The Corrupt Bourgeois: Oh, Please Make The Archetype Go Away

It is not uncommon for Hollywood and New York Times Bestseller lists to promote, as Updike does with Gertrude & Claudius, the suburban family life that is seething with drugs and promiscuity underneath seeming respectability. 

In fairness to Updike, that could have been his point regarding his retelling of Hamlet. Not great drama! Just two somewhat pathetic people living out a typical intellectual trope. 

Unfortunately, the idea that suburbia is riddled with ghastly secrets and all kinds of repression is the main reason most current products of Miss Marple entirely misunderstand Christie's point. 

Christie wasn't preaching the dark underbelly of seemingly refined middle class mainstream life. She fully supported middle class mainstream life! She was pointing out that the dark underbelly of human nature on a resort wasn't too different from the dark underbelly of human nature in a village. People are much the same everywhere. 

Again, in fairness, Updike may have been making the same point. But this not-entirely-normal obsession with suburbia makes one wonder if the writers--and Hollywood--are indulging mostly in a kind of wishful thinking, in both directions: what they wish they had and what they wish would happen to all those people in those neighborhoods.

When Bones did its evil suburbia episode, the writers deliberately filled it with every supposed suburban underbelly trope. They topped all the cliches with ordinary neighbors and, ultimately, as the excuse for the murder, the utterly mundane. 

Still, Blue Bloods generally did better with Danny's neighbors: community is community. No point in dismissing it until one learns its value. 

Sandlot truly is closest to the truth.

Stopping Christie Murderers: Crazy is Harder to Stop, Murder is Easy and Endless Night

These posts present fictional crime prevention detectives who go into novels, specifically Agatha Christie novels, to stop the murders there. 

*Spoilers* 

Not many but some of Christie's murderers are nuts, such as Miss Honoria Waynflete from Murder is Easy. And the problem with crazy is that craziness is difficult to stop. 

Take Michael from Endless Night. Although he goes crazy after the murder, he doesn't start out that way. Like most Christie murderers, he is self-protective. He doesn't plan to put himself at risk. The murder at the end is an aberration in an otherwise careful plan.

That is, Christie's murderers usually kill within a mindset and current set of experiences; they want various things out of their real lives that they will protect by not behaving stupidly. The things they want are often the things that make them vulnerable. And because they are vulnerable, they can be stopped. 

With the truly crazy, their craziness is their protection. While Michael's link to Greta immediately gives away his nefarious plan, Miss Waynflete's link to the dead parrot, by itself, wouldn't convince anyone of anything. Unfortunately, my crime prevention detectives would have to catch her in the act of trying to do someone in.

The point here is an important one: my recent personal contact with a suicide brought home to me how much the human spirit, evolutionary or emotionally or culturally or morally, isn't prepared for acts that violate social norms. And social norms do matter! (By themselves, they do an exceptional job keeping society functional.) Consequently, I've always thought it was unfair to blame police and other investigators for not imagining as a reality the unimaginable.

The point here is also the reason that I don't buy the "sane person who murders a dozen people to hide one murder" as occurs in The ABC Murders. I don't think truly non-serial-killing people do that. Something inherent holds us back from that one-on-one level of evil. And, in fact, Christie does a decent job with her serial murderer. He may actually be what he thinks he isn't. (I will come back to The ABC Murders in a later post.)  

To put the matter more cynically: people justify themselves, and they have to live with their justifications. And some acts simply are too difficult to justify unless one is nuts. Michael in Endless Night goes crazy because he can't leap the gap--not when he was likely falling in love, unintentionally, with the wife he killed.  

Stop the Christie Murder: Christmas & Murder

A popular myth insists that murders occur more around holidays. 

I doubt it. However, the myth is so common that mystery writers regularly use it: put a bunch of non-complementary personalities together in a single house...MURDER! 

*Spoilers*

"The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding" does not entail an actual murder. It is one of those occasions when the detective forces the villain to react by faking a robbery or death or suicide. If the police did it, it would be called entrapment. When private detectives creates these scenarios, they still come off as rather extreme. 

Poirot likes to fool the villains and I often accept the plot device as "hey, that's fun!"

"The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding," however, is a little creepy since the person who supposedly dies is a girl in her early teens. Granted, her "death" is arranged by her and her cousins (to supposedly fool Poirot). But Poirot plays along. It is rather unimaginable that everyone would just laugh and say, "How cute" after the fact rather than punching Poirot in the face. 

The Poirot episode is rather enchanting, however, since it delivers a full plate of English Christmas customs from going to church to singing carols to charades and Christmas crackers.

To avoid Poirot being punched in the face, my prevention detectives reveal that Bridget isn't dead. Moreover, they let the villain get away with the jewel well beforehand. Once they do, they nab the villain for theft. Collected evidence will trace the original theft to him as well. 

Not as exciting! But there are the festivities to get to.

Perilous Interference: Why Not to Get Involved in a Christie Investigation

*Spoilers* 

One of the stranger Poirot novels is Peril at End House. Poirot helps a young woman who he is believes is being stalked by a killer...only to discover that she was playing him the whole time. She's a murderer. 

How far did Poirot's interference inspire and aid her? If no one had picked up on her hints--"Someone is trying to kill me"--would she have still committed the book's primary murder?

I tackle this problem in an earlier post: "Detectives Who Cause Deaths."

The problem here is less about the ethics and more about the writing. 

I think the murderess may have still committed the murder: she is something of a sociopath. And Poirot is susceptible to damsels in distress. Still, the issue points up the plot's weaknesses. 

In sum, my prevention detectives would simply need to warn the murderess's cousin--the true target--to stay away. And I don't think they would need to witness the murder first in order to rewind and issue the warning. Objectively-speaking, simply asking around would expose the murderess's mercenary nature and her less than respectable friends. The cousin staying away is good sense. 

The book isn't one of my favorites precisely because so much depends on Poirot not questioning the young woman's motives. And Christie appears to side-step Poirot's accountability at the end. 

On the other hand, Christie appears to have set up Poirot deliberately. She explores detective compliance in other books. When does interference actually create more problems? 

Ordeal by Innocence directly addresses this question. Arthur Calgary returns from a trip to discover that a young man he gave a ride to years earlier was hung for a crime committed during the time the young man was with Calgary. He insists on investigating, only to discover that actually the young man did plan the crime. Calgary's investigation stirs up a lot of unhappiness and exposes one of the young man's victims. The book is a more solid mystery than Peril since the detective's culpability is addressed upfront.

As I mention in the earlier post, Dorothy Sayers also tackled an investigation having unintended negative consequences. In Gaudy Night, when the professors accuse Wimsey of harassing people who were forced to commit terrible deeds due to social inequity, Wimsey responds by asking them to consider his "real" victims--the people who got killed while he was investigating, usually by criminals who feared exposure. The question of when and when not to get involved continues throughout the book, up to Harriet's choice between a "safe harbor" (where "real world" events impinge only through the mind) and an "unsafe" life/marriage with a complicated guy, where the outcome is less sure.

Neither Christie nor Sayers argue that Poirot and Wimsey shouldn't be involved. They are pointing out that getting involved may have a cost. (My definition of a non-Mary Sue is that non-Mary Sues accept that cost instead of having their "safety" preserved by the author no matter what.)

My prevention detectives have a mandate to stop murders. That doesn't mean they can't be careful and wise about how they go about it. They are more likely to be careful and wise if they understand and accept the possible ramifications.

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.

Stop the Christie Murder: Do Conspiracies Ever Really Work?

In Elementary, Sherlock challenges the idea of conspiracies, pointing out that people are incapable of keeping schtum. 

I agree with Sherlock entirely. 

I also find conspiracies boring. Conspiracies, drug wars, gang stories..all bore me. The inner machinations of a group of self-absorbed people are not even passably interesting. Give me a single body in the library any day.

Christie created a few books with conspiracies. I have no idea whether she believed in them or whether they were part of the culture. Everyone else was writing spy/conspiracy/hidden agenda tales, so she did as well. 

I quite like the 1997 version for capturing

the time period. That's Andy Serkis on the

right!

I generally avoid such tomes. However, one conspiracy/murder mystery tale I enjoy is Pale Horse, so long as I ignore the implausibility of the underlying set-up. 

Christie, as always, focuses mainly on character so Mark Easterbrook and his experiences with other people run most of the narrative: his off-again/on-again girlfriend; the love of his life and fellow investigator, Ginger; the so-called witches; the local vicar's wife; the doctor...

But whether anyone would really be able to keep the conspiracy a secret, much less keep it operating smoothly...

I doubt it. 

 *Spoilers!*

How the conspiracy works: A client wants to kill someone off. The client visits a businessman and sets up a bet: I bet you so-and-so won't die by this date. If so-and-so DOES, I will pay you $$$$. 

The client is told to visit a pair of witches in a small village and then go abroad for a time. The witches perform a supposed curse, so the client (supposedly) believes that the witches killed the victim.

Meanwhile, survey takers inform a fake business run by the mastermind/contract killer what products the victim uses. The killer slips into the apartment or house and replaces a product with one that kills through thallium. The killer later retrieves the bad product. 

There was a true life case where a man killed numerous people with thallium and wasn't caught immediately. However, he was acting alone as was William Palmer with strychnine.

As a plan, I find The Pale Horse conspiracy fairly unbelievable. First, the killing method is hit or miss. A cat could knock over the product. Someone else could use it (an approach used by Heyer in one novel). The victim could carry it away somewhere (the products are hygiene products), so the killer can't retrieve it. The victim could decide to switch products or temporarily move on to another one (I do this with shampoo all the time), so the death doesn't happen when desired, and the client demands to be paid. The victim could be in the middle of moving and all the products get thrown out the day after they are delivered.  

Other variables: The client could fail to visit the witches, could blab about the witches, feel guilt and blab about the contract, be irritated by the introduction of the witches and send a separate contract killer to cancel the bet with the businessman. The client could ignore instructions and not stay away at the time of the death and therefore be suspected--at which point the client might blab to the police. The victim and client could get into an argument before the scheduled death and one could kill the other. If the murderer is the client, the client could blab to the police in the hopes of leniency. The client might actually truly believe in the occult and fear it, to the point of reporting the encounter and/or to the point of arguing, "I shouldn't have to pay anyone." The client could fail to pay up for entirely mercenary reasons (an approach used in the 1997 movie). 

The witches could turn on the contract killer if they imagine they are not getting a fair cut. So could the businessman. The witches or the businessman might decide to take over the organization, leading to a three-way turf war (witches versus businessman versus mastermind/killer).

For that matter, the survey takers could mess up: ask the wrong person questions, go to the wrong address, fail to mail in the paperwork, take down answers wrong, fill out the forms with whatever answers they want because they are too lazy to go canvassing...

In fact, the conspiracy here

unravels because the conspirators

cannot control the weather, new

passengers, forensic methods, etc.

In fairness, Christie was well-aware of all these holes. Her murderers are often found out because they can't control human vagaries, the oddness of, for instance, one of the survey takers becoming suspicious about the number of deaths she has encountered and telling a priest--who is then coshed on the head (the sequence in the novel). And Christie intelligently implies that the conspiracy would have unraveled eventually: for one, the contract killer is far too arrogant. 

Me? I think the very first killing would upend the entire edifice. The one crazy witch who truly believes in her powers would brag. The businessman would want a larger cut. The client would also blab and/or refuse to pay. The contract killer would try to insert himself into the investigation, as he does in the novel. The police would investigate, not because they identified the poison but because deaths of otherwise healthy people are suspicious. (Police have investigated deaths where the poison was not immediately identified.) The victim would become suspicious and contact a private investigator (the victims don't die immediately).

Unfortunately, I'm not sure my prevention investigators would be able to prevent that first death. But I doubt a conspiracy with so many moving parts would last long. So the deaths that start the novel--that of the priest and the survey taker--would ultimately be prevented.

More on Amateur Aristocratic Detectives: Harley Quin

Although a great many Golden Age detectives created amateur aristocratic detectives, Agatha Christie didn't much. Her primary detectives--Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple--are thoroughly middle-class gentry. Her lesser known detectives tend to be the police or, like Colin Lamb, people connected to the police. 

The one somewhat aristocratic character that Christie created was Harley Quin. He appears in the short story collection bearing his name, The Mysterious Mr. Quin. He is a dark, saturnine young man who shows up when problems/mysteries arise involving lovers. He often solves them by prompting an elderly man Mr. Satterthwaite to take certain actions. 

Harley Quin is not entirely aristocratic, but he bears markers in common with Wimsey and Vance--namely, his secrecy and vaguely humorous air. However, he has a far darker side than the other characters. Christie was drawing on Harlequin from the Harlequinade, and Harley Quin has the unorthodox and faintly chaotic nature of Eros. Not the cutesy Cupid but the god who might just challenge all expectations. 

Christie's novels show a continual willingness to allow for passion and terror in the face of domestic love. She would, of course, come down on the side of Miss Marple regarding civility and decent behavior. But she allows that people are often helpless before their emotions. Characters who plan and carry out deaths are far more venial in her books than characters who wish and hope in secret, full of painful desires. On more than one occasion, Poirot consoles a character by pointing out that "wishing" for a death, however desperately, is not the same as carrying one out. 

Christie also, continually, comes down on the side of young women leaving home to "chance" their lives with rogues and other such lovers rather than remaining safely at home. One gets the impression that she wouldn't be all that big on trigger warnings. Stepping outside the door matters more than throwing up blockades to experience.

Harley Quin protects lovers but not always in the way we or Mr. Satterthwaite expect. The stories are, oddly enough, more Hans Christian Andersen's mermaid walking about on legs that give her continual pain than anything from Hallmark. 

Love is dangerous. Harley Quin will help but he will not pause or excise the emotion.

Stop the Christie Murder: Death on the Nile and Murder in Mesopotamia, Murder & Affairs

*Spoilers*

I reference the ridiculous murder in Death on the Nile here. It is one of the easiest to prevent since all anyone has to do is not leave the murderer alone when he is supposedly shot (the reason for leaving him alone isn't plausible--one of the other passengers should have gone for the doctor, not taken the accomplice TO the doctor). 

Murder in Mesopotamia is less easy to prevent. Although the particular murder in the book is easily prevented (I don't think anyone should be sticking their head through the bars of windows, anyway), the murderer is fairly remorseless. He would likely try again and succeed. 

The question here is, Could the reason for the murder be prevented? 

I generally ignore motive since murderous intent is (1) not other people's fault; (2) not necessarily based on anything substantial enough to merit intervention, no matter what "crime is the fault of society" folks try to preach. Dorothy Sayers argues in multiple places that figuring out HOW is far more important than WHY since there are too many WHYs: the murderer could be anyone!

However, in both above books, a "stolen" lover and an affair are the direct motivations. Could my intervention detectives stop the events that set everything into motion?

Christie makes clear with Death on the Nile that the instigator is Simon, not Jacqueline or even Linnet. Although Poirot points out to Linnet that she took her friend's lover, he does so to stop her prevaricating. He still pities her (Branagh's version also shows Linnet in a reasonably positive light). 

The problem is Simon who, like Willoughby from Sense & Sensibility, wants love and money. Jacqueline, with a more sensitive conscience, goes along to prevent him messing up the matter. 

I think my prevention detectives could stop the ill-fated marriage between Linnet and Simon. They could point out Simon's avaricious nature using bank records and testimonials (Linnet is fairly hard-headed). They could put pressure on Jacqueline to abandon the plan. They could excoriate Simon, who wouldn't care to see himself as dishonorable. All the parties involved are human enough to be stopped. 

Murder in Mesopotamia would be more difficult but at least one member of the party, Richard Carey, feels guilty enough about the affair to potentially be stopped. 

Here is where motive gets messy, though. Even if the affair was prevented, it is possible that the husband, Dr. Leidner, would still kill his wife. Her betrayal is less physical and more emotional. It isn't that she is having sex with Carey; it is that she has fallen in love with him. 

The prevention investigators would have their job cut out for them. 

I have always been impressed that Agatha Christie, whose first husband left her to marry another woman, was able not only to extend compassion to those embroiled in love affairs but to also see them as differing from each other considerably. 

Her mysteries always come back to character.

Stop the Christie Murder: Hercule Poirot's Christmas

*Spoilers* 

Hercule Poirot's Christmas was one of the first Christies I read and one of my favorites for many years. I still find the family dynamics fresh and interesting. Christie didn't do manor house mysteries as often as people think. When she did, she did them well. She populates the house in this particular book with three distinct couples plus a roguish son, two outliers, and several servants. And she keeps all of them functioning smoothly (as in believably) together. 

The murder is clever but not entirely believable. 

Hercule Poirot's Christmas (also, a Holiday for Murder) is one of those murders that relies on a kind of Rube Goldberg machine series of events--and like with other closely timed murderers, I don't entirely buy it. 

There's a Columbo episode, for instance, in which the murderer relies on a tape recording of his voice during a film, and every time I watch it, I start getting nervous on behalf of the murderer. Not that I want the murderer to succeed and not that I haven't seen the movie a dozen times but--

I keep expecting the tape recorder to eat the tape. It did often enough back in the days when I listened to tapes. I can't even count the number of tapes I had to disentangle from a machine and then rewind manually. 

I feel the same way about Hercule Poirot's Christmas. Maybe the string will break. Maybe the bladder pig toy will fizzle out or someone will declare, That sounds like a bladder pig toy! Maybe the furniture will remain stacked, greeting the family with an obvious set-up when they burst into the room. Maybe the window will get loose and fall on the string/wire...

 And so on. 

Take into account that when Adam and Jamie decided to do a Rube Goldberg machine as a holiday present for viewers they found it nearly impossible to get it to work flawlessly in one (or even twenty) seamless takes. And these are both skilled special effects guys. As Adam nonchalantly and honestly points out, when one is doing a commercial, one doesn't usually film the whole thing in one go. 

(There is a Rube Goldberg machine at the Boston airport--or used to be--I once spent several hours between flights, staring at it--but it clearly is operating entirely on electricity and items placed on tracks.) 

In any case, my prevention inspectors might miss the murder--I'm not sure that people leap to the conclusion that intricate plots are being hatched that involve strings and toys and stacked furniture--but the convoluted coverup would be a giveaway, especially to eyes trained to see it (Poirot doesn't arrive until after the fact).

In terms of prevention, the murder rests on identity: the many legitimate and illegitimate sons of the murder victim who are lurking about the house. If I give my prevention inspectors access to DNA tests (which Poirot, of course, did not have), they could swab every male in the vicinity. 

Even without DNA tests, however, if my prevention inspectors do thorough, in-depth research on the victim starting in his youth up to his current age (an approach Christie would approve since her detectives believe that the solution to a mystery is often discovered through understanding the victim), the identity of the murderous son would reveal itself.

Stop the Christie Murder: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd & Evil Under the Sun

 *Spoilers*

Both mysteries could be stopped by my prevention investigators hanging around where they aren't wanted.

In fact, a tremendous number of fictional murders could be prevented by snoopy, loud, obnoxious characters who ignore social cues and just won't go away! 

The question therefore becomes, Will the murderers try again?

The murder of Roger Ackroyd is entirely dependent on Roger Ackroyd's lady friend not telling him she is being blackmailed before she commits suicide. She sends him a letter instead, and the blackmailer kills him before he can open it. 

A lingering, unwanted guest who rifles through people's mail would take care of that matter in the present. But would that put off the murderer in the long run?

I say, "Yes." Pierre Bayard in Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? makes a strong case that the blackmailer is a weak-willed doofus to begin with, not exactly given to murderous action and not very good at planning. The sister is actually the murderer! 

In either case (sister or brother malefactor), there is a very narrow window before the authorities bear down on the blackmailer and his family and make his life a misery. My prevention investigators simply have to stall the blackmailer and his sister. 

In the second case, Christie presents a couple in which the man is a serial killer and his wife abets him. They could easily be forestalled in the related book--again, my prevention investigators simply have to hang around the victim until she accuses them of stalking her. Or hang around the isolated beach until they annoy any and all visitors. Or hang around the murderer until...he goes after one of them. 

The snag here, of course, is that one person may be saved but the couple will likely keep on killing. Although they ostensibly kill for money, they obviously enjoy the evil thrill of the whole thing. 

Which means that my prevention investigators will either have to catch the murderer in the act or prove he and his wife are responsible for a prior murder; Poirot ends up performing the latter task. 

Evil Under the Sun is one of those mysteries where the mystery itself rests on the utterly implausible notion that nobody but the murderer will check the supposed dead body on the beach for signs of life.

However, aside from this silliness, the overall psychology of the book is quite good. My prevention investigators will have to be clever and on the alert to keep bad stuff from happening in the present and in the future.

I don't think it would be difficult for them to figure out the victim--"eternal and pre-destined," Poirot calls her. The next step is to shadow her continually. When she goes to the beach (stupidly but predictably) to meet the serial killer (hey, there were girls who went off with Bundy though he had to ask quite a number before he "caught" one), they keep her in the nearby cave.

They may not even have to send her back into danger. Once they see what Patrick intends to do--create a false public alarm--they can haul him into the nearest police station for questioning until the prior case is proved.  He will no doubt claim that he and his wife were joking but he also has a short temper. A skilled interrogator could likely trip him up.

Stop the Christie Murder: Murder on the Links

These posts are based on my fan-fiction approach to Agatha Christie's mystery novels: a group of murder prevention detectives enter each novel to stop the crime. 

See Mysterious Affair at Styles

*Spoilers*

Murder on the Links is a Christie murder whose solution lies in the past--Poirot recognizes that the current apparent crime resembles a murder from 22 years earlier.

22 years earlier, Madame Jeanne Beroldy arranged with her lover, Georges Conneau, to kill her husband. Conneau tied her up, then knifed her husband. Madame Beroldy told the investigators that thugs broke into her home and committed the deed. The investigators didn't buy it. For one, Conneau did not tie her wrists tightly: the lack of bruises was suspicious. The police arrested Madame Beroldy but couldn't arrest Conneau, who had already fled the country. By fully blaming Conneau, Madame Beroldy managed to achieve an acquittal.

 

Twenty-two years later, Conneau returns to France, married with a grown child. He encounters Madame Beroldy, now going by Madame Daubreuil and with a grown child of her own. She recognizes her erstwhile lover, who could still be arrested for his part in the prior murder, and she begins to blackmail him. 

 

Along with his current, strong-willed wife, Conneau determines to fake his death using the same method as before: he will tie up his wife, this time remembering to bind her wrists tightly; she will tell the police that thugs broke in; the body of a tramp with a disfigured face will be found on the adjoining golf links. People will believe Conneau is dead.

Conneau's plan goes wrong when he gets murdered instead.

It seems rather stupid of Conneau to (1) return to a place where people know him; (2) duplicate the same crime as before. But, as Golden Age mystery writers like Dorothy Sayers and profilers like John Douglas point out, criminals do in fact do this: they go back to what is familiar--not necessarily to the scene of the crime but to the surroundings and people and methods that worked for them in the past. They keep, for instance, drowning their brides in the bath--or poisoning their neighbors and children and everybody else within reach with strychnine.

The bike race is in the Poirot movie, not the book.

My investigators are primarily concerned with preventing the current crime--the original crime is a different matter--and the easiest prevention method is recognition. One of my investigators shouts out in the middle of town or the middle of a hotel (or a bike race), "By gum, you are Georges Conneau! I say, you're Madame Beroldy! Isn't one of you supposed to be in jail?"

Since my investigators are required to behave in realistic, organic ways, the question then becomes, How plausible is recognition after twenty-two years? (The Poirot movie uses a ten-year gap.)

The Beroldy case would have

equaled the Crippen case in coverage.

I suggest that even in 1923, recognition of an advertised criminal from 1913 or 1903 would be more than likely. The same urge that pushes Conneau back into his prior habits would send him into the same business circles. Even before social media, newspaper articles, especially for popular cases, were common currency. 

 

As a prior post about Monk points out, people have the capacity to suppose and assume and suggest and speculate any number of possibilities. If the public can suppose that Jack the Ripper was an aristocrat, public gossip about "that guy who moved into that villa last month" would eventually deliver the link to Conneau (as well as a dozen other possible links).

In any case, once Conneau is recognized, Daubreuil loses her power over him. He doesn't try to run away and nobody gets knifed in the back. 

 

Of course, Conneau ends up in jail! But eh, my investigators don't care about that, only in stopping the murder.

A different set of "sub-text" investigators would have to go back twenty-two years to stop the original murder from taking place.

Stop the Christie Murder: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde allows characters to enter novels and experience life alongside the characters. 

I suggest that all writers play with the idea of "virtual" literature, simply because we love books and reading so much. 

One idea that I've played with for awhile is a series where "prevention" detectives enter Christie novels to stop the murder. 

They have to stop the murder in keeping with the novel's actions--that is, they can't rewrite the murderer's intentions or the sequence of events. They have to work organically to prevent the death. I allow them to know ahead of time what they are trying to stop, but in truth, the idea would likely work better if they were in the dark and only knew the victim's identity or perhaps the method.

The question, of course, is whether the murder is preventable. Is it a matter of propinquity? Character? Is it inevitable?

So here is the first novel: The Mysterious Affair of Styles, which introduced Poirot. 

*Spoilers! I give away the murderer's identity!*

The novel is classic Christie with supposedly unbreakable alibis, overheard conversations, clues hidden in plain sight, and a very clever use of a medicine's residue. Agatha Christie was working in a pharmacy when she wrote the book (during World War I) and used her knowledge to bring about the murder. 

Hastings and Poirot proving the alibi.

It is also one of those murders that depends on everybody being cleverer than people actually are. The husband of the victim, Alfred Inglethorp, at the contrivance of his lover, Evelyn Howard, wants to be arrested for murder;  his alibi (for when he supposedly bought the poison) will get him off and he can't be tried again. 

Christie isn't the only crime writer to use this trope and I don't buy it. It is waaaay too risky. The police don't like making mistakes, and many detectives agree with "it's always the husband" Lieutenant Provenza, which means that the police would focus on discrediting the alibi rather than saying, "Oops, we made a mistake." The D.A. or equivalent just might follow suit. And whoops, Inglethorp ends up in prison anyway.

After all, it turns out that Inglethorp and Howard are guilty. The alibi is irrelevant since the poison was taken, unsuspectingly, while everyone was absent. 

But my writing problem here is not to warn Inglethorp, "Hey, don't be an idiot!" but to prevent the murder. 

Depending on how much they know, my prevention detectives wouldn't have to do much more than substitute the medicine with the potential lethal dose with a new bottle.

However, if they only know the victim's identity, they will have a more difficult time. Emily Inglethorp is a proud woman who would object to the possibility of anyone trying to murder her. With some people, identity really is everything. See Law & Order UK "Denial." In fact, in the novel, she is aware that her husband has betrayed her, yet she stays in the same house with him. 

Her staying may sound a little too much like suspense novels where the ingenue REMAINS in the haunted house. But her behavior is in keeping with her personality. Even in that first novel, Christie explored how the personality of the victim might inform the character of the murder itself.

My prevention detectives could always kidnap Emily and haul her to safety, but that's not exactly an organic solution. 

And they could always stand guard. However, the method of killing is ingenious enough--kudos, Christie!--they might miss it, at least the first time.

Since books can be read more than once, my prevention detectives would get things right the second time. However, there's no guarantee Alfred and Evie wouldn't try again or that my protagonists would be able to convince Emily that she is in danger. She may end up murdered no matter what. 

And there are other books to get to!

More to come...

The Truth About Christie: Manor House Mysteries are Rare

A perusal of Agatha Christie novels reveals an important truth--

She truly didn't write all that many "murder during the local manor house weekend party" books. 

Other mystery writers did--almost as if they were deliberately spoofing the form. Ngaoi Marsh, Georgette Heyer. 

Agatha Christie: not so much. 

Christie's books might best be described as "local community" murders: Murder is Announced, Murder at the Vicarage...

One of the few books that does explore the dissolution of a closed environment (or manor house) is Bertram's Hotel, and the point here is one that Christie returns to again and again, namely: 

There is no such thing as a closed environment. 

Bertram's, for one, is a deliberate facade. Other Christie mysteries present the problems of the supposed closed environment more organically. In The Body in the Library, complications result from an expanding community and neighborly resentment. In both Murder is Announced and Hercule Poirot's Christmas, the absence of generational and community knowledge is underscored. Are people who they claim to be? How would we know if they aren't?

When Christie wanted to keep a group in one place--and then knock them off one by one--she put them on an island (And Then There Were None). 

As I state in an earlier post about the problems of utopia, isolation is artificial. Stuff always leaks in, leaks out. Christie understood this truth very well.

Hollywood Can Get It Right: The Mirror Crack'd

Generally speaking, I consider the Joan Hickson's the definitive Miss Marples (the movies were recently remastered and re-released).

However, The Mirror Crack'd is one place where I think the Hollywood Miss Marple is far superior, despite the miscasting of Angela Lansbury (see below). 

In The Mirror Crack'd, Hollywood comes to St. Mary Mead. An aging and fragile female star who is about to rebuild her career buys Gossington Hall and then proceeds to get herself involved in a murder. 

Claire Bloom

The BBC The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side stars Joan Hickson as the detective with Claire Bloom as the aging and fragile female star, Marina Gregg. Barry Newman plays Jason Rudd, the devoted husband and director who knows her better than anyone. Constantine Gregory plays Ardwyck Fenn, the brusque and rude producer, while Glynis Barber plays the rival female star, Lola Brewster. 

Elizabeth Taylor

 In the Hollywood version, Angela Lansbury plays the detective and should have played it as her Murder, She Wrote persona rather than as an aged spinster. Angela Lansbury has never looked like an aged spinster in her life, not even now at age 96. 

Elizabeth Taylor plays Marina Gregg. Rock Hudson plays Jason Rudd. Tony Curtis plays the producer while Kim Novak plays the rival female star. 

And the fact is, the Hollywood cast plays nearly all the parts better. The BBC version is serious and tragic and Claire Bloom is arguably the superior actor for the lead role. But Christie is quite deliberately playing off the Hollywood mystique, including the status symbols and culture that come with it. The characters are actors who are, in a sense, playing themselves. 

Detective writer Ngaio Marsh, who worked in the theater, attempts to explain this behavior in a number of her books. It isn't that actors and actresses don't feel as passionately as they claim in their personal lives. They do. But they are trained to portray their emotions to the nth degree; consequently, their emotions come across as false, even when they aren't.

Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson and others manage to convey this double falsehood or double sincerity. They are depicting the end years of classic Hollywood, not the serious craft of hard-working actors.  

The one part that I prefer in the BBC version is Gwen Watford as Mrs. Bantry. Gwen Watford is extraordinarily delightful to watch in the Joan Hickson Miss Marples, and I love the scene in The Mirror Crack'd where she asks Mr. Rudd if she and the ladies of the parish can tour his marble bathrooms. 

Otherwise, the Hollywood version does a much better job capturing the milieu and the problem and the tragedy and the over-the-top resolution. Elizabeth Taylor is, after all, a great scene chewer. 

In fact, the resolution of the Hollywood version is altogether preferable--Miss Marple is allowed her summary. If only Hollywood had simply used Jessica Fletcher!

Silliest Agatha Christie On Record: Death on the Nile

In preparation for Branagh's upcoming Death on the Nile (February 2022), I re-watched David Suchet's Poirot version. I saw the Hollywood version years ago but couldn't bring myself to re-watch it. (The reason isn't Ustinov; see below.)

Before I continue: I loved this book when I was younger. I especially liked the exchanges between Poirot and Jacqueline. And on the page, the book more or less works.

It is unbelievably ridiculous on film. 

First, it relies on split-second timing and the kind of set-up that never, ever, ever happens in real life. 

*Spoilers If You Read Between the Lines*

For one, why doesn't someone stay with Simon? They would in real life. Why didn't one of the other passengers pick up the gun? They would in real life. What if a passenger wandered into the temporarily empty lounge? They would in real life. Why didn't someone come out of a cabin and run quite noisily into Simon ("Hey, Simon! Whatcha' doin' with that gun?")? They would in real life. 

Simon and Jacqueline can't kill off everyone. Which brings me to--

Second, so many people die! Tragedy around every corner, long before anyone has time to recover from the last "surprise." It's like Tess of the D'Urbervilles on steroids (though somewhat more interesting). Bang--wife dead! Bang--maid dead! Bang--horrible mother dead! Bang! Bang! Bang! Or "Boom, boom, boom," as Balder would say. 

It's more or less the reason I stopped watching Midsomer Murders, despite liking John Nettles. Uh, I don't think anyone in the tiny English village at the end of the episode is left.

I am extremely willing to suspend my belief (or disbelief) when I'm watching just about anything. So I know that something has reached radical levels of "I can't help but roll my eyes" when that's exactly what I start doing. 

I have thought for years that scriptwriters should remove at least one of the extra murders from Death on the Nile. It simply doesn't translate from the book to the screen. Writers never do. Melodrama sells! 

I'm curious to see how Branagh handles the problem.

Agatha Christie Collection: Evil Under the Sun

Technically, Evil Under the Sun, starring Peter Ustinov, isn't part of the Agatha Christie Collection, which consists of television movies. 

However, Evil Under the Sun does star Peter Ustinov, who has such a fun time being Poirot, it is easy to forgive him for not being Albert Finney (or David Suchet). 

Evil Under the Sun and Death on the Nile were both attempts to capitalize on the success of Murder on the Orient Express. Murder on the Orient Express is arguably not a great mystery but it worked as a movie--with all its celebrity cameos--because the celebrity cameos were used to highlight the importance of the characters. So the coarse American diva/matriarch/actress played by Lauren Bacall becomes more important and recognizable because she is played by Lauren Bacall. Ingrid Bergman wins an Academy Award for a ten-minute performance as a guilt-ridden nursery maid. It's rather like watching a series of skits.

Unfortunately, the other studio movies, rather like the second Ocean's Eleven movie, become so focused on insider jokes (Look at us clever celebrities playing parts in a mystery in which we make barbed comments to each other!) the movies are more irritating than clever. 

I compared Evil Under the Sun with Ustinov to Evil Under the Sun with Suchet.  

Evil Under the Sun is one of Christie's mysteries that relies on absolutely perfect timing, which I always find rather unbelievable. 

It also relies on a remarkable insight on Christie's part: that the so-called femme fatale might be considerably more naive about men than other people--especially other women--realize. She flirts and plays the seductress, but she is actually quite vulnerable. The men who claim to be under her spell manage to walk away with large amounts of her money. 

The "evil" on the island is revealed as the true face of the supposedly innocent, misused couple. Imagine if the couple in Indecent Proposal actually turned out to be sociopaths who kill Robert Redford's character for his money. (Way more interesting idea!)

It's classic Christie: appearances are deceptive, and people tend to believe in the roles they perceive. 

In Ustinov's production, Arlena--the femme fatale and victim--is played by Diana Rigg, who simply doesn't come across as vulnerable. Jane Birkin as the supposed fragile wounded wife does an impressive transformation at the end to tough, beautiful broad, the second half of the sociopathic couple. And Nicholas Clay is so unnerving as a murderer that his identity as the murderer seems sort of obvious. 

But it's mostly a nothing film. 

The most notable aspect of Suchet's film is that it has gorgeous music, a mournful tune on top of the usual Poirot theme song. 

It also offers the pleasure of a full Poirot cast, from Japp to Miss Lemon to Hugh Fraser as the affable Hasting. 

In terms of the mystery, the past of the villains is more deftly used. However, Arlena--who in the book comes across as femme fatale--comes across instead as vapidly flirtatious. 

In other words, like with many Poirot films the emphasis is placed on Poirot's comprehension of human nature rather than the oddities of human character as they greet and mislead the reader. The book Murder in Mesopotamia, for instance, is entirely dependent on the nurse's highly individual, commonsense, and artless voice while the Poirot movie is all about Poirot. (This may be a necessary change from book to movie.)

Suchet's version of Evil Under the Sun does deliver characters rather than Celebrities Doing a Mystery. So that's one major plus. And Suchet as Poirot delivers the most important line, "I saw her first, last, and all of the time as a victim. Eternal and predestined...a target."

The Poirot episode "Triangle at Rhodes" does a better job than either movie at capturing the psychology behind Christie's novel, namely the fundamental insecurity and uncertainty of the murdered femme fatale (see image above).