Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making: Stories and Secrets from Her Archive - includes an unseen Miss Marple Story. John Curran
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5 [A] False man with dogs – stepson – different name [B] Real – invalid mother and daughter – dau[ghter] does it
Throughout the Notebooks murder methods, motives, settings and even the detective are apt to change between the early notes and the published book; names, in particular, change, sometimes radically. I try, where possible, to identify which character Christie may have had in mind when this occurs.
In Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks I examined over 25 novels, almost a dozen short stories and the genesis of all 13 of The Labours of Hercules; I also included some stage scripts and presented two ‘new’ Hercule Poirot investigations. Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making includes the rest of her novels, as well as an ‘unknown’ stage script. And, unlike Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks, this new volume contains some more personal glimpses – her reading lists, her own account of the creation of Hercule Poirot, a fascinating letter to The Times. As well as a new version of a Miss Marple short story I also include, from either end of her career, the original denouement of The Mysterious Affair at Styles and her notes for a final, unwritten novel.
If any further proof were needed of the universal and timeless appeal of Agatha Christie, the appearance of Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks provided it. Since its appearance I have received correspondence from Christie devotees the world over: from Australia, Russia, Croatia, Brazil, Argentina and Italy as well as the UK, the USA and Ireland; I have been interviewed for magazines, radio and TV in France, Portugal, Turkey, the USA, Iceland, Finland, Spain and Brazil as well as the UK and Ireland; I have been invited to Tokyo, Helsinki, Istanbul and New York, and to literary festivals throughout the UK and Ireland. And the book itself has been translated into 17 languages including Vietnamese and Croatian.
As a certain Belgian might say, ‘It gives one furiously to think, does it not …?’
1
Rule of Three
‘One of the pleasures in writing detective stories is that there are so many types to choose from: the light-hearted thriller … the intricate detective story … and what I can only describe as the detective story that has a kind of passion behind it …’
SOLUTIONS REVEALED
The A.B.C. Murders • After the Funeral • Appointment with Death • The Body in the Library • Curtain • Death in the Clouds • Death on the Nile • Evil under the Sun • Endless Night • Hercule Poirot’s Christmas • The Hollow • Lord Edgware Dies • The Man in the Brown Suit; • ‘The Man in the Mist’ • ‘The Market Basing Mystery’ • The Mousetrap • The Murder at the Vicarage • ‘Murder in the Mews’ • The Murder of Roger Ackroyd • Murder on the Orient Express • The Mysterious Affair at Styles • One, Two, Buckle my Shoe • Ordeal by Innocence • A Pocket Full of Rye • Sparkling Cyanide • Taken at the Flood • They Came to Baghdad • They Do It with Mirrors • Three Act Tragedy • ‘The Unbreakable Alibi’ • ‘Witness for the Prosecution’
‘Surely you won’t let Agatha Christie fool you again. That would be “again” – wouldn’t it?’ Thus read the advertisement, at the back of many of her early Crime Club books, for the latest titles from the Queen of Crime. The first in the series to appear, bearing the now-famous hooded gunman logo, was Philip MacDonald’s The Noose in May 1930; Agatha Christie’s first Crime Club title, The Murder at the Vicarage, followed in October of that year. By then Collins had already published, between 1926 and 1929, five Christie titles – The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Big Four, The Mystery of the Blue Train, The Seven Dials Mystery and Partners in Crime – in their general fiction list. As soon as The Crime Club was founded, Agatha Christie’s was an obvious name to grace the list and over the next 50 years she proved to be one of the most prolific authors – and by far the most successful – to appear under its imprint. This author/publisher relationship continued throughout her writing life, almost all of her titles appearing with the accompaniment of the hooded gunman.1
As the back of the dustjacket on the first edition of The Murder at the Vicarage states, ‘The Crime Club has been formed so that all interested in Detective Fiction may, at NO COST TO THEMSELVES, be kept advised of the best new Detective Novels before they are published.’ By 1932 and Peril at End House, The Crime Club was boasting that ‘Over 25,000 have joined already. The list includes doctors, clergymen, lawyers, University Dons, civil servants, business men; it includes two millionaires, three world-famous statesmen, thirty-two knights, eleven peers of the realm, two princes of royal blood and one princess.’
This is the first edition title page of The Murder at the Vicarage, the first Agatha Christie title to appear under The Crime Club imprint on 13th October 1930.
And the advertisement on the first edition wrapper of The A.B.C. Murders (1936) clearly states the Club’s aims and objectives:
The object of the Crime Club is to provide that vast section of the British Public which likes a good detective story with a continual supply of first-class books by the finest writers of detective fiction. The Panel of five experts selects the good and eliminates the bad, and ensures that every book published under the Crime Club mark is a clean and intriguing example of this class of literature. Crime Club books are not mere thrillers. They are restricted to works in which there is a definite crime problem, an honest detective process, with a credible and logical solution. Members of the Crime Club receive the Crime Club News issued at intervals.
As the above statement suggests, not for nothing was the 1930s known as the Golden Age of detective fiction. In that era the creation and enjoyment of a detective story was a serious business for reader, writer and publisher. Both reader and writer took the elaborate conventions seriously. The civilised outrage that followed the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in 1926 showed what a serious breach of the rules its solution was considered at the time. So, while in many ways observing the so-called ‘rules’, and consolidating the image of a safe, cosy and comforting type of fiction, Agatha Christie also constantly challenged those ‘rules’ and, by regularly and mischievously tweaking, bending, and breaking them, subverted the expectations of her readers and critics. She was both the mould creator and mould breaker, who delighted in effectively saying to her fans, ‘Here is the comforting read that you expect when you pick up my new book but because I respect your intelligence and my own professionalism, I intend to fool you.’
But how did she fool her readers while at the same time retaining her vice-like grip on their admiration and loyalty? In order to understand how she managed this feat it is necessary to take a closer look at ‘The Rules’.
THE RULES OF DETECTIVE FICTION – POE, KNOX, VAN DINE
Edgar Allan Poe: inventor of the detective story
In April 1841 the American periodical Graham’s Magazine published Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and introduced a new literary form – the detective story. Together with four more of Poe’s stories, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ established the unwritten ground-rules that distinguish detective fiction from other forms of crime writing – the thriller, the suspense СКАЧАТЬ