Strand runs obscure Christie, Chandler works

Two of crime fiction’s most famous storytellers, Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie, also knew how to get a laugh.

Chandler, beyond the terse and cynical narratives of such Philip Marlowe novels as “The Big Sleep” and “The Long Goodbye,” was able to poke fun at his own life.

His rarely seen “Advice to an Employer,” likely from the early 1950s, is a list of suggestions for how you can ruin the day for those stuck on your payroll, including “Always tell your secretary you have nothing to dictate until it is time for dinner. Then rattle off a lot of letters you have left since domesday.”

Christie’s Hercule Poirot enjoys an amusing holiday in the 1923 story “Christmas Adventure,” only now being released in the U.S. It’s an easygoing tale of a Christmas gathering and a foiled attempt to fool the wily sleuth. When a guest calls out, “Come down at once, please. Someone’s been killed,” he calmly replies, “Aha, this is serious.” The story, the basis for the longer “The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding,” was originally part of a series called “The Little Grey Cells of Hercule Poirot.” The story also appears in the Christie collection “Midwinter Murder,” due Tuesday.

Chandler’s and Christie’s appear in the new issue of Strand Magazine, a quarterly that has published obscure work by Steinbeck, Twain, Faulkner and others. Its focus is on crime and mystery, but managing editor Andrew Gulli said he wanted to offer relief during the pandemic.