She Wrote Stinkers Too - Revisiting & Revering Agatha Christie

I would not be the prolific reader I am today — in fact may never have discovered my love of reading so early in my youth — if it wasn’t for one particular genre that pulled me in as a boy of ten — Mysteries.

You know those instantly recognizable blue, hard-cover Hardy Boy books in many a thrift store? Little boy Joey (that’s me) purchased, devoured, rank-ordered and then displayed every single one of them across my bedroom floor. Only to be followed up by the rank-order by favorite cover art design, best to worst.

We’re talking 66 mysteries. That’s a lot of money forked over at the local Waldenbooks by a youngster — money that was hard-earned thanks to an early-morning paper route, and faithfully spent on true treasures, books.

By middle school I’d progressed to Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective mysteries, which were a tad more up-to-date than the boys Hardy, and I was now known by my classmates as “a reader.” But in seventh grade I met my match in an English teacher who wasn’t content to consider me a good kid just because I was a reader. To her, that should just be a given.

As she made her way around the room to inquire what book we’d selected for our next oral book report, I presented her with my latest Encyclopedia Brown. After a cursory glance, Mrs. L pronounced, “I think you’re reading at a much higher level than this — you could do better, Joe.”

Then she spoke the immortal words:

“Have you ever heard of Agatha Christie?”

I had not.

Mrs. L pulled out the book-order sheet and pointed to the one Christie title offered, Ten Little Indians, also sometimes referred to as And Then There Were None, and I agreed to do my book report on that.

And this young lad’s life was forever changed.

I became obsessed, entranced and a full-on fan.

The ladies at Waldenbooks shook their heads and smiled as the bespectacled now-12 and 13-year-old me plunked down more money every other week and bought another Agatha Christie mystery, already envisioning the next rank-order fun.

The timing was right. The popular film adaptations of her work — Murder On the Orient Express with Albert Finney and Death on the Nile with Peter Ustinov — were often a Sunday night movie of the week. Not to mention the TV-movie versions of Dead Man’s Folly, Caribbean Mystery and Murder With Mirrors all over the screen in the mid-80s.

I was like a pig in poop.

My grandparents marveled and gave money to support my cause in not just reading but purchasing all 88 books that Ms. Christie published between 1920 and 1976.

It was probably a three-year odyssey and I adored it.

However, at the tail end of this quest, I couldn’t deny I was dragging my feet about reading the stragglers deliberately left to the end. Titles like Postern of Fate, Akhnaton, Passenger to Frankfurt beckoned mournfully. I had to reluctantly accept that even my dear goddess Agatha was human who had written many a boring dud here and there.

And I marveled — truly marveled — at how lucky I was that the first Christie novel my 11-year-old eyes encountered was a spectacular one like And Then There Were None.

I shuttered to realize it could’ve been her not-so-entertaining At Bertram’s Hotel, the overly dark non-mystery The Pale Horse, or the dense and drawn out They Came to Baghdad, the morose Destination Unknown.

If I’d read any of those stinkers, I may have moved on and never worshiped and paid homage at the Altar of Agatha, never lived to tell the tale.

But allow me to now acknowledge the elephant in the room.

I can hear some of you more discerning and astute readers kindly indulging me but secretly you’re thinking, that’s all well and good, my boy, but Agatha Christie is not a serious author. This is sweet and all, but she’s for the great unwashed masses — she’s pop, she’s popcorn, she’s fluff, she’s… below my standards.

I suppose some may say that — you know who you are! — but may I remind you that the woman published her first mystery in 1920 and her last basically as Jimmy Carter was about to enter the White House in the U.S.?

Every year. Without fail. There was a new Christie novel.

Some years, two. For 56 years.

That’s a lot of daily procrastination and resistance for a writer to face and overcome.

Her body of work is almost always set in the present, therefore each story’s backdrop reflects the times — the fear of The Great War, then the agonizing years of 1930s Europe as Hitler rose to power amidst so much uncertainty. Then the World War II years from a decimated city, the recovery years, the swinging ‘60s with pretty young things in fashionable London, into the ‘70s.

And she did this while simultaneously adapting short stories into plays, like The Mousetrap, which coincidentally just this past weekend celebrated its 70th anniversary of playing nonstop in the West End.

But most importantly, please point your sleuthing magnifying glasses to her characters and her humor.

If you take the time to pick up any other popular book from the 1920s, I guarantee you’ll have a more than challenging time making it through the overwritten dialogue and prose. It’s dense and highfalutin, and definitely from another era of gentility and big words.

But pick up a Christie novel from the ‘20s and ‘30s and the dialogue crackles, humorously informing you of a character’s nature within seconds, and suddenly you’re recognizing your Aunt Ida from today. The youngsters joke and flirt and are firmly entrenched in their “now” — not a past era, per se, but their very real present, as they live life fully.

And attention, you snobs, that is no easy feat, to write dialogue that young teens, working class mechanics, less educated ladies, lawyers and academics — across the globe, mind you — seem to still be enjoying today.

There are spies, intricately plotted mysteries, Middle Eastern locales, archeological digs and boy-meets-girl fantasies amidst train travel.

I’ve of course moved on to read other superb fiction authors that take my breath away. But my early dalliance with Agatha lead many to suggest I visit with other ladies of mystery, like P.D. James, Ngaio Marsh and Ruth Rendell, whom I now adore.

But Christie remains, dammit.

As you know, to this day the Christie estate is compelled to rake in more money as they approve more foolhardy remakes, more updates, even going so far as to change who the murderer is??!, maybe inserting Miss Marple into what was originally a Poirot story.

It can be torture for a hearty traditional Christie fan like myself — but every so often someone gets it right or makes an improvement. But most are trying-too-hard crap. (I’m looking at you Kenneth Branagh and team!)

So let me close in saying Thank You, Mrs. L, for launching me on my super-fan reader journey and specifically pointing me to the non-stinker of And Then There Were None.

And since you asked, dear reader, allow me to quickly list the Christie novels that I’d recommend to a first-time reader to best showcase either Agatha Christie’s humor, her plotting, her characters or simply some amazing locales. And please note, they aren’t necessarily the tired titles you’ve heard of or have come to expect —

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Crooked House

Murder In Retrospect / Five Little Pigs

4:50 from Paddington

Murder In Three Acts

Murder for Christmas

Ten Little Indians / And Then There Were None

Evil Under the Sun

Ordeal by Innocence

Mrs. McGinty’s Dead

The Mirror Crack’d

Murder in Mesopotamia

Cards on the Table

Which Christie title did you happen to read first? Which is your favorite or the one you’d recommend to a first-time reader?

Be wary and discerning, dear readers and book-lovers — if you’re going to perpetuate the love of reading, don’t just casually recommend your favorite author, for they all have those not-so-great stinkers in the lexicon, and you don’t want to disappoint your hungry reader protégé.

Steer them directly to the title, the book that will fully affirm your blessed recommendation. Or even better, physically place that tome into their beckoning hands.

Thanks for reading real words written by a real human. This piece was originally published on Medium.com.