Curtain

About a year ago, I set myself the task of reading all of Agatha Christie's fiction books, including short story collections (but not plays or anything published under a pseudonym), in the order they were published. This comes to 81 books, excluding those only published in the UK.

I read my first Agatha Christie when I was in fourth grade, 'Cards on the Table.' It was her 20th full-length novel and 13th Poirot. It's a well-crafted story bringing together Poirot with two crime fighters from other novels as well as introducing Ariadne Oliver, the fictional mystery novelist whose detective is a Finn that she's come to dislike and wonders why she chose such a character, especially as she knows nothing about Finns. No one can say she didn't have a sense of humor!

I certainly had no appreciation for any of this reading that first novel, but I liked it well enough that I read more. I tried Miss Marple, but found I did not care for the one or two I read. I'm not sure why that was, as I found them enjoyable this time around. Maybe I did not understand Miss Marple's think the worst of people attitude, or just couldn't appreciate its usefulness.

Over the years, I knew I had read many of the books, but could not be sure which I had read and which I had not. My solution? Go ahead and read them all. I'm a little amazed that I've been reading them for a year now (with some other books thrown in). And now, I have reached the end with 'Curtain,' the last Hercule Poirot novel. I did read the last Miss Marple, published a year after 'Curtain,' first since both it and 'Curtain were written during the second World War. I also skipped a collection of short stories, 'Poirot's Early Cases,' which I think I'll savor over the coming year or so (either that or use like a nicotine patch if I suffer any withdrawal symptoms).

I'm not sure how much of it is the setting--England between the world wars--but I enjoy her early works the best. Later, she focused on evil, sometimes to better affect than others, but nothing she did really touched the evil we find commonplace today. She was always a conservative upper class English woman that never got too down and dirty (don't be mislead by modern adaptations like 'Easy to Kill' that feature incest; Christie never went anywhere close to that!).

It does seem that as time went on, she needed a better editor. Perhaps, once you've reached the acclaim and sales she did within her lifetime, no one is willing to edit the way every author needs to be. Mysteries especially need to be clear and tidy, which makes the lack of editing harder to take.

One thing that surprised me the most about Agatha Christie's body of work was the number of stories that did not involve Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, or Tommy and Tuppence. She wrote several espionage/thriller type novels, as well as a novel set in ancient Egypt. While the earlier ones are generally pretty good, she never would have become famous on most of these.

The biggest surprise, though, was how little her two most famous detectives appeared in some of their novels. Miss Marple especially. It's more like she's got a cameo role in some of her novels. Most of the early Poirot novels are narrated by Arthur Hastings, keeping Poirot at a distance. It's an odd change for someone used to reading the first person narrative of Dashiell Hammett or, more recently, Kinky Friedman, or the involved personal lives of modern detectives like Harry Fairsteen or Elvis Cole.

Part of me wishes I'd written something about each one, but I'm not really one for writing reviews. Maybe I need to redefine reviews, short and sweet, just something to give my impression rather than any real analysis or detailed documenting.

Reading 'Curtain' is like meeting up with a good old friend. Arthur Hastings narrating, Poirot still as sharp as ever even if he is wheelchair bound, and a puzzle that is familiar but with its own novelty. Plus, it was written still in the golden age of her writing, in a world that was not yet past WWII. Nothing better.