Books to Die For Page 10
Murder on the Orient Express (aka Murder on the Calais Coach)
by Agatha Christie (1934)
KELLI STANLEY
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The peerless doyenne of the mystery novel’s Golden Age, the hugely prolific Dame Agatha Christie (1890–1976) wrote eighty mystery novels and short-story collections and nineteen plays, and is heralded as the bestselling novelist of all time by the Guinness Book of Records, her sales ranking third behind those of the Bible and William Shakespeare. Her best-known creations include Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, while her play The Mousetrap, which first opened in 1952, is still running in 2012 after more than twenty-four thousand performances. She also wrote under the pen name Mary Westmacott. Agatha Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, and she was made a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1971.
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Agatha Christie is not only the best-selling mystery writer of all time, but also one of the most successful writers in any genre. Her career spanned the greater part of the twentieth century, and she is still as popular in the twenty-first. Her most famous protagonists, the Belgian ex–police detective Hercule Poirot and the elderly spinster Jane Marple, are as entrenched in popular culture as Christie herself, the author who arguably crystallized the image of the traditional mystery and the traditional (female) mystery writer.
Yet Christie—the undisputed Queen of Crime—is often critically dismissed and pigeonholed by her own phenomenal success. She’s too often overlooked as an innovator and too often taken for granted as a “cozy” author, as if murder were nothing more than a pair of fuzzy slippers and a crossword puzzle.
Let me set the record straight, at least as I see it. I write a tough-as-nails female private investigator modeled on the classic hard-boiled and noir traditions of Chandler, Hammett, and Cain, with a good dose of film noir influence thrown in for good measure. Yet Christie has also provided surprisingly strong inspiration for my work.
I’ve read everything: from her novels and short stories and romances (written as Mary Westmacott) to her autobiography. Nancy Drew may have been my initiation into the crime-fiction genre, and Sherlock Holmes nursed me along, but it was Agatha Christie—not Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett—who first showed me the dark side.
Far from the feel-good Christie image, the books and stories reveal a woman who, early in the development of psychiatry, wrote compelling and disturbing profiles of criminality; who could write from the point of view of the killer before it became the fashion for thrillers du jour; and who could write about evil and call it evil, and knew that it lurked not just on the mean streets of London but along the cobblestones of St. Mary Mead.
Christie’s grasp of psychology enthralled me. Her best novels are examples of superb psychological suspense mixed with the baroque ingenuity of the drawing room mystery. Hercule Poirot’s “little gray cells” are as adept at therapy as they are at deduction . . . and Miss Jane Marple, the delightful, white-haired, and eternally knitting spinster, evinces a vast knowledge of human behavior based on profiling the population of her tiny, timeless village. She blinks at nothing.
Move over, Clarice Starling.
Dame Agatha, a properly brought-up middle-class Victorian, mingled her interest in psychology with daring, push-the-envelope twists no one had ever before attempted. Her plots can be audacious—so much so, in fact, that they seem to revel in their own meta-textuality, a ballsy sort of acknowledgment and challenge to the reader that this is one puzzle and puzzle maker they will never outwit.
Granted, her reliance on the surprise ending, and the sheer improbability of some of the solutions, earned Christie the ire of my favorite crime-fiction writer and strongest personal influence, Raymond Chandler. In his essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” Chandler takes the English traditional mystery in general to task, and Christie and Murder on the Orient Express in particular.
Chandler describes the ending of Murder on the Orient Express as one that “only a halfwit” could guess. He goes on to suggest that Christie and other writers of the school produced better plots than this one, before finally damning them all by concluding: “There may be one somewhere that would really stand up under close scrutiny. It would be fun to read it, even if I did have to go back to page 47 and refresh my memory about exactly what time the second gardener potted the prize-winning tea-rose begonia . . . ”
He does, of course, have a point. Though there are as many tropes and contrivances in hard-boiled fiction as there are in traditional mysteries (and Chandler himself was notoriously weak on plot structure), his real bête noire is setting. For him, murder properly took place in the back alley. For Christie, it took place in estate libraries, in art deco apartments, on luxury liners, and in first-class train compartments. Chandler, who himself had been raised in England, preferred the realistic school of Hammett and Hemingway, though, ironically, the essence of his own enormous contribution to the genre was the insertion of a cynical, world-weary romanticism in the private eye. Romanticism also runs through the stories of his best English compatriots in crime, Christie included.
In 1934, when Murder on the Orient Express first saw print, “The Simple Art of Murder” was still sixteen years ahead. Hammett published his last novel that year; Chandler’s first, The Big Sleep, wouldn’t line discriminating bookshelves until five years later.
So why Murder on the Orient Express? Why did Chandler single it out for attack and why do I consider it one of Christie’s very best?
To begin with, literature needs to be examined within its own time and context. Chandler and Christie have both been slavishly imitated, over and beyond the point of parody. But just as Chandler was the first detective writer to lyrically fuse the private eye to the Romantic knight-errant, Christie was often the first to come up with solutions and puzzles that pushed past the typical plot twists.
By the time Chandler penned his famous essay, Christie’s penchant for surprise endings had become as entrenched and imitated as a PI in a dingy office, and Chandler chose Murder on the Orient Express as the most egregious offender, offering, as it does, an exotic, upper-class setting with a large cast of characters trapped on a snowbound train, and a tour-de-force solution to the murder. The ending—and I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t enjoyed the book or the spectacular 1974 film adaptation—is one that the reader never even considers. As she did with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Dame Agatha spins a yarn that seems to violate the “rules.”
But Murder on the Orient Express is far more than a logic problem, a cryptogram to be worked out to the tenth degree like an exercise in calculus. I first read the novel when I was about twelve and have reread it many times since. As a child I was able to completely enjoy the surprise. On subsequent rereadings, however, what lingered more than the intellectual and literary delight of such a neat solution was the notion of justice and law and criminality that Christie evoked.
Published in the same year as James M. Cain’s seminal The Postman Always Rings Twice, Murder on the Orient Express allows us a glimpse of a darker world, one in which the moral integrity of a private detective—even Hercule Poirot—can be compromised.
As in some of her best work—And Then There Were None (1939), for example—she draws compelling psychological portraits of guilt and innocence, self-righteousness and self-doubt. If you read these two novels back to back, you’ll see how she tackles a similar situation as in Murder on the Orient Express and arrives at an even darker, noir-ish conclusion. Of course, by 1939 the winds of war were blowing across the Devon moors, and the idea of guilt, crime, judgment, and punishment raised in the earlier novel sparks a rather different response, with Monsieur Poirot nowhere to be found.
One of my favorite motifs in Christie is her love of masks and masquerades. Her use of this theme could be quite complex, even in her early work (the odd little short stories featuring Mr. Harley Quinn, for example), and she exploits it brillian
tly in Murder on the Orient Express.
Perhaps the deepest mask of all is the one that this brilliant writer wears in critical circles; she is far too commercially successful to be taken seriously, and the darkness that permeates her best books—the darkness that allowed her to write of the evil in everyone, from children to apple-cheeked old murderesses, the darkness of real pain and real crime and real death—has been covered up in the popular imagination with a thick woolen blanket and drowned by a weak cup of tea.
The “cozy” disguise does Christie a great disservice. Make no mistake. Agatha Christie, like many a Victorian before her, was one hard-boiled Dame.
Kelli Stanley lives in Hammett’s San Francisco, where she writes the Miranda Corbie series, the first of which, City of Dragons, won the Macavity Award for Best Historical Mystery and was short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Shamus Award, the Bruce Alexander Award, and the Reviewer’s Choice Award. City of Secrets is the sequel; City of Ghosts is forthcoming. Her Miranda Corbie short story “Children’s Day” was published in the ITW best seller First Thrills, while “Memory Book” is available as an e-story from Macmillan. Kelli writes a second series set in ancient Rome, the latest of which is The Curse-Maker. Nox Dormienda, her debut novel, won the Bruce Alexander Award. Visit her online at www.kellistanley.com.
Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
MINETTE WALTERS
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Dame Daphne du Maurier (1907–89) was a British author and playwright. A native of Cornwall, she made the county the setting for many of her books, including probably the best known, Rebecca. A reclusive woman who was born into a famously theatrical and artistic family, her work has provided the inspiration for a number of films, including Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
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First published in 1938, Rebecca is Daphne du Maurier’s most enduring and best-known novel. It’s never been out of print, has had numerous adaptations in television, radio, and theater, and was turned into a memorable Oscar-winning film noir (1940), directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine.
Rebecca tells the story of a shy young woman (unnamed throughout the book) who becomes the second wife of widowed Maxim de Winter. Their marriage is a hurried, rather furtive affair, and the new bride learns very quickly that her husband is still obsessed with her predecessor. When she finally arrives at Manderley, his estate in Cornwall, she discovers the house unchanged since Rebecca’s death. Memories of the woman are everywhere, pointing up painful comparisons with her timid replacement. Rebecca was everything that her successor is not—beautiful, witty, sophisticated, adored, and admired—and the second Mrs. de Winter develops as much of a fixation on her as Maxim has.
At the time of its publication, Rebecca was promoted as a gothic romance—“an exquisite love story . . . with an atmosphere of suspense”—with no hint of the sordid little murder at the heart of the story. Indeed the murder was considered so shocking by Hollywood that it was removed entirely from the film adaptation. The rigid Motion Picture Production Code, which sought to apply moral censorship to movies from 1930–68, meant that Hitchcock had to make Rebecca’s death an accident. It was acceptable in dramatic terms for a husband to dislike his wife, but quite unacceptable for him to shoot her through the heart and walk away scot-free.
In view of the anodyne phrases that the publishers used to promote the novel, they, too, may have had reservations about du Maurier’s plot. To describe Rebecca as “an exquisite love story” is to ignore the fact that Maxim’s unexpected attraction to his second wife is subsumed and eaten up by his loathing of his first. Rebecca haunts every page of the novel. Her presence is more strongly felt than anyone else’s—including the narrator’s—and it’s only when the reader learns how she died that Maxim’s guilty obsession is explained.
Feminist interpretations of this story look to unearth the dual sides of du Maurier’s nature in her depiction of the two Mrs. de Winters—confident extrovert against self-questioning introvert—but I suspect that the character who most closely resembles her is Maxim. He is a reserved man of simple tastes who dislikes the pretense and artifice of high society; he is deeply attached to his house, Manderley, and the beautiful landscape of Cornwall that surrounds it; he is proud of his family name, and he does what he does to protect its honor.
The same traits were apparent in du Maurier. Many of her novels are set against the backdrop of Cornwall, where she lived, and she was fiercely proud of both her maiden name and her married name of Browning—her husband was Lieutenant General Sir Frederick “Boy” Browning, commander of the 1st Airborne Division. I don’t doubt that she had great affection for Rebecca—most authors prefer to write flawed and twisted characters—and indeed for her unnamed narrator, the second Mrs. de Winter—who sets out with cold deliberation to help her husband escape the consequences of what he’s done—but I see more of du Maurier’s wit and humor in Maxim. She would have taken a mischievous enjoyment, I think, from writing herself as a successful murderer.
The cleverness of the story lies in the narrator’s naïveté. The second Mrs. de Winter’s perceptions of her predecessor are skewed because she lacks the one detail that would explain why Maxim is haunted by memories of Rebecca. Until the murder is revealed, it makes sense to her, and to the reader, that he adored her. Why would he not? Rebecca was the perfect wife, and the perfect mistress of Manderley.
The narrator is also cursed with an overactive imagination, causing her to embroider compelling fantasies around Rebecca from the mementos she left behind. For the majority of the book she lives in Rebecca’s shadow, unable to compete on any level with her vibrant rival; and it is only when she understands the reality of the dead woman—explained to her by Maxim in the hours before Rebecca’s body is discovered—that she begins to assert herself.
As a novel, Rebecca can be read on any level. Du Maurier’s prose and mastery of plot confirm it as one of the great classics, but the page-turning suspense, which made it a runaway best seller when it was first published, also confirms its status as a consummate psychological thriller. For those who see Daphne du Maurier as a romantic author, the book ticks every box in the developing Jane Eyre–love between the older Maxim and his younger second wife. For crime buffs, it is one of the few murder stories where the voice of the victim resonates loudly on every page, playing not only with the minds of the other characters but also with the reader’s.
My own views of Rebecca—just as du Maurier intended—are thoroughly ambivalent. She is the quintessential psychopath—cruel, manipulative, sexually demanding, egotistic, uncaring of anyone else’s feelings—but I admire the courage she shows in the moments before her death, and the loyalty she inspired in the handful of people she loved. The most notable of these is Mrs. Danvers, the Manderley housekeeper, who protects Rebecca’s memory with all the jealousy of a lover.
Du Maurier’s handling of her three main characters shows an extraordinary grasp of psychology at a time when the science was still young. Her artistry lies in her slow revealing of Rebecca’s nature, and her unnamed narrator’s stumbling journey from ignorance to knowledge. Du Maurier seemed to have a natural understanding of human frailties, and a natural ability to write those frailties into her characters, creating a set of people with distinct and rounded personalities who are as true and valid today as they were in 1938.
Rebecca is a rare and brilliant murder story. It stands alone as an example of how a psychological thriller can, and should, be written.
Minette Walters has published twelve full-length novels since 1992. Specializing in psychological thrillers, and eschewing recurring series characters, she has won every major mystery award, including the Edgar and CWA Gold Dagger, and her work has been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Many of her novels are set in her adopted county of Dorset, and several have been adapted for television. Visit her online at www.minettewalters.co.uk.<
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Brighton Rock
by Graham Greene (1938)
PETER JAMES
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Graham Greene (1904–91) famously, or infamously, described his novels of suspense and mystery as “entertainments,” a categorization he abandoned in the latter stages of his career. First published with The Man Within (1929), Greene’s reputation as one of Britain’s finest writers of the twentieth century rests on novels such as Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), The Third Man (1949), and Our Man in Havana (1958). Greene was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1948 for The Heart of the Matter. In 1986 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire.
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Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock is, very simply, the book that changed my life. When I first read it at the age of fourteen, as a kid growing up in Brighton, I knew the moment I put it down that I wanted to be a writer, too. I promised myself that, one day, I, too, would try to write a novel set in Brighton, and hoped that it would be even 10 percent as good as Brighton Rock . . . As a gentle homage, I created a villain called Spicer in my Roy Grace novel Dead Like You.
I’d been addicted to crime novels from a very early age, especially Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, yet until Brighton Rock it seemed to me that the British crime novel was all about the ingenious solving of a complex puzzle, but little more. A body would be discovered early on, frequently in the first chapter, and the rest of the narrative was about the detective hero finding, and ultimately confronting and arresting, the perpetrator. Graham Greene threw the rulebook out of the window. This was the first crime thriller I read that dealt with the inner lives of the villains, and made them the central characters. It truly broke new ground, and is a big influence on the way that I write my Roy Grace crime novels today.