LOVE READING WITH KAREN
The great Agatha Christie spawned an appetite for clever murder mysteries…
I’ve spent much of this winter’s lockdown glued to boxsets on TV and was struck by how much we all love a murder myster y! Cardinal, The Serpent, The Valhalla Murders, Traces have taken me from Canada to Thailand to Iceland to my native Scotland, but they all have juicy murders, brooding detectives, gorgeous scenery and twisty plots to be disentangled before the final credits roll.
My love affair with murder mysteries began way back in the 1970s when I picked up my first Agatha Christie detective stor y. Death Comes As The End is the only one of her books set in the distant past, and unlike most of her classics, it doesn’t feature Poirot or Miss Marple, or even Tommy and Tuppence Bereseford. It takes us back to ancient Egypt, where Nofret, concubine to a Ka priest, is found dead at the foot of a cliff.
Beautiful but evil, most agree she’s no loss – only Renisenb, the priest’s daughter cares enough to unravel a murder myster y that throws up the evil that lurks within her father’s own household. From that moment, I was hooked.
The next Agatha Christie I read was The Mysterious Affair At Styles, which introduced me to her most famous detective, the dapper little Belgian Hercule Poirot, and his sidekick Captain Hastings. A twentieth centur y Holmes and Watson, they solved over 50 murders in their outings of books, plays and shor t stories – a prolific output for any writer! But the Queen of Crime didn’t stop with Poirot – genteel spinster Miss Marple of St Mar y’s Mead made her first appearance in 1930 in The Murder At The Vicarage, followed with eleven more full-length stories, along with shor t stories and plays.
Husband and wife team Tommy and Tuppence
Beresford were the stars of five more books by Agatha Christie. I can still remember the thrill of reading By The Pricking of My Thumbs – a murder myster y with a hint of black magic!
Agatha Christie’s stor ytelling genius lay in mixing the mundane with the outrageous, and hoodwinking the reader in the process. Who could forget the outcomes of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and And Then There Were None? Yet she was always fair; the revelation of the killer was always an “aha” moment for me.
When Agatha Christie died at 85, she’d written over 60 detective novels, leaving us all with a taste for great detective fiction. For tunately, there are superb writers out there to satisfy our needs – I just finished The Mirror Dance by Catriona McPherson (Hodder & Stoughton HB, £21.99) a murder-myster y set in 1930s Dundee. Upperclass private sleuth Dandy Gilver solves the murder of a Punch and Judy man, with all the wit and clever plotting fans of Christie could want.
NEXT MONTH Inspired by Jane Austen, I’ll be looking at our favourite romance writers.
Do share your thoughts with me by emailing karen.byrom@blueyonder.co.uk