The Queen of Crime
‘Poetry is not the most important thing in life … I’d much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.’
Welsh poet Dylan Thomas author of Under Milk Wood (1954). It was described by Thomas as ‘prose with blood pressure’.
Agatha Christie was a prolific writer. She sold two billion copies of her books and is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the all-time bestselling novelist. One of Christie’s novels And Then There Were None is one of the world’s bestselling books.
Christie also wrote plays, Miss Marple novels, Hercule Poirot mysteries, memoirs, children’s stories and six stories published under the pen name of Mary Westmacott. Her play, The Mousetrap, is the longest running stage production from 1952 to 2020 and it restarted after Covid in 2022.
Agatha Christie’s novels are currently being heavily referenced by authors who mimic her style and present the work as ‘an Agatha Christie novel’.
Jane Austen attracts a similar level of interest from writers and Austen’s writing style and characters have been appropriated and rewritten in various genres. Some of these rewrites are a continuation of where her novels finished, while others diverge into what could best be described as mash-ups of contemporary writing styles.
So for example Jane Austen’s character Mr Darcy recently revealed his dark secret – he’s a vampire. Meantime in other recently published novels Austen’s well known characters appear in different guises while retaining the same or similar names.
Some contemporary authors retell Austen’s plots updated to modern times while other authors stick with the Regency era, say around 1811 -1820. Rom coms have been written appropriating Austen’s most popular characters experiencing different lives and loves. And so it goes.
There have been many adaptations of Agatha Christie’s work. I’ve just read Closed Casket – billed as ‘The Brand New Hercule Poirot mystery’. It features the world famous Detective Hercule Poirot, his friend Police Inspector Edward Catchpool and a country estate chockers with rich folk who despise each other. It’s another version of the Hollywood trope of rich people behaving badly. Any one of them could be fingered as the killer.
As with Jane Austen’s books, many films and TV series have also been made of Christie’s novels. Kenneth Branagh’s, Murder on the Orient Express is one of the most successful. Branagh understood Christie’s novel was more than just entertainment. He not only directed the film but he played Hercule Poirot with a extravagant moustache. It was so long that Poirot sleeps on the Orient Express wearing something around his face that resembles a bizarre face net.
When directing the film Branagh retained Christie’s whodunnit recipe, while enriching the character of Poirot and drawing attention to what it meant to be wealthy and privileged in the 1930’s. The fact that luxurious trains such as the Orient Express even existed, is testimony to the power of the elite who could afford to travel in such splendid style.
In an interview Branagh stated, ‘There is a passionate depth to Christie, even though she sometimes said her writing is merely entertainment … There’s quite a moral brood in Murder on the Orient Express as well.’
When I saw Kenneth Branagh’s, Murder on the Orient Express film I didn’t realize that I was attending a ‘Babes in Arms’ movie session. It finally dawned on me – when I stumbled over a whole bunch of prams parked inside the door and wedged down the aisles – that I should have read the fine print.
My first impression was that all would be well. The newborns were quiet and happy in their mother’s arms, sucking down bottles or slyly observing their neighbours from the security of their parked vehicles.
But all hell broke loose when an avalanche swept down the mountain. Shot on old school 65mm film, we were treated to panoramic views of the brutal winter landscape. When the train derailed, the volume increased significantly.
The sound effects were suitably dramatic and there were loud screeching, crashing and grinding noises. The Orient Express passengers got terribly excited and lost their cool. And the babies in the cinema became very, very alert.
One babe started mewing plaintively and soon they were all crying. More dramatic mood music ensured the crying escalated into wailing – it’s a marvellous thundering score – and the gloomy, high contrast jump cuts of the derailed train threw strange shadows around the cinema.
When the Orient Express passengers started rushing about all over the goddamn screen, the mothers picked up their babies and tried to soothe them.
This meant that by the end of the movie, several mothers – and one father – were standing at the back of the cinema, rocking their offspring while keeping their eyes fixed on the screen.
But here’s the thing. Despite the crying babies and the general mayhem, I was transported by the movie. Branagh’s film pays homage to Agatha Christie’s style of mystery. Her tale Murder on the Orient Express is engaging and entertaining and it translates really well to film.
Image above: A Holiday for Murder by Agatha Christie was originally published in 1938 under the title Hercule Poirot’s Christmas.
The novel was re-titled to Murder for Christmas when it was released in the United States in 1939.