For years I’ve loved one-off homicide mysteries that associates beneficial, however the style hadn’t actually gotten its hooks in me. I’ve merely by no means been the form of reader who actively tries to unravel the case. My associates who champion these books are likely to care deeply about monitoring pink herrings and trying to out-sleuth the creator. 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 many years with out studying something by the “queen of thriller” Agatha Christie, regardless of her being one of many best-selling authors of all time. However after burning by means of tons of romances this 12 months and searching 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 challenge of studying each considered one of Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries so as of publication. It helped me discover commonalities in a few of my favourite books, exhibits, and flicks, and finally led me down a wormhole of so many others. I really like to gather hobbies. In 2023, homicide mysteries turned my newest.
I began with the books associates most passionately beneficial: And Then There Had 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 Had been None is taken into account considered one of 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 in addition due to the detective on the coronary heart of the story, whose illustrious mustaches stole the present. That is, in fact, the beloved Belgian mastermind Hercule Poirot.
In Orient Categorical, I acquired a direct 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 used to be struck particularly by Poirot’s morality; his determination 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 practice 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 unravel the case. Is he in additional of her books? I questioned, like a spring hen. I used to be instantly rewarded.
Picture: Nicole Clark/Polygon
Since July, my Libby app has been a protracted 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 may 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 manner, 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 creative set-ups and options.
Studying by means of Hercule Poirot’s foibles has additionally been like opening up a skylight in my thoughts. Very early on, Poirot helped me notice I liked 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 colour to my recollections 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 Checklist. I don’t know that I might 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 motion pictures and exhibits that play with a few of Christie’s most well-known set-ups. Like a detective with pink yarn and thumbtacks, I’ve taken notes whereas rewatching a lot of Rian Johnson’s latest 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 Loss of life on the Nile, during which a person marries a lady for her wealth after which works along with his true beloved to homicide mentioned 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.
Satirically, it’s the direct variations that I haven’t deeply engaged with. I haven’t but watched any of the Kenneth Branagh motion pictures, nor have I watched the beloved present Agatha Christie’s Poirot. Since Orient Categorical is what acquired me into Poirot, the one adaptation I’ve watched is the 1974 film directed by Sidney Lumet, with an outrageous forged 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 delightful establishing pictures of the practice chugging alongside. It feels distinctly like one thing that might 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 learn deeper into Christie, I’ve constantly discovered trendy tales that pay homage to her work are extra enjoyable than people who method it as straight adaptation. Why reproduce a facsimile of Christie’s work when her model and inventiveness go away a lot room for play? She wrote within the Nineteen Twenties by means of the ’70s — the world is so completely different now, and rife with alternative for lighthearted sleuthing. I’m anticipating the brand new tales her work will lead me towards as I hold studying into the brand new 12 months. For now, although, I can be pleased about all of the newly beloved tales my journey with Poirot has introduced me — from Christie or these she instantly impressed.
