The secret to Agatha Christie’s enduring appeal
The maven of murder combines strong storylines with truths about human nature
“Murder Is Easy,” Agatha Christie once proclaimed, as she dreamed up the title for one of her classic crime novels. Easy for Dame Agatha, anyway. In 2017, the British “Queen of Mystery” (as her current publisher has dubbed her) is having a moment, yet again. The novelist and playwright, who had a pretty good run during her lifetime (1890-1976), is hotter than ever in the 21st century.
The “Queen” indeed reigns over a publishing empire, with two new movies out this fall (“Murder on the Orient Express” and “Crooked House”), a series of TV adaptations set to stream on Amazon, and books on current bestseller lists thanks to a complete reissue of all her mysteries in the U.S. and a new series of Christie novels being penned by contemporary crime writer Sophie Hannah.
Why does the creator of celebrated sleuths Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple — who has sold more than 2 billion books worldwide, outranked only by the Bible and Shakespeare — still knock ‘em dead nearly a century after she published her first book?
Let’s examine the evidence.
It starts with the books, of course. And in the 21st century, the image of Christie as a sweet old lady who wrote quaint tales of gentle deaths (often by poison) set in charming English villages is shifting to a more nuanced view. Christie 2.0 is studied at academic conferences and in scholarly books, with a new generation of mystery writers piping up as vocal fans. Agatha Christie, a hack? Prove it, they say.
“She’s the gold standard, the Shakespeare of crime writers, and she influenced many, many of today’s crime writers,” says Hannah, a British mystery novelist (“Keep Her Safe”) chosen by the Christie estate to conjure up new Poirot mysteries (2014’s “The Monogram Murders” and 2016’s “Closed Casket,” with another title coming in 2018).
Hannah believes Christie in the past was underrated by “snobby people” who thought she was a page-turning “genre writer,” while Hannah trumpets her mentor as a serious literary stylist who combines “brilliantly strong storylines with truths about human nature,” among them greed, jealousy, revenge and fear.
Jennifer Hart, a senior vice-president at William Morrow, a division of HarperCollins that works closely with HarperCollinsUK and the Christie estate, notes that the author’s “cosy” image is a misnomer. “She writes about murder,” Hart points out. “These are murder mysteries.”
In an era when psychological thrillers fly off bookshelves — think of all those deliciously grim ‘Girl’ books by the likes of Gillian Flynn and her peers — today’s readers are discovering that Christie “started the form way back when,” Hart says.
With the lavish, star-studded (but poorly reviewed) adaptation of “Murder on the Orient Express” now in theatres, Christie is getting a high-profile boost from director Kenneth Branagh, who also stars as the lavishly mustachioed genius of detection, Poirot.
Because of the film, “Murder on the Orient Express” is now the top seller in the U.S. among all Christie’s books, this year surpassing “And Then There Were None,” considered by many to be her masterpiece. That 1939 “locked-room” mystery, in which guests are lured to a house on an island and killed off one by one, became a USA Today bestseller in 2016 after a Lifetime adaptation aired.
This year alone, HarperCollins is shipping half a million copies of Orient Express in various formats, from paperback movie tie-in editions to a hardcover facsimile of the original 1934 British Crime Club edition.
Hannah says there’s a reason the “brilliant” Orient Express is Christie’s most popular novel.
“It’s a closed group of suspects, trapped on a train in snowstorm, and the solution to the mystery is the cleverest in all of mystery fiction,” says Hannah, who fell in love with Christie as a 12-year-old. “We mustn’t spoil it for everyone,” she says, but when Mr. Ratchett ( Johnny Depp in the movie) is discovered murdered in his compartment with 12 stab wounds, there are 12 possible suspects. The novel, Hannah says, “is absolutely perfect in its construction.”
For the first time since 1980, Christie’s books are now under one publisher in the U.S. In 2011, William Morrow began reissuing all 80 of the novelist’s works (66 mysteries and 14 story collections) in uniform paperback and digital editions with new, pleasingly retro jackets.
A branding campaign was developed calling her “The Queen of Mystery” (the phrase appears on the new jackets) and quotes were gathered from contemporary mystery writers, including Louise Penny and Sue Grafton, singing Christie’s praises. To modernize the oeuvre, e-singles and new digital audio recordings read by stars such as Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens have hit the market.
Since 2013, 11 Christie titles (including “Murder on the Orient Express” and Hannah’s “The Monogram Murders”) have made USA Today’s bestselling Books list.
All the ongoing film and TV adaptations are having a symbiotic effect on book sales. Christie has always been popular on screen (there have been many Poirots and Marples over the years) but in an era in which content is king, her works are suddenly fresh catnip.
“Crooked House,” a standalone Christie novel about a wealthy family in which the aged patriarch is knocked off, is now a film starring Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks as the much-younger widow and prime suspect. It’s available on demand and via streaming starting Nov. 21 and in movie theatres on Dec. 22.
The new adaptations are bringing new readers into the Christie fold.
“Between the movies and TV, so much is happening,” says Hart. Americans who are Anglophiles — you know who you are, Masterpiece fans — are ripe for the picking, Hart notes, and Hannah’s original Poirot novels are opening eyes, too.
“I hear from readers who say, ‘I read your Poirot novels and loved them, and I thought now I’ll try (Christie’s) Poirot novels,’” says Hannah.
“Of course I do think, how the hell do you get to age 40 never having read Agatha Christie?”
It’s a mystery.