For years I’ve loved one-off homicide mysteries that pals really helpful, however the style hadn’t actually gotten its hooks in me. I’ve merely by no means been the sort of reader who actively tries to resolve the case. My pals who champion these books are likely to care deeply about monitoring purple herrings and making an attempt to out-sleuth the writer. I’m simply as content material to know whodunit from the very begin, so long as the novel itself has satisfying pacing and character writing.
All that is to say I’ve lived three a long time with out studying something by the “queen of mystery” Agatha Christie, regardless of her being one of many best-selling authors of all time. However after burning by tons of romances this year and trying for different books with brisk pacing and a constant ending, I gave in. I ended up getting so sucked in that I began a ardour undertaking of studying each one in all Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries so as of publication. It helped me discover commonalities in a few of my favourite books, exhibits, and films, and in the end led me down a wormhole of so many others. I love to gather hobbies. In 2023, homicide mysteries turned my newest.
I began with the books pals most passionately really helpful: And Then There Have been None and Homicide on the Orient Categorical. They each thrilled me — the previous with its macabre and completely calibrated deaths, themed to every of the invitees, constructing and breaking suspense. I understood, instantly, why And Then There Have been None is taken into account one in all her greatest. However Homicide on the Orient Categorical caught in my thoughts even longer, particularly due to its bombastic homicide reveal on the finish — and additionally due to the detective on the coronary heart of the story, whose illustrious mustaches stole the present. That is, after all, the beloved Belgian mastermind Hercule Poirot.
In Orient Categorical, I bought an instantaneous sense of his memorably peculiar habits: his want for order, his style in garments, and his sense of pomp (that he by no means owns as much as). However I was struck particularly by Poirot’s morality; his choice to not flip these individuals over to the police after having solved the crime, as a result of the sufferer was himself a heinous assassin. Right here was a prepare fairly actually stuffed with murderers, confronted by a grasp detective, and but all of them walked away unscathed. Poirot, I instantly understood, was on this for the enjoyment of utilizing his little grey cells to resolve the case. Is he in additional of her books? I puzzled, like a spring hen. I was instantly rewarded.
Picture: Nicole Clark/Polygon
Since July, my Libby app has been an extended string of Poirot thriller holds. I made a listing of the books so as in order that I may strike them off with my useful highlighter. 20 books later, my starvation for them has solely grown. I’m extraordinarily keen on Poirot’s eccentricities: his continued makes an attempt at retiring and rising vegetable marrows, his tendency to meddle when he will help two individuals discover love, and his insistence on by no means explaining what he’s doing to his lovably dimwitted good friend Hastings (the narrator of the early books within the sequence). Even when the homicide thriller isn’t at all times resolved in my favourite method, I cherish passing time with Poirot a lot it hardly issues. Fortunately, Christie was masterful at plotting out her mysteries, and by no means appears to expire of ingenious set-ups and options.
Studying by Hercule Poirot’s foibles has additionally been like opening up a skylight in my thoughts. Very early on, Poirot helped me understand I beloved a locked-room thriller, and so I spent a month spiraling into different studying lists. A few of my favorites from Edgar Allan Poe belong on this legacy — which gave shade to my reminiscences of being the bizarre child who carried round her dad’s battered Poe omnibus plastered in sticky notes. From there, I added tons of Dorothy L. Sayers to my library maintain listing, earlier than getting right into a pocket of Japanese Honkaku mysteries (Shimada Soji, Seishi Yokomizo). Impulsively, I appeared for modern American authors who write locked-room thriller however for the Instagram period, and landed on Lucy Foley’s The Visitor Record. I don’t know that I would have discovered these authors in any other case, and loved every of their distinctive approaches to my new favourite tropes.
I’ve additionally gotten distracted by hoovering up modern films and exhibits that play with a few of Christie’s most well-known set-ups. Like a detective with purple yarn and thumbtacks, I’ve taken notes whereas rewatching a lot of Rian Johnson’s current work: Knives Out and Poker Face. I’ve honed a specific love for a pairs of colluding con artists just like the husband and spouse in Demise on the Nile, wherein a person marries a girl for her wealth and then works along with his true beloved to homicide stated spouse and share the newly inherited cash. In Poker Face, I delighted at episode 5, which equally showcased a scheming pair — however within the type of two former activists in a retirement residence committing a homicide collectively.
Mockingly, it’s the direct diversifications that I haven’t deeply engaged with. I haven’t but watched any of the Kenneth Branagh films, nor have I watched the beloved present Agatha Christie’s Poirot. Since Orient Categorical is what bought me into Poirot, the one adaptation I have watched is the 1974 film directed by Sidney Lumet, with an outrageous solid that features Sean Connery, Anthony Perkins, Ingrid Bergman, and Lauren Bacall. It’s great as a historic object, and as a movie, it holds up as having a definite perspective, with its memorably climactic stabbing scene, well-performed monologues, and lovely establishing photographs of the prepare chugging alongside. It feels distinctly like one thing that would not exist within the streaming period, the place IP is more and more recycled, and tailored so faithfully it appears to squish a director’s makes an attempt at interpretation.
As I’ve read deeper into Christie, I’ve persistently discovered fashionable tales that pay homage to her work are extra enjoyable than people who strategy it as straight adaptation. Why reproduce a facsimile of Christie’s work when her fashion and inventiveness depart a lot room for play? She wrote within the Nineteen Twenties by the ’70s — the world is so totally different now, and rife with alternative for lighthearted sleuthing. I’m keen for the brand new tales her work will lead me towards as I hold studying into the brand new year. For now, although, I will be grateful for all of the newly beloved tales my journey with Poirot has introduced me — from Christie or these she instantly impressed.
