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MYTOP12 CHRISTIE CRACKERS
The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published 100 years ago this month, is just one of life long fan jeremy Vine’s delectable dozen...
1 HERCULE POIROT’S CHRISTMAS 1938
The very first Agatha I read, lent to me when I was 11 by my darling mum – ‘Why don’t you try this?’ – and the start of my love affair with the Queen of Crime. The author dedicates the book to her brother-inlaw James, who she says wanted a murder with an enormous amount of blood. There’s also a curious piece of rubber and a peg at the scene of the murder, in which man called Simeon dies in a locked room as the police appear. No spoilers, but the amount of blood turns out to be significant...
2 THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES 1920
It’s incredible that this was Agatha’s first published novel, written in the middle of the First World War and in print by October 1920. Here we find Poirot displaced from Belgium by the war, staying near his friend Emily. She doesn’t last long. As with many Christies, a contentious will is involved, and poison, and a chap with a bushy beard (always suspicious).
3 THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD 1926
This particular Christie is exceptional, but I can’t tell you why because that would spoil the plot. Read it, and then think of how many novels bear the signature of this one – Gone Girl and The Wasp Factory come to mind. Again, I can’t say why. When I read this as a teen in the 70s I was blown away by what Agatha did to me as her reader, and I won’t ever forget turning back to the page where the plot twist happens.
4 WHY DIDN’T THEY ASK EVANS? 1934
Bobby Jones is playing golf in a Welsh seaside town when he finds a man who has fallen or jumped off a cliff. In the dead man’s pocket is the photo of a beautiful woman. Soon Bobby is joined by the quintessential Christie passing stranger, Roger Bassington-ffrench. I read this 40 years ago, and still recall the denouement – I also remember buying a copy for my colleague Chris Evans while he was at Radio 2.
5 CURTAIN: POIROT’S LAST CASE 1975
Agatha lived from 1890 to 1976. By the time she wrote Poirot’s final case, I think she knew she was the greatest. She was thus determined that no one else should get their hands on her Belgian detective, which makes his last mystery a sad read. It’s not a classic, but it is an important moment in Agatha’s career when she realised she could only keep Poirot by letting him go.
6 PERIL AT END HOUSE 1932
Here we have a great study of how to keep a reader guessing until the very end. Poirot’s friend Hastings and Inspector Japp join the detective to aid a young woman in
Cornwall whose life seems under threat. Once again Agatha Christie shows you she can deliver a new setting and characters along the same basic spine – suspects, a murder and a question.
7 DEATH ON THE NILE 1937
There are some Christies that are worth it just for the setting (although avoid They Came To Baghdad, her worst book). Death On The Nile is one of them. Exotic locations make for favourites because they give you a sense of a breeze blown from afar – this is not murder in a small village, or on a golf course (yes she really did write Murder On The Links), this is a killing with Egypt in the background.
8 DEATH IN THE CLOUDS 1935
The joy of this particular plot is that it involves a blowpipe. The second beautiful thing about it is the way it dates itself with the opening scene, where Poirot is one of 11 passengers in a light aircraft travelling from Paris to Croydon Airport. This book was written when Heathrow was just a village southwest of London. I love the window Agatha gives us onto a Britain long passed.
9 AND THEN THERE WERE NONE 1939
This is undoubtedly the standout Christie. Do not read it first, as everything else may disappoint! The plotting is from another dimension. You think by the end that there cannot be a solution because (for reasons I will not elaborate upon) you have ruled out all the
suspects. And then you discover that one somehow managed to commit murder.
10 THE ABC MURDERS 1936
In which the deaths of Alice Ascher, Betty Barnard and Carmichael Clarke become one of the first serial killer cases in literature. Poirot tries to stop the murderer going through the entire alphabet, and you soon wonder if you are – as is typical with Agatha – being served up a series of decoys.
11 4:50 FROM PADDINGTON 1957
Type ‘450’ into Google and it completes with ‘from Paddington’. That is how famous the Queen of Crime remains. Here we have Miss Marple finding that her friend Elspeth Mcgillicuddy saw what she thinks was a strangling on a passing train. But the newspapers do not report the crime, and Jane Marple’s instincts take the lead, in probably her finest hour.
12 THE SITTAFORD MYSTERY 1931
I recently listened to this book for a second time on audio. What struck me was how real the scenery was — a snowy landscape between two homes and, somewhere in the blizzard, an unnerving séance. The plot is so simple but so baffling. The key to solving a Christie is to work out when an overly suspicious character has been placed in your line of sight to obscure your view of the real murderer. Jeremy’s novel The Diver And The Lover is out now; his Radio 2 show is on weekdays, 12-2pm.