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WAITING FOR POIROT

by Moderator2

WAITING FOR POIROT

By Chris Chan

(WARNING: THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THE NOVELS APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH, DEATH ON THE NILE, THE HOLLOW, AND FIVE LITTLE PIGS; AS WELL AS CHRISTIE’S STAGE ADAPTATIONS OF THESE PLAYS.)

(NOTE: The title of this essay is taken from a chapter from The D. Case: The Truth About the Mystery of Edwin Drood, by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini; a novel where multiple fictional detectives, such as Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Nero Wolfe, Philip Marlowe, Inspector Maigret, and several other fictional sleuths; solve the central mystery of Charles Dickens’ last ...

  • Posted 28 Mar 13 at 10:40a.m. GMT
  • 1 comment
Is There More To The Death of Arthur Richmond In And Then There Were None Than Was Previously Suspected?

by Moderator2

By Chris Chan

SPOILER WARNING! THIS ESSAY CONTAINS SPOILERS TO THE PLOT OF AND THEN THERE WERE NONE!!! IF YOU ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH THIS STORY, YOU SHOULD READ IT IMMEDIATELY- IT'S EXCELLENT.

In And Then There Were None, all of the major characters are responsible for the death of at least one person, which is why they are summoned to a mysterious island off the coast of Devon to be punished at the hand of an unknown executioner. General John Macarthur's crime is that he knowingly and deliberately sent Arthur Richmond to his death in battle. Richmond was ...

Murder in the Making - review by Chris Chan

by Moderator2

BOOK REVIEW: JOHN CURRAN'S AGATHA CHRISTIE: MURDER IN THE MAKING: MORE STORIES AND SECRETS FROM HER NOTEBOOKS By Chris Chan

John Curran has written a sequel to his marvelous book Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, and it's an extremely worthy companion to its predecessor. Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making puts special emphasis on Christie's writing process and the way that she revised and changed her plots and characters. In addition to these never-before-seen details about Christie's writing, a heretofore unpublished short story starring Miss Marple, essays by Christie on Poirot and Shakespeare, and the original ...

TV ADAPTATION REVIEW: POIROT­– HALLOWE’EN PARTY

by Moderator2

TV ADAPTATION REVIEW: POIROT­– HALLOWE’EN PARTY

By Chris Chan

(MINOR SPOILERS!  READ WITH CAUTION!)

Christmas came early this year, and the Poirot production team’s gift to us is a Hallowe’en Party!  The three episodes of the new season (at least, what PBS in the United States has dubbed “Poirot: Series XI”) have all been great additions to the series, and of them, I can’t decide whether The Clocks or Hallowe’en Party is my favorite. 

Hallowe’en Party is a tricky book to adapt.  In terms of plot, it’s one of Christie’s most complex ...

TV ADAPTATION REVIEW: MARPLE– THE PALE HORSE

by Moderator2

TV ADAPTATION REVIEW: MARPLE– THE PALE HORSE

By Chris Chan

 (SPOILERS!  READ WITH CAUTION!)

I am not wild about the Marple series’ habit of inserting Miss Marple into novels that she does not originally feature.  Frankly, as a Christie purist, this deeply disturbs me.  The sheer charisma of Margaret Rutherford helped me enjoy the latter three entries in her series, and I freely admit that in Geraldine McEwan’s third season of Marple the two entries not based on Miss Marple stories (Towards Zero and Ordeal by Innocence) were better than the two that were (Nemesis and At Bertram’s ...

TV ADAPTATION REVIEW: POIROT­– THE CLOCKS

by Moderator2

TV ADAPTATION REVIEW: POIROT­– THE CLOCKS

By Chris Chan

(MINOR SPOILERS!  READ WITH CAUTION!)

Two of the three episodes of the twelfth season of Poirot have aired now in the U.S., and the news is partially good.  The remaining part of the news is indisputably great.  The Clocks is one of the best Poirot movies in recent years, and is perhaps the first episode where nearly every significant change to the original source material works brilliantly.

I have enjoyed and appreciated all of the Poirot novels to varying extents, but The Clocks is probably my least favorite Poirot novel ...

TV ADAPTATION REVIEW: POIROT­– THREE ACT TRAGEDY

by Moderator2

TV ADAPTATION REVIEW: POIROT­– THREE ACT TRAGEDY

By Chris Chan

With Three Act Tragedy, a new season of Poirot starring David Suchet begins in the United States– and the news is all good.  In this entry, cocktail parties turn deadly as guests fall dead from poisoned drinks, and Poirot is compelled to solve a crime that is cleverly scripted and stage-managed.  A major impediment to the investigation is the fact that none of the murders seems to have any apparent motive!

Over the last several years, I have consistently enjoyed the Poirot series (for the most part), and I have ...

Agatha Christie and the actresses who've played her

by Moderator2

By Chris Chan

(THIS ESSAY CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS FOR SEVERAL MOVIES AND TELEVISION PRODUCTIONS.  READ WITH CAUTION.)

Agatha Christie’s presence in film and television involves more than just adaptations of her mysteries.  Since her death, nearly a dozen actresses have played her in movies or on TV, although many of these performances are either hard to find or expensive to obtain, or both.  Playing one of the world’s most successful and beloved authors is a dream role for many actresses, so it is interesting to observe the ways that some movies have approached their subject.

One of the ...

A History of the Orient Express

by Moderator2

The name Orient Express means different things to different people. It's a particular engine and set of carriages, the original route between Paris and Constantinople and to travel in style. In fact, it's all of these. As authentic as the modern day Venice Simplon-Orient-Express seems, it is not the only "Orient-Express" in existence and the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express licences its name, from SNCF (French railways), the trademark owners.

The Radio Plays

by Moderator2

As well as Three Blind Mice (1947), Christie wrote three other radio plays between 1937 and 1954.

The Yellow Iris was first broadcast on the BBC National Programme (as it was then called) on Tuesday, November 2, 1937 at 8.00pm. The script was based on the short story, Yellow Iris, which had been published in issue 559 of the Strand Magazine in July of the same year. The main part of the story takes place in a London restaurant and the play was unusual in that the producer, Douglas Moodie, interspersed the action with the performances of the cabaret ...

Joan Hickson interview

by Moderator2

Joan Hickson's portrayal of Miss Marple for the BBC won her countless fans across the world. In 1993 The Agatha Christie Society Editors interviewed her about her career and role in the Christie television series. We thought you might like to reread their report here:

Over coffee, we chatted about her early life as an actress. "Having studied at RADA, I thought I ought to learn my job, so I went into rep in Oxford. It was lovely in those days, but hard work: the company performed a new play every week. The first night was Monday, and on ...

Good News, Bad News and Worse News

by Moderator2

Written by Chris Chan

In terms of adaptations of Agatha Christie mysteries, this is both the best of times and the worst of times.  Filmmakers have been making adaptations of Christie’s work since 1928, but since the late 1980’s, there have been no big-screen film version of Christie stories in the English language.  While movie theatres haven’t seen much of Christie for the last two decades, television sets have actually been a fine home for Christie adaptations, with the superlative David Suchet Poirot series, the superb Joan Hickson Miss Marple series, and the uneven but still notable ...

ONE TRAIN, TWO VERY DIFFERENT JOURNEYS

by Moderator2

By Chris Chan 

(SPOILER WARNING: THIS ESSAY CONTAINS MANY REFERENCES TO THE PLOT AND THE SOLUTION TO MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, AS WELL AS RECENT ADAPTATIONS OF THE BOOK.) 

Murder on the Orient Express is one of Agatha Christie’s greatest and most popular novels, and it has been made into one of the most successful Christie films ever produced, as well as one as one of the most anticipated entries in the David Suchet Poirot television series.  It has also been adapted again for television with Alfred Molina as the great detective, but this remake updated and distorted ...

SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERY FIGURE GAME

by Moderator2

 By Chris Chan

Warning!  Several spoilers for Christie novels can be found here.

I looked around the room, looking at a sea of angry faces, all of whom were shifting uncomfortably in their chairs.  Odd… I was about to identify one of them as a killer… but they were all killers!  I was looking at a sea of about two hundred faces.  Men, women, doctors, lawyers, dentists, judges, police officers, actors, little old ladies, children, politicians, military men, members of the aristocracy, servants, teachers, secretaries, Britons, Americans, French… many nationalities, even an ancient Egyptian!  All these people, from all walks ...

When Agatha Christie 'Ripped from the Headlines'

by Chris_Chan

            (WARNING: SPOILERS FOR VARIOUS CHRISTIE NOVELS FOLLOW.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.)

            The Law & Order television franchise is famous for "ripping from the headlines," that is to say, taking real-life crimes and other news stories and then fictionalizing them and incorporating them into the plots of episodes.  Although Law & Order is probably the most famous example of this practice, many other crime shows borrow actual events.  In another prominent instance, the television show The Fugitive is thought to be based on the true case of Dr. Samuel Sheppard (no relation to the character from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd!), who was ...

Agatha Christie at Home

by Moderator2

Agatha Christie at Home

Written by Hilary Macaskill

I first thought about writing a book on Agatha Christie’s homes when I visited the gardens of Greenway, while researching a travel article about The ABC Murders in the 70th anniversary year of its publication. I was visiting the scenes of the murders -  Andover, Bexhill, Churston Ferrers and Doncaster – and, while in Churston, I was taken to Greenway. Many years before, on a boat trip down the River Dart to Dartmouth, I had seen the elegant cream Georgian house, perched on its promontory overlooking the river, and had been captivated by ...

  • Posted 22 Feb 10 at 10:57a.m. GMT
  • 1 comment
Is the solution to Murder in Mesopotamia plausible?

by Chris_Chan

Is the solution to Murder in Mesopotamia plausible?

By Chris Chan

SPOILER WARNING!  THIS ESSAY CONTAINS SPOILERS TO THE SOLUTION OF MURDER IN MESOPOTAMIA.  DO NOT READ THIS ESSAY IF YOU HAVE NOT READ MURDER IN MESOPOTAMIA!!!

A few of Christie's endings are controversial. For example, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd has provoked opposing responses from critics as eminent as August Derleth (who thought that stylistic flaws ruined the story) to Dorothy L. Sayers (who contended that the book was extremely fair). The controversy in this case stems from arguments over whether Christie played fair with the rules of ...

Thirteen Things You Know About Christie Are Wrong!

by Chris_Chan

By Chris Chan

 Agatha Christie is one of the most famous writers in the world, and like many celebrated authors, there are plenty of misconceptions about her and her work.  Numerous critics and pundits have contributed to the spread of misinformation by drawing erroneous generalizations about her work, and lots of people who have not read her work extensively have popularized false statements about her books, plots, and worldview.  All of the following claims have been made in articles about Christie, in locales ranging from so-called "informational" magazines to Wikipedia (although some of these have been removed from Wikipedia, given ...

When Good Adaptations Happen to Good Books

by Chris_Chan

In a previous column, I complained about the disasters that can result when screen adaptations of Christie novels play fast and loose with the original source material.  I stand by my whining.  However, I feel that I need to follow up my previous, largely negative article with a companion piece describing what I like about Christie film adaptations. 

Although there have been a few hiccups along the way, the Poirot series starring David Suchet has been one of the finest programs on television for two decades and counting.  The Joan Hickson Miss Marple series is another gold standard for quality ...

Adapting Christie, or, How I Learned to Start Complaining and Hate the Changes

by Chris_Chan

Fandom is a strange yet wonderful phenomenon.  Some professed “fans” of Agatha Christie are content to read the occasional Christie novel once in a while, when they have the time.  Other fans feel compelled to read every book that Christie ever wrote.  Still other fans seek out every movie and television adaptation of Christie novels ever filmed.  Some fans with the time and money to travel actually visits locations from Christie’s life and novels.  Then, there are fans like me, who want to help preserve, perpetuate, and polish Christie’s legacy.

Ever since the first film adaptations of Christie ...

How did Nadine Boynton know about the Orient Express Case in Appointment with Death

by Chris_Chan

How did Nadine Boynton know about the Orient Express case in Appointment With Death?

By Chris Chan

(SPOILER WARNING!  THIS ESSAY CONTAINS POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, CARDS ON THE TABLE, AND THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD.  READ WITH CAUTION.)

In Appointment with Death, the suspect Nadine Boynton asks Poirot to cease his investigation of her mother-in-law’s death, claiming that bringing the killer to justice would further destroy the lives of those who had suffered under the twisted matriarch’s mental sadism.  In order to justify her pleas for Poirot to abandon this case, she cites ...

CHRISTIE ADAPTATIONS ON THE RADIO

by Chris_Chan

The movie, stage, and television adaptations of Christie’s work are well known and often discussed amongst Christie fans.  A fourth medium, radio, is much more obscure and often ignored.  Two of the major overviews of Christie’s work and adaptations of it, Dick Riley and Pam McAllister’s The New Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie, and Dennis Sanders and Len Lovallo’s The Agatha Christie Companion, discuss the movies, plays, and television adaptations, but both ignore the radio dramas.

This is a terrible shame, because some of the best and most interesting adaptations– as well as some ...

Did Achille Poirot really exist?

by Chris_Chan

SPOILER WARNING!  THIS ESSAY CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE BIG FOUR AND CURTAIN.  DO NOT READ THIS ESSAY IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THESE BOOKS

We know very little about Hercule Poirot’s family life, and the few details that Poirot reveals may not be reliable, since he often makes up details about his wife to advance his investigations.  For example, in one story in Poirot Investigates, Poirot lies and claims to have a sick wife in order to gain entrance into an apartment.  There are a few references to his career as a Belgian police officer, but he rarely speaks ...

What are the true circumstances of the death of Claudia Hardcastle

by Chris_Chan

SPOILER WARNING!  THIS ESSAY CONTAINS SPOILERS TO THE SOLUTION OF ENDLESS NIGHT.  DO NOT READ THIS ESSAY IF YOU HAVE NOT READ ENDLESS NIGHT!!!

Endless Night is widely considered to be one of the best novels from the later years of Christie’s career.  Christie and her husband, Max Mallowan, both ranked Endless Night as one of their favorite books, and many critics share this sentiment.  There are many reasons to support this assessment.  Both plotwise and thematically, Endless Night is very different from most of Christie’s other mysteries, and it also contains well-developed central characters and particularly intriguing ...

The Domineering, The Meek and the Downright Gullible

by Tony_OSullivan

One of the many interesting features of Agatha Christie’s work is her recurring focus on the dynamic that exists between strong forceful characters and subdued introverted ones. Throughout her work, these two character types are brought together in many different guises and through a wide variety of circumstances. From the sadistic bully that is Mrs Boynton, who exerts total control over her traumatised family in Appointment With Death, published in 1938, to the self-righteous Mrs. Price-Ridley who holds sway over the subordinate Miss Hartnell and Miss Wetherby over tea and gossip in St Mary Mead ( The Murder at the ...

The Works of Agatha Christie R.I.P.

by William_Friend

Irrelevant. Dated. Dead.

These are just a few adjectives which the following article is going to apply to the works of Agatha Christie. It may make your blood boil temporarily – but hopefully you’re enough of a fan to be so wholly scandalised that anyone has the audacity to write this, you will continue to read long enough for the article to explain itself.  In 1920 ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’ was published and the crime genre was never the same again. With the effortless introduction of hallmarks we now refer to as ‘clichés’ and the addition to British ...

Playing the Game

by Chris_Chan

First of all, I want to welcome all of the Agatha Christie fans who are visiting this blog.  I hope that you enjoy my essays, and that what I write helps to enhance your appreciation for the works of Agatha Christie.

I intend to produce several different styles of essays.  Some of what I write will be critical essays, evaluating some of Christie’s work or certain adaptations of her stories.  Others may be factual essays about real-life crimes that may have affected Christie’s work, or true anecdotes about Christie’s impact on fans.

Other essays that I write ...

Featured stories And Then There Were None And Then There Were None

Ten people, each with something to hide and something to fear, are invited to a lonely mansion on Soldier Island by a host who, surprisingly, fails to appear.

Murder on the Orient Express Murder on the Orient Express

Travelling on the Orient Express, Poirot is approached by a desperate American. Afraid that someone plans to kill him, Ratchett asks Poirot for help ...

The Murder at the Vicarage The Murder at the Vicarage

When the thoroughly unpleasant Lucius Protheroe is found dead, there is no shortage of suspects with a motive for murder ...

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