As a child, I spent a lot of time in my grandparents’ house.
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It’s possible I may be biased in my assessment, for it was The Murder at the Vicarage that made me a crime writer.
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Written at the height of Christie’s powers, it’s perfectly constructed, packed with red herrings and smart sub-plots it’s shot through with sly humour and it’s full of characters who may be stereotypical but whose motivations and responses we recognise, often with a wry smile. When it comes to the best Christie, as opposed to the most popular, my vote still goes to The Murder at the Vicarage, the novel that introduces the estimable Miss Marple. Was she an influence, even if only as someone to react against? Were or are they still a fan and, if so, which is their favourite of her books, and why? No matter how many you read, there was always the assurance that there were plenty more.īut where does Agatha Christie’s reputation stand today? Is she still relevant, given the current appetite for gritty realism and bloody gore? Do her books still hold up as great mystery fiction? Or is she still read more for nostalgia than anything else? To mark today’s 125th anniversary of Agatha Christie’s birth, I asked contemporary crime writers to contribute their thoughts on her work. Part of the attraction undoubtedly was that Christie was as prolific as she was talented. Looking back on it now, it seems clear that Enid Blyton was the gateway drug: the Famous Five and the Secret Seven gave me a craving that soon only Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple could satisfy.Īpart from the most famous plots, the details have long since faded, save the odd motive for murder (passing on German measles!) weird clues (Lo - Hen - Grin) and peculiar words (mountebanks and anti-macassars) but what still linger in the memory are the paranoid parsing of every paragraph for that tell-tale clue the late nights when lights out had to be disobeyed as a denouement loomed and the satisying frustration of being outwitted time and again by a master plotter.
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I used to think of my early teenage addiction to the works of Agatha Christie as the literary equivalent of pool-hall prowess, the sign of a mis-spent youth.