante.
Paul M Gottlieb
I have read, although I cannot verify it, that the in the original editions of her novels, some of the racial and ethnic terms she used were bigoted enough that so editing had to be done in the American editions to avoid offending her readers. And this was long before the age of political correctness.
M31
an interesting thread that goes through several of the mysteries is about seances and ‘the spirit world’ — I bet there would be some students in the class eager to delve into what was going on then with regard to that. As I recall, in one Sayers book Miss Climpson does a fake spirit reading to get information, and Poirot does the same in at least one, maybe more.
Conan Doyle was a famous believer, and there is a great book I read a while back called “the Witch of Lime Street” about Houdini and his crusade against spiritualists who were cynically preying on the vulnerable
FelonyGovt
I seem to remember a book by Christie, The Moving Finger, although whether it was because I especially liked the book or because the full quote really resonated with me (and does more so today) I can’t say.
kalakal
@Wyatt Salamanca:
I like both Marsh & Allingham.
Allingham’s the most fun & lightweight and I think her post ww2 books aren’t as good with the exception of
The Tiger in the Smoke which is absolutely brilliant, as good as anything any of the 4 did.
I do like the Peter Davison TV show as light entertainment
I love Ngaio Marsh. Dashiell Hammett who didn’t think much ofGolden Age detective stories thought her Death in a White Tie the best detective story ever written. Her plotting is superb.
She also brings a different view of the world being from New Zealand
schrodingers_cat
@kalakal: Same here. I only read them for completeness.
Dan B
Several decades ago a group of us extremely dedicated gardeners and designers visited great gardens in England, Wales, and Ireland. We visited Agatha Chrities’ home in Devon on a hill above a tiny sound. It was completely neglected but there were some very rare and interesting plants on the hillside. Devon has a very mild, and moist, climate. I believe the National Trust has restored the property. There was a walled garden that would be good to see restored.
schrodingers_cat
@Paul M Gottlieb: Then there were none had two unfortunate titles.
Ten Little N word (plural)
then it was changed to
Ten Little Indians.
Annie
@Citizen Alan:
Agree. Suchet’s Poirot felt like a real person to me. Branagh’s Poirot films were just ego-fests for Branagh.
Steeplejack
@Citizen Alan:
As played admirably by Zoë Wanamaker in the Suchet Poirot series.
SiubhanDuinne
@Annie:
I find it fascinating to compare Lady Mary Wimsey and, say, Dian deMomerie in Murder Must Advertise. They are both more or less of an age, both monied. I think Dian is what Lady Mary might have become under only slightly different circumstances. Mary had brains and ideals (and Charles Parker), which all saved her from becoming a tragic Bright Young Thing like Dian.
Similarly, it’s interesting to contemplate two middle-aged “superfluous” women — Miss Katherine Alexandra Climpson (in several of the books) and Mrs. Weldon in Have His Carcase — and see how the one could so easily have ended up like the other.
I plan to get into this a lot more in a few weeks. Eager to hear your thoughts!
Steeplejack
@M31:
Yes, the Peter Davison series was good. Haven’t seen that in decades either.
schrodingers_cat
@Citizen Alan: Ariadne Oliver, the apple eating author modeled after Christie herself was pretty funny. In one of the books Oliver calculates the age of her detective and its about 120 and says if she knew he was going to be a success she would have made him a lot younger.
Torrey
@columbusqueen:
That may well be the case, but the idea that a woman can’t write a type of woman other than herself, rather than that she chose not to do so in this case, strikes me as, to put it as nicely as possible, problematic.
Let’s try it this way: Lord Peter is a highly sought after partner: wealthy, titled, conventionally decent-looking, suave, mannerly, clever, witty, war veteran and hence brave, etc. Undoubtedly he could have had his pick of any of a number of beautiful titled women. He chose instead a middle-class woman who is herself intelligent, skillful, a talented writer, clever, witty, and, yes, not conventionally beautiful. What about Lord Peter suggests that he would care about conventional attractiveness?
I would argue instead that had Sayers made Harriet beautiful, the Wimsey-Vane pairing would have seemed, perhaps, a bit of a let-down. Too obvious by half. Run it through your mind: at first sight, Lord Peter notices how beautiful Harriet is. And then take the plot from there. It would have been a lost opportunity for characterization. And it would look like formulaic hack-work: brave, titled, wealthy man falls deeply in love with beautiful woman (who also happens to be clever, witty, etc.).
I’d have to go back and read Strong Poison again, but I don’t recall that Harriet spent much time thinking about her looks, either way. It was others who made the judgment.
One of the Many Jens
I love Dorothy Sayers, and as I’ve gotten older, have appreciated more and more the ever-present (though diminishing over time) thread of WW1 effects on Wimsey. I enjoy the Paton Walsh continuations, as well.
I was substantially less fond of Christie’s books until I discovered Agatha Christie audiobooks and radio plays, and found that her work translates well to the spoken word – perhaps because of her work as a playwright. There are a bunch of BBC radio plays of her books that are marvelous.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: Yes, I thought those two were very good. I also liked the Suchet Orient Express.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
Almost word-for-word what Christie herself said about Poirot!
Brachiator
@kalakal:
I wonder how many people and writers saw this as an opportunity? The old order has been destroyed. What can we do with this new world?
Annie
@FelonyGovt:
Yes. It’s very good. About a brother and sister who rent a house in a quiet English village so the brother can recover from a plane crash. Of course the village turns out not to be so quiet and calm after all . . .
M31
Was the Spanish Flu epidemic ever mentioned by either author?
zhena gogolia
@M31: Strong Poison is the one where Miss Climpson does the seance.
schrodingers_cat
@Annie: Can’t stand Branagh in anything. He is always playing himself.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Come sit by me. I find Poirot an insufferable prig in any medium
Steeplejack
@Annie:
“Ego-fests for Branagh.” As was the Wallander series he did. Vastly inferior to the Swedish original, which I recommend highly.
kalakal
Christie wrote a lot of plays, the plays were popular except with actors who apparently felt the dialog was stilted. The Mousetrap is the longest running play in history, still running after over 70 years. It’s great going to a performance, every one dresses up and you have to swear not to reveal who dunnit.
Spoiler: It wasn’t the butler!!!!*
*There isn’t a butler in the play
Annie
@SiubhanDuinne:
You know, I had not thought about this but you are absolutely right. Miss Climpson is a great character, and the idea of these women becoming undercover operators is brilliant.
How does one sign up for this class? I’m in San Francisco but if it’s on Zoom that shouldn’t matter, right?
JoyceH
@M31:
*Blink* I really don’t think so! It’s weird, isn’t it, how thoroughly that global pandemic got memory-holed?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodingers_cat: someone said that George Smiley would had to have been at least 110 in his final appearance in LeCarré’s world
SiubhanDuinne
@kalakal:
It’s odd. Poirot and Miss Marple both stay pretty much the same from the ‘20s and ‘30s straight through into the late ‘60s and even early ‘70s. Yet I find them both more accessible than I do Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, who start out young and age into parenthood, middle age, and retirement. I find them tedious at any age, and I wish AC had given us a few more Marples instead.
JoyceH
@kalakal:
I think the Mousetrap was the one where she gave the copyright to a nephew as a present, thought it would make him some nice pocket change. But it just goes on and on and I think it’s made him actually rather wealthy, which he finds kind of embarrassing.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Yes.
kalakal
I always felt Christies love of order is part of the secret of her commercial success. There are no loose ends, justice is seen to be done. People with uncertain lives, in troubled times. can find an escape into a world where crime does not pay and order triumphs. Obviously not the only reason but I’m sure it’s there
JoyceH
@SiubhanDuinne:
Tedious? I find them well-nigh unbearable! It’s weird how annoying her young characters are, considering she was young herself when she started writing.
SiubhanDuinne
@JoyceH:
Hardly at all. I think there’s a minor character who mentions that his wife or heir or somebody “died in the Flu” but it’s never a plot point to the best of my recollection.
However, a later (1929-30), more localised, influenza epidemic in the village of Fenchurch St Paul is crucial to the plot of The Nine Tailors in several ways. So DLS at least dealt with some of the effects of an outbreak on a vulnerable community.
SiubhanDuinne
@kalakal:
I think it’s very important indeed, and I thank you for highlighting that element of her work.
kalakal
@SiubhanDuinne: Couldn’t agree more, I read the books despite them. I’d much rather have more Miss Marple
Of her other tryouts I find Mr Satterthwaite ( sp?) creepy but Parker Pyne I rather liked
Annie
@Citizen Alan:
Sorry, not that I can recall.
zhena gogolia
@kalakal: Have you seen See How They Run?
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: I can tell you and I are going to be the TV-watching participants in this discussion.
SiubhanDuinne
Guys, I am loving this whole conversation, but I need to leave for a few hours. I’ll check the thread overnight and certainly tomorrow, so please keep this great discussion going as long as you want.
Apologies to those of you who asked questions I didn’t get to, or answered only partially. I promise to check them all!
THANK YOU, JACKALS!!
kalakal
@SiubhanDuinne: I seem to recall somewhere seeing a graph of sales of her books and crime statistics over decades and the correspondence was striking
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
I haven’t read any of the Tommy and Tuppence books, but my lesser PBS station is running the series with Francesca Annis and James Warwick (Partners in Crime, 1983-84), and it is dreadful. Very dated and trying too hard to be a “romp.” Ugh.
Wolvesvalley
@Torrey:
He did, when choosing mistresses. But he didn’t want to marry one of them. In Busman’s Honeymoon there is a passage where Lord Peter
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: Anthony Anderson and ?somebody? I’ll look it up played them on PBS for a couple of unbearable episodes. ETA: Sorry, should be Anthony Andrews, and Greta Scacchi.
kalakal
@zhena gogolia: No, don’t know it all. I’ll have a look, thanks
zhena gogolia
@kalakal: I thought it was amusing.
kalakal
@zhena gogolia: A lot of Ngaio Marsh’s books are set in the theatrical world, her main career was as a theatre director, she got the Damehood for her contributions to theatre not her writing.
If you like classic murder mysteries set in theatres she’s a goodie
kalakal
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank you. Look forward to the next
Torrey
@Wolvesvalley:
Thank you. I think this also shows development and maturity in Peter’s character. What I was objecting to was the implication that Sayers only wrote Vane as not conventionally attractive either because she was incapable of writing a woman unlike herself (!!!) or because she was using the character to work out her own insecurities.
Wolvesvalley
@Torrey:
When choosing mistresses, he had always insisted on beauty. But he hadn’t wanted to marry any of them. Near the end of Gaudy Night, he tells Harriet:
In Busman’s Honeymoon there is this passage:
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
I guess. I haven’t read any of Sayers’s books—which I hope to start rectifying—and I’ve read only a few of Christie’s, so I don’t have that “This doesn’t follow the book, goddamn it!” reaction.
My only exposure to Wimsey is the Ian Carmichael series from the early ’70s, which I saw on Masterpiece Theatre back in the Alistair Cooke days. I assume it’s dreadfully outdated at this point. My memory is that even at the time a lot of the attraction was simply that it was something outside the narrow band of the three American networks’ shows.
zhena gogolia
@kalakal: We started one recently (my husband keeps bringing old mysteries down from the attic, I read them to him, then we get rid of them). I couldn’t stick with it. It was kind of convoluted and I didn’t like the characters. I can’t even remember what it was called. It was set in Italy.
On the other hand, we very much enjoyed The Widow’s Cruise by Nicholas Blake (pen name of Cecil Day-Lewis).
Wolvesvalley
@Wolvesvalley:
Rats. The first version of this comment disappeared; so I rewrote it.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: We tried to watch Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane in the Petherbridge ones, but much as I love Walter, it was so slow and plodding we couldn’t stick it.
Wolvesvalley
@Steeplejack:
I couldn’t bear Ian Carmichael’s portrayal of Lord Peter.
zhena gogolia
@Wolvesvalley: Petherbridge is good.
JoyceH
@Steeplejack:
Was that the one where they’re running a detective agency? If so, yes, pretty dreadful. What was funny, though, was that they didn’t really know how to be detectives, so were trying on all the various techniques of the mysteries they’d read (mainly by adopting the mannerisms of the books’ detectives) – and all of those then-famous mysteries are now long-forgotten. So it’s sort of ‘…HUH?’, when perhaps it was incredibly humorous at the time.
Kristine
@Steeplejack:
Hickson will always be my Marple. I didn’t see many McEwan episodes, but the last one–Julia McKenzie–struck me as too dithery. Hickson played Marple as clear-eyed and decisive and steely. I need to find those episodes somewhere.
Steeplejack
@JoyceH:
Yes, that’s the one. They’re making it up as they go along, and their office boy is obsessed with American gangster movies for added humor. It’s pretty bad but in an “I can’t stop watching” way. A lot of the attraction is that Annis is very beautiful in a specifically 1930s style, and her costumes are implausibly gorgeous.
kalakal
@JoyceH: Christie managed some good sly jokes in her books & Ariadne Oliver is a funny self portrait but when she tried to write humour with Tommy & Tuppence she bombed
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack: She tries too hard too hard and misses in those books. Spy stories are not her forte. At all. Each successive T and T book is more trying than the previous one.
kalakal
If any of you value your sanity do not watch the old Miss Marple films with Margaret Rutherford. They’re dreadful comedies with the only thing related to the books is the name of the character.
kalakal
@zhena gogolia:
Not read that one, I liked Malice in Wonderland.
There’s a lot of mostly forgotten crime authors from around that time, it’s kind of a hobby of mine.
A couple of good general guides for names are Bloody Murder by Julian Symons and Snobbery with Violence by Colin Watson
persistentillusion
@JoyceH: In one of Jill Paton Walsh’s books, there’s a great throw-away line: don’t worry about me walking at night (in London during a murder spree), save your worry for the ‘flu.
persistentillusion
@kalakal: In one of the Wimsey books, Peter says approximately, Harriet, your books sell because we want the murderer caught and punished, since we know that doesn’t happen often in the real world.
Steeplejack
@kalakal:
You might be interested in the book SiubhanDuinne and I were discussing above, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators, by Martin Edwards. Very detailed history with lots of titles and authors to explore.
persistentillusion
@Wolvesvalley: Yes, too arch by half.
Joy in FL
@Steeplejack: I do love Geraldine McEwan. However I agree it’s Joan Hickson and also Margaret Rutherford as the best Miss Marples.
Joan Hickson played a housekeeper and cook in the movie of 4:50 from Paddington with Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple. I love that connection, that Joan Hickson would one day play Miss Marple herself.
LiminalOwl
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank you! I’ll do what I can, not tonight but hopefully in the morning.
Feathers
I got back into the golden age detective fiction after the 2016 election. I watched a few episodes of Poirot, then went back and watched them all in order. Got me through to March and basically helped keep me sane. I started listening to SheDunnit a few months in. I pushed it in threads where people were looking for podcast recommendations, but other people were liking it too. I’ve joined their book club, so I’ve been reading a lot of other between the wars mystery writers, if anyone is interested = Ngiao Marsh, Gladys Mitchell, Josephine Tey, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, and others.
Someone was asking if all these authors knew each other. The answer seems to be yes. Anthony Berkeley Cox was the leader in founding the Detection Club, which invited worthy writers of detective fiction to join – they had to swear an oath (written by Sayers) to play fair with readers, among other things. They met regularly for what sounds like fantastic dinners. The group was funded through joint projects. I read one of them: Six Against the Yard, a collection of impossible mystery short stories by various authors, including Sayers, Allingham, and Berkeley, which a retired Scotland Yard detective then said (pompously) how he would solve. One of the things I realized is that fair play often involves a serious amount of tedious detail. Christie saves herself a lot of trouble with Poirot and Marple’s solving of cases through psychological observation. There’s a SheDunnit episode about the club. It’s still going and Martin Edwards is the current president. He’s written about the history of the club, as well as The Life of Crime.
I decided to cut back on the TV watching and read more at the end of 2021. I read all of Allingham, in order from December into January. Loved them. It’s fascinating how her style changes through the years. Read a lot of the book club books, plus other mysteries last year. Got into the All About Agatha podcast, where they read all 65 of Christie’s novels in order, they got to the end last year, sadly after the death of one of the co-hosts. Read all of Marple in order over the summer, plus about a dozen other Christies. Read all of Sayers in order last December. Read The Life of Crime straight through, because I got it from the library. Kind of knocked me on my ass, took me a while to get reading again. Also read Lucy Worsley’s new biography of Agatha Christie. I’d recommend it for anyone interested in Christie. She looks at Christie and her books as emblematic of the changing role of women over Christie’s long life. It’s about the length of a novel, with a similar amount of content, rather than being highly academic. There’s a three part TV series that showed in the UK recently and will be coming to PBS at some point. It’s on YouTube with framing shifts to avoid copyright strikes.
I think it’s important to separate Christie’s attitudes from those of the characters in her books. I think a lot of the snobbery is more from the social anxious people she’s writing about than the narrative of the book. That people don’t recognize a person they know dressed as a servant says more about that person than it does the servants. In the All About the Agatha podcast, one of their rules in figuring out whodunnit is Don’t Underestimate the Help. Characters who do usually come to bad ends. Christie never has a servant commit the crime (except in one short story, and that is a young woman who has been impregnated by a rich man and is going along with his plan in hopes that he’ll marry her).
So my Christie recommendations:
The Hollows
Five Little Pigs
Endless Night
A Murder is Announced
Nemesis
The Sittaford Mystery
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans (a minority opinion, I like it when the plotting gets a bit bonkers)
Apologies for running long and late, got called away from the computer. Looking forward to the next threads.
Joy in FL
@SiubhanDuinne: I love Geraldine McEwan also, and I wore out my VHS copy of Mapp & Lucia. Good thing it’s available to stream.
I wonder if you saw Geraldine McEwan in the movie Barchester Towers. I really enjoyed that.
LiminalOwl
@SiubhanDuinne: Ooh! I was going to ask what you thought of Josephine Tey. My father gave me “The Daughter of Time” when I was 10, and then “Brat Farrar,” and four others… I read them all in high school and “The Daughter of Time” many times since. I’ve been afraid to revisit the others lest they be too problematic, but it’s time to find them again
I read two or three Margery Allingham (given to me by the same ex who introduced me to Sayers), but found them unmemorable.
Not right for your class, but do you know Jo Walton’s “Small Change” trilogy? (Farthing, Halfpenny, and Half a Crown, IIRC.). Walton is primarily a science fiction/fantasy writer, but the trilogy is only sfnal in that it’s alternate-universe. Feels to me like she was trying for Golden Age in tone; the books are set in a 1930s-‘40s England in de facto alliance with Nazi Germany, and the main characters are a family clearly modelled on the Mitfords.
kalakal
@Steeplejack: Thanks for the remainder, its been in a holding pattern in my to-read list for ages, I’ll bump it to the top
kalakal
@Feathers: A couple of between/post ww2 writers I rather like are Cyril Hare and George Bellairs, do they feature in the book club?
Steeplejack
@kalakal:
As SiubhanDuinne said, it’s more of a reference than a “read it straight through.” Which I have been doing, however, albeit in small doses.
scribbler
@SiubhanDuinne: Completely agree about Joan Hickson. She is sublime as Miss Marple. I could (and do!) watch those shows repeatedly. I can enjoy Geraldine McEwan a bit, but Hickson is the gold standard.
SiubhanDuinne
@Joy in FL:
OMG YES!! Mrs Proutie, the Bishop’s wife, locking horns with a young and sneering Alan Rickman as Obadiah Slope!
I ❤️❤️❤️ Barchester Towers!
Feathers
@M31: @JoyceH: The epidemic does show up, but it tends to be treated as just something the characters and readers understand implicitly, as in this scene of an inquest from Chapter 6 of Sayer’s Whose Body? from 1923:
Tehanu
@SiubhanDuinne: I too am a huge fan of the late (alas) Geraldine McEwen, but I don’t think either she or Joan Hickson (whom I loathed, she was so grim) was right for Marple. I’m re-reading 4:50 From Paddington right now and Marple is described as appearing — not being, mind you — as rather fluffy and dithery. For that matter, I don’t think any of the actors who’ve portrayed her meet that description. OTOH, I worship Margaret Rutherford’s 3 Marple movies and she’s even less “fluffy”. And I’m a rabid Wimsey fan who re-reads all the books every couple of years and loves both Ian Carmichael and Edward Petherbridge.
@JoyceH:
Haven’t read the Tommy & Tuppence books in ages, but I loved James Warwick and Francesca Annis as them in the BBC series “Partners in Crime.” Apparently several others here hated it; guess I’ll just have to be alone in this.
frosty fred
I have, and do, read DLS and AC over and over. Any writer is of their time, but Marsh’s homophobia and obsession with drugs as cause of crime (not drug dealing, but character weakened by drug use), and Allingham’s anti-feminism, seem to me more problematic than anything in the other two. Mean time, if you see classism in Christie–you haven’t read Tey lately.
SiubhanDuinne
@Feathers:
Excellent catch! Thank you.
Feathers
@Steeplejack: I remember watching Tommy and Tuppence with my mom on Sunday nights on Mystery! It was so hopelessly fun and glamorous! Fond memories. Was looking forward to do a rewatch. It lasted one episode. Sad how some things just don’t hold up.
Feathers
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank Project Gutenberg for having the full text online that I could search for influenza! It was the book club book for January as the theme was books having their centennial.
Feathers
@frosty fred: Gladys Mitchell is the author who has aged the worst, at least of the one’s I’ve read. And it’s tough because she’s being pushed for a revival due to her being presumed queer and the unconventional content of her books – the occult, pornography, abortion, the supernatural, and all sorts of unconventional relationships. I love gonzo books so many of her’s certainly are that. I’m wondering how many people have actually read many of them. Caroline from SheDunnit does certainly not hide how problematic many of them are.
But you come across not just the genteel racism of many of the other authors, but straight out Holy Fuck That’s Racist! And her detective, Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, is a psychoanalyst who consults for the police. I was reading The Worsted Viper and really enjoying it, when suddenly the very sad murder of a young woman was excused as understandable – by the series detective! – on eugenicist grounds. Even though I found a lot to like in her work, I haven’t been able to read any more of Mitchell’s work.
Yes, this is the Mrs. Bradley of the Diana Rigg Mrs. Bradley Mysteries. The character from the TV shows is also a consulting psychoanalyst, but otherwise bears almost no relation to the Mrs. Bradley from the books.
Leslie
Speaking of Christie adaptations, there’s a recent one of Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? that I thought was well done.
Andrya
@LiminalOwl: ‘The Daughter of Time’ is an absorbing read, but it does not convince me as history. (I don’t think the matter can be proved either way, but I think the balance of the evidence is that Richard III was guilty.) Key evidence that Josephine Tey did not consider: there are two non-English sources (one Italian, one French) that rumors that Richard murdered his nephews were circulating in 1483. (link) If the nephews were alive, it’s hard to see why Richard didn’t bring them out of hiding to show everyone.
Tey’s thesis is that the next king, Henry VII, murdered the two princes. I will say this: if the two boys were alive in 1485, when Henry VII seized the throne, the probability is 100% that they would have been murdered by Henry.
In medieval and renaissance England, it was a REALLY bad idea to be heir to the throne and have your father die when you were still a child. (King John murdered a nephew for for the same reason.)
ChristianPinko
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s how I feel in re Jeremy Brett and Sherlock Holmes.
Andrya
@LiminalOwl: Oh, I simply can’t resist. The three Black sisters in the Harry Potter series were also clearly modeled on the Mitford sisters. Andromeda (Black) Tonks is Jessica Mitford, who lost her first husband fighting fascism. Bellatrix Lestrange is Unity Mitford, who was obsessed with her adoration of Adolf Hitler. And Narcissa Malfoy is Diana Mitford, who married the leader of the British fascists, Oswald Mosley.
Apologies for going OT, but the temptation was too much to resist!
Cathie from Canada
I’m late to the party but I’m a Christie fan — her best books, I think, were the late 40s and 50s ones. Some recommendations:
Piorot: Cards on the Table, Murder in Three Acts, Five Little Pigs, Cat Among The Pigeons, Death on the Nile, Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, Hickory Dickory Dock
Marple: The Body in the Library, A Pocket Full Of Rye, Moving Finger, 4:50 from Paddington, A Caribbean Mystery, At Bertram’s Hotel, Sleeping Murder
And Then There Were None, Endless Night, The Pale Horse
Also, I enjoy many of her “stand-alone” short stories (Three Blind Mice, Witness for the Prosecution) and her Harley Quinn and Parker Pyne short stories are fun.
According to the discussion above, nobody likes Tommy and Tuppence, but give “N or M?” a try – they’re hunting Nazi spies in an English resort town in early WW2.
LiminalOwl
@Andrya: Agree on all points (especially the Not Proven verdict), but I still love the book. (Though Grant’s insistence on seeing character in someone ‘s appearance is, for me, another problem.) And it was fun seeing “the sainted Thomas More” portrayed as an evil schemer in Wolf Hall instead of as the hero of A Man for All Seasons.
LiminalOwl
@Andrya: Ah! I disliked Harry Potter so didn’t know anout tbat. (Jessica is he protagonist of Farthing, btw.)
HeartlandLiberal
I am late to this conversation, but I just wanted to say this. We subscribe to MHZ, two times the French have “adapted” Agatha Christie, both times being results that would have Christie spinning in her grave. The French are stuck in 50’s era sexism and misogyny, and both these reek of it.
Steeplejack
@HeartlandLiberal:
Since you mention MHz, I will make my semiannual recommendation for Montalbano, the excellent Italian series. The first episode is a bit uneven, but after that it shines.
Chief Oshkosh
I’ve read a lot of both, but prefer Sayers. She has a bit of a light-hearted touch vaguely reminiscent of PG Wodehouse, and with the reader often included as being in on the semi-farcical aspects of British life. Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence had a bit of that. There are a tad too many Christie stories that begin a bit plodding (like early PD James) and end with a deus ex machina. These are all fine hairs being split — I enjoyed them all when I was younger and could read for hours at a time.
Best of luck with your class. It sounds like a winner.
boatboy_srq
@SiubhanDuinne: Death Comes As The End has always been one of my favorites. Even if the ending is a bit trite.