Agatha Christie is having a moment
Gone for more than 40 years, “British Queen of Mystery” is hotter than ever
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 best-seller lists thanks to a complete reissue of her mysteries in the United States and a new series of Christie novels being written 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.
She wrote murder, folks
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 chosen by the Christie estate to conjure up new Poirot mysteries ( The Monogram Murders, Closed Casket).
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 story lines 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, notes that the author’s “cozy” 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.
Killing them on screen and page
With the lavish, star-studded (but poorly reviewed) adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express chugging into theaters, 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 United States 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 became a USA TODAY best seller 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, who was on her way to the film’s world premiere at London’s Royal Albert Hall when USA TODAY caught up with her, 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.”
All together now
For the first time since 1980, Christie’s books are under one publisher in the U.S. In 2011, William Morrow began reissuing all 80 of the novelist’s works in uniform paperback and digital editions with new, pleasingly retro jackets.
A branding campaign was developed calling her the Queen of Mystery, 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 have made USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list.
Some of the books indulge in ethnic stereotypes, but her publisher has not tinkered with Christie’s works. “I think they’re of their time,” Hart says.
All the film and TV adaptations are having a symbiotic effect on book sales. Christie has always been popular on screen, but in an era when content is king, her works are suddenly fresh catnip. Crooked House, a stand-alone Christie novel about a wealthy family in which the aged patriarch is knocked off, is now a film starring Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks. It’s available on demand and via streaming starting Nov. 21 and in movie theaters Dec. 22.
She dunit! What a dame
The new adaptations are bringing new readers into the Christie fold.
“Between the movies and TV, so much is happening,” Hart says. 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,’ ” Hannah says. “Of course I do think, ‘How the hell do you get to age 40 never having read Agatha Christie?’ ”
It’s a mystery.