Prevent the Christie Murder: Save the Teenage Girl

*Spoilers*

One of the saddest deaths in Agatha Christie books--and proof that she was capable of great pathos--is the teenage girl in The Body in the Library, the one who is used to replace the target and confuse time of death. 

She is young, pretty, and utterly taken in by the slick bad guy who persuades her that he is an agent looking for upcoming stars. It is the wildly implausible, wished-for idea--the equivalent of winning the lottery: "She was strolling along the boardwalk, an agent spotted, her, and she became an overnight sensation."

That type of thing does happen--but an examination of stars' backgrounds indicates that many more of them have networks already in place when they arrive in Hollywood. The rest scrimp and save and take whatever jobs come along until they get their breaks. 

But the myth of the "Instant Star" is a popular one, and the young girl falls for it. The 1984 Pamela Reeves is presented as excited and innocent and completely trusting in her good fortune. She tells her friend who is excited on her behalf but keeps her secret. Pamela goes to the hotel, expecting to be chaperoned while she is made up for a screen test...

Only to be drugged and then killed. 

Agatha Christie mentions in several books the importance of a young woman having reliable adults who look out for her. Christie's position is far less sermonizing than she sounds. She was a concerned but not hovering mother. She also believed quite firmly in young women taking chances and leaving the family nest--parental figures who can't let go also come in for her criticism. And she shows great compassion to the parents in Body in the Library, who cannot have foreseen their child's willingness to ignore "Don't Talk to Strangers" when the pay-off was so alluring. (Likewise, children stop considering a stranger a stranger if that "stranger" asks them to help find a pet.) 

The mother and daughter relationship

in Bertram's Hotel is characterized

primarily by abandonment.

Christie's point is that there is little to protect this young woman EXCEPT savvy (which Pamela Reeves does not have) and a culture that keeps its eye out. 

My murder prevention detectives would be able to easily protect Pamela--warn her parents, scare off the murderer, distract her--but not if she gives them the slip. They are dealing with a potential victim who is truly that self-defeating, as many parents have discovered. 

There's a reason teenagers are considered borderline nuts.