Agatha Christie and the Art of The Whodunit

There is no thrill quite like what I get when I read a good, old-fashioned whodunit. I love this genre with a passion that mystifies most people who know of my tendency to look down upon popular fiction. Why do I love whodunits? Simple…as Hercule Poirot says, they give one the illusion of living an exciting life.

This mention of Hercule Poirot brings me nicely to what is going to be the focus of this post – my abiding love for Agatha Christie and her unusual and idiosyncratic detectives – Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. It takes an original mind to make a little old woman and a rotund, ex-police detective the ‘heroes’ of some of the most thrilling mysteries ever written. Christie’s sleuths are not like your modern detectives – full of sex appeal and an appetite for action. They have a more cerebral appeal that the sleuths of today’s detective fiction do not. In fact, I strongly suspect this to be the reason why mystery writers today feel the need to inject the sex and action factors into their stories – their detectives simply do not have the ‘little grey cells’ which Poirot and Marple have. These two can solve mysteries simply by arranging the facts in order and never dirtying their hands. That’s true sleuthing!

Christie had a few special elements she used repeatedly – a secluded country house with a surprisingly large number of guests (but small enough to be a convenient group of suspects), murder by poisoning (favourites were Arsenic and Strychnine), the domineering and rich widow with a colourless secretary-companion and a host of preying relatives, the awkward ex-military man (Capt. Hastings being the most prominent) and the charming, irresistible rake. She used these elements often, but never to excess which is why her works are instantly recognizable as her works with their cozy, secluded atmosphere and the surprising number of people with murder motives.

I remember when I first read an Agatha Christie (The Big Four) I was very disappointed. I could not see what the fuss was about and I intensely disliked the pompous Belgian detective, Poirot. But then I found The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and there was no looking back. I fell in love for life. The Poirot mysteries are classics – one and all. They are studies in how a detective story should be written – Christie teases her readers with tanatalizing hints and clues throughout only to spring a complete surprise on them right at the end when Poirot makes his denouement. Even the most astute reader can only solve part of the mystery by the end – for clearing up the whole matter, the reader still needs Poirot.

Miss Marple is lovable for another reason – her methods are purely mental. Poirot at least re-enacts cases in order to solve them (The Mystery of the Blue Train, Death on the Nile). Miss Marple solves mysteries by simply sitting at home and using some good old common sense and a deep knowledge of human psychology.

I can’t finish this post without mentioning another character I’m secretly, passionately in love with – Captain Hastings. He’s Poirot’s closest ally and foil and is the narrator of most of the Poirot stories. He may not have the little Belgian’s grey cells, but he has his own peculiar charm – his unwavering loyalty towards Poirot and his deep sense of honour. What a gentleman! He’s got a witty, dry sense of humour and some of his observations about his clever and pompous friend are just brilliant!

I regret to say that I’ve still not read all the available Christie books…I’ve been ignoring them for the past couple of years in my pursuit of ‘higher literature’ (most of which cannot entertain as well as Agatha Christie). In any case, here’s a list of a few of my favourite Christie books.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (My favourite of all the Christie books)
Murder on the Orient Express
Sad Cypress
The Mousetrap
Dumb Witness
Endless Night
Murder is Easy
Hallowe’en Party
Elephants Can Remember
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
The Mysterious Mr. Quinn (Not a Poirot or Marple mystery; the brain here is Mr. Harley Quinn)
Towards Zero (One of Christie’s more disturbing books)
A Murder is Announced
The Witness for the Prosecution

Image from Wikipedia

Vampires!

I’m sure those who know me well will wonder why I took so long to post something on Vampires. Well….the answer is simple – I was just plain lazy. Oh and before you read any further, let me warn you that this post is full of possible spoilers!

Anyway, this post is going to be about my three favourite Vampire books to date – Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova and Dracula by Bram Stoker. I’ve read loads (and loads) of books dealing with vampires and these three, I can say with confidence, are the best.

Interview with the Vampire is definitely my favourite. The mixture of blood & gore and implicit eroticism is magical. Anne Rice does away with the superstitions that abound in the myth of the Vampire – no garlic, sacred water and crufixes here. Rice’s vampires are not fiends…they’re philosophical, powerful, surprisingly human and above all – beautiful. As a matter of fact, I’ve always felt that Rice’s vampire stories are not so much about vampires as they are about vampires’ love affair with all things beautiful.

The Historian is not as sensual or as beautiful, but it is quite interesting. Loads of research and hard work are evident in this book. I love the academic discussions that are to be found here (not everyone’s cup of tea) and the history of the Carpathians suddenly seems so interesting. The best thing about the book is the portrayal of Dracula or Vlad Tepes – a prince, a warrior, a psychopath and a scholar. What I didn’t like about the book is, again, the portrayal of Dracula – as a vampire who shies away at the sight of a crucifix and who can be killed by a silver bullet ( i thought that was a way to get rid of werewolves). I found these little things too pedestrian. Also, a vital question remains unanswered – how did Dracula turn into a vampire? There are hints of some great heresy carried out at a monastery in France, but nothing specific.

Dracula is the book I read most recently. I started out with a few prejudices – my dad had told me that I’d find the book ludicrous and I generally end up agreeing with him. Also, I was not sure I’d like the idea of Count Dracula, after I’d just read about Prince Dracula.

But I ended up loving the book. Stoker’s book is quite attractive in its own way. I like my vampires to look like Rice’s Louis, Lestat and Armand – eternally young, beautiful and rather like Boticelli’s angels. Stoker’s Dracula “has hair growing on the palms of his hand. His ears are long and pointed. His red eyes glare out from under thick eyebrows that meet over a knife of a nose. His red, swollen lips are flagrant against the glimmer of his face, with its extraordinary pallor, its long white mustache, its prominent teeth”. But I loved him nevertheless – he’s unabashedly evil and takes genuine pleasure in victimising poor mortals. Who wouldn’t love such fiendish honesty?

The book has some truly hair-raising moments, but surprisingly they have nothing much to do with Dracula’s blood-sucking moments. The mental patient Renfield with his hunger, literally, for ‘life’ is far scarier. And the chilling description of Jonathan Harker’s ride to Castle Dracula with slavering wolves in the gloomy forests….horrifying! And then there is the mother whose child Dracula has stolen from her ( I shudder to think what happened to the child). Harker’s simple description of the scene where the bereaved mother comes wailing to the castle , ” …I heard the voice of the Count calling in his harsh, metallic whisper. His call seemed to be answered from far and wide by the howling of wolves. Before many minutes had passed, a pack of them poured, like a pent-up dam when liberated, through the wide entrance into the courtyard.
There was no cry from the woman, and the howling of the wolves was but short. Before long they streamed away singly, licking their lips.
I could not pity her, for I knew now what had become of her child , and she was better dead.” I found this to be one of the more striking passages in the book.

Then of course, there is the sheer eroticism of Dracula and Van Helsing and his comrades’ horror of it. There’s a scene where Dracula attacks Mina Harker. In the words of Dr. Seward “…with his left hand he held both Mrs. Harker’s hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension; his right hand gripped her by the back of her neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare breast which was shown by his torn open dress.” And then there’s the time when Jonathan Harker is cornered by three blood-sucking beauties. He looks at them in “an agony of delightful anticipation” and in a “langorous ecstacy” as one of the ladies ” went down on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuosness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips, and on the red tongue as it lapped the sharp white teeth’.

There are also moments of sly humour in the book like when Dr. Van Helsing says “…there is a terrible task before us, and once our feet are on the ploughshare we must not draw back.” Van Helsing says many such unwittingly funny things since he’s Dutch and does not have a proper grasp over the English language and its many idioms and the various diarists – Jonathan Harker, Mina Harker and Dr. Seward – record his words faithfully, hilarious or otherwise. That is another interesting thing about the book – it is written entirely in the form of diary entries, letters, telegrams and newspaper reports.

All in all, I wasn’t at all disappointed with the book, even though hair grows on the palms of Dracula’s hands.

A Tribute

This is a tribute to a writer who brightened my childhood, who fed my imagination and who supplied me with the raw material for endless daydreams – Enid Blyton. Of late, her stories have come under criticism for containing racial and gender stereotyping and there has been much talk about ‘cleaning’ them up. The very thought of that appalls me! To touch-up those masterpieces of children’s fiction, to my mind, borders on sacrilege!

How well I remember the sheer joy of reading the adventures of The Famous Five or The Secret Seven, the lives of those who lived int he Enchanted Wood and the Magic Faraway tree. The description of high tea and picnics made my mouth water and I wish I had a rupee for all the times I wished I could lay my hands on a lovely, cool glass of ginger beer. And the school stories were simply magnificent too…Malory Towers, St. Clares, the Naughtiest Girl series…It was another world entirely, a world I desperately wished I was part of. I still remember begging my parents to send me off to a residential school, tempted as I was by thoughts of midnight feasts and hilarious pranks played on unsuspecting French teachers.

Blyton wrote in a different world, a world where race relations were tenser and where only the girls cleared up after dinner. Altering her stories would rob them of any historical value that they have. Her stories are not just stories…they’re an account of her life and times. They’re a monument in themselves and altering them in any way would be like painting the Taj Mahal blue. [ok..not quite like that..but you get the picture ]
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An apology to all those who actually read this blog. I’ve been really busy of late..work, new hobbies, catching up with friends. One of my latest obsessions, and the main reason why I was not blogging, is this fantastic place called Deviant Art. Do visit it if you can..there’s a link on this page to the DA homepage as well as to my DA page. As proof that I was really busy, I have put up a sample of my work. [I'm showing off, of course!]

Harry Potter and the anti-Satanists

I’m a huge fan of the Harry Potter books by J K Rowling. They’re enjoyable and make for wonderful, escapist fun in a fantasy world where magic resides along with the mundane. Who wouldn’t enjoy that? J K Rowling obviously meant her fantasy world to be read about and enjoyed. She certainly didn’t have any hidden agenda while writing about it, something which should be obvious to the rational reader.

Which is why it annoys me when people read too much into the series. Many find the series incredibly stupid and childish and overhyped. I agree the books are overhyped, and I can even see why someone may think they are childish and stupid. I’m fine with that point of view. But what I can’t stand are self-righteous people who decry the series on the basis that it propagates withcraft and should be banned. They claim Rowling is leading children into a life of sin and sorcery where they will never know God and religion.

Utter rubbish, in my opinion! Sin?? One of the first things that strikes you about the books is the great emphasis on love, sacrifice and loyalty. Last I heard, these were virtues, and not sins. Of course, I may be wrong. You see I’m too busy being lured by withcraft and have lost touch with the real world like Gioia Bishop, 10, who said, “I was eager to get to Hogwarts first because I like what they learned there and I want to be a witch.”

I’ve met many Potter fans and not one of them has been tempted into sorcery. If any fan has been, then he/she need help. There is nothing wrong with the books.

Some religious critics say that Harry Potter leads children to Satanism. Says the editor of ESPMinistries in Harry Potter: The Truth Behind The Magic,

In some instances I have seen psychic phenomena performed in the Harry Potter movies and book. For example, the movie showed Harry looking into a mirror and seeing the future. This is known as “mirror mancy”, this is a form of divination (the art of obtaining information of the spirit world forbidden by God Deut. 18:10). It is interesting to note that Sirhan Sirahan, who assassinated Robert Kennedy, said he practiced this phenomena and saw himself in the mirror killing Robert Kennedy before he committed the act. His defense was the “devil made me do it”.

Obviously, Sirhan Sirahan had issues. I’m sure if a good psychiatrist had been consulted, he would have found out exactly what Sirahan’s problem was. But it certainly was not Satanism.

The editor also says

I was horrified as I saw another scene where there was a large glass cage with a huge snake slithering on the floor, apparently there was a boy being mean to Harry Potter. Harry then performed his magic and put the boy in the cage with the snake, who was terrifying the kid.
Eventually he cast a spell and took this humongous snake out of the glass cage and left the boy locked in there. But the thing that got my attention, was when the snake was freed, it spoke to Harry and as its fork tongue shot out of its mouth, it said “thank you” to Harry Potter.
Yes, Satan is saying “THANK YOU” to J.K. Rowling and publisher’s Scholastic inc. for introducing witchcraft to millions of children all over the world.

This is ridiculous! Satan?? As I mentioned before, the books revolve around the themes of love, sacrifice and loyalty. Harry’s greatest weapon against Lord Voldemort, his arch-enemy, is that he can feel love. He knows its powers and does not underestimate it, unlike Voldemort. And according to popular belief, Satan sows the seeds of discord among people. How then can he spread his message through Harry Potter?