Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot, and Giant Mustaches
If you clicked on this blog post, chances are you’ve heard of Agatha Christie. Maybe it’s because you’ve see one or both of the movies based on her famous books, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. Maybe you’ve seen her name on a book at the bookstore and vaguely remember picking up one of her books, reading the back, and putting it back down. Or maybe, just maybe, you’re like me, and you made either the greatest mistake of all time or the best decision of your life and decided said book and read it and was UTTERLY GOBSMACKED BECAUSE EACH AND EVERY TIME YOU READ HER BOOK SHE STILL MANAGED TO TRICK YOU AND THE KILLER WAS ALWAYS A SURPRISE EACH TIME AND AGATHA HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS EVERY SINGLE TIME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
So yeah, Agatha Christie is a genius and I am here to rant
about it.
For the uninformed, Agatha Christie was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. I’ve only read her novels with either Poirot or the ones with no lead detective, so I can only comment on those. She passed away in 1976, but her books are still massively popular to this date, which is why they are getting the movie treatment as of late.
You may be wondering – Joy, why are you so obsessed with
this woman? I mean, sure she was a British mystery author, but so was Arthur
Conan Doyle, and he probably created a way more famous detective than her,
Sherlock Holmes. What makes her any different?
Oh boy. Have I got a story to tell you.
This all started in 2017, about a month before the release
of the Murder on the Orient Express movie. I was pretty excited about the cool
murder mystery movie coming out, (For context, I’ve been a big Nancy Drew fan
since I was a kid, so murder mysteries were literally the best genre on earth),
so when I spotted the book in a bookstore I took my chances and bought it. I
must confess, though it hooked me for the first few chapters, once the murder
was done and the interrogation began, the book began to lose me – it becomes a
very large information dump, which makes it a little difficult to try and keep
up.
But the info dump begins to work to Agatha’s advantage as
the story goes on. You see, we the reader are seeing things from Hercule
Poirot’s point of view. This is unique because traditionally we watch the
detective work from the point of view of an outsider, like Dr. Watson and
Sherlock Holmes – Dr. Watson is narrating the story for us, so we, the readers,
are like him in the sense we both have no idea what’s going on in Sherlock’s
head. In Agatha Christie’s books, however, we are Poirot - we see and
hear everything the detective sees and hears, so of course we would be exposed
to the huge amounts of information Poirot has to get from everyone.
However, we the reader do not possess Poirot’s detective
senses, or, as he likes to call it, his little grey cells. Poirot is the
one who manages to sift through this information and deduce what is a red
herring and what is a crucial to solving his investigation. The cool thing
about this is, since we get to hear the whole story, we too can solve the
mystery alongside Poirot. The best kind of mysteries, after all, are the ones
you can solve yourself. This applies for most movies and books with a plot
twist narrative – the plot twist or solution should not come out of nowhere,
and instead should be cleverly hidden. Which
is something I know from personal experience is a difficult thing to write, so
kudos to her for making it look so effortless.
Another fun thing about Poirot, he actually has obsessive-compulsive disorder, AKA OCD. And the weird thing on his face is a mustache protector - yeah, he really loves the mustache.
And as Poirot begins to nitpick at everyone’s alibi (and
trust me, there was a lot of fake ones) exposing the lies and forcing
them to tell him the truth, we begin to see that the murder is a lot more
complicated than it seems. I’m not going to spoil the ending, but it absolutely
blew me away. The way all the random things in their stories just suddenly
clicked into place and the killer being revealed was just. Absolutely floored
me. I was in shock for at least a week. Once I had recovered, I immediately
began searching to get my hands on more of Agatha Christie’s work.
Next up was the Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In this one, a quote unquote retired Poirot is forced to investigate the murder of, of course, Roger Ackroyd. I saw retired because you can take the detective out of the mystery, but you can never take the detective out of the man. It was quite amusing to read about this funny Belgian man with a huge mustache (and I mean, HUGE) try and fail to peacefully plant aubergines (eggplants) in his backyard without his crazy neighbors interrupting him every 10 seconds.
That’s another thing I like about Hercule Poirot – he’s absolutely hilarious. Poirot is this jovial elderly man who speaks in a heavy French accent and is a loving grandfatherly figure – and he’s still a thorough detective, leaving no stone unturned. His empathy is an interesting aspect of the character, as you can tell he’s been though some rough stuff in the war, along with the death of his wife/lover. Sherlock Holmes, another famous literary detective, is funny too. But it’s not quite as prominent as Poirot.
Small tangent here: after reading some of the original
Sherlock Holmes stories, I realized just how much his character has been
assassinated. My man is (no, seriously, look it up,) autistic, not a
emotionless heartless machine. His real characterization should be
something like Donatello from the Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles –
low empathy, but highly intelligent with a penchant for sarcastic humour, while
still being able to be affectionate in his own way with others. Yes, I realize
how that sounds, but the cons of being a writer is hyper fixating on characters
you enjoy for so long your brain can pull facts about them in your sleep. Sherlock’s relationship with Dr. Watson is
also not done very well in modern media; it’s one of strong brotherhood and
affection for each other, with the only downside being Watson gets heart
attacks whenever he comes to Sherlock’s place and sees how much cocaine (I’m
serious, look it up) Sherlock is doing
to solve a case.
Old-school Sherlock Holmes TV shows are still hilarious, though. My family has fond memories of watching this every night during the COVID lockdown
The definitive way you know the murderer is going to be
revealed in a Hercule Poirot mystery is when he gathers everyone together for
the final confrontation. It’s a pattern of his I’ve seen in his other cases,
and it’s also something that was used in both Knives Out movies, which
were partially inspired by some of Agatha Christie’s work as well. Benoit Blanc
is literally just Poirot with a foghorn-leghorn accent, but that’s a whole
other blog post. Poirot is also an interesting detective because he solves mysteries
using his knowledge of the human psyche rather than just going on hard
evidence, which makes for some interesting discussions on the nature of the
mind through his mysteries. For this book, I was convinced I had solved
it by the time Hercule called his tell-tale meeting. All the evidence pointed
to this one character, and I was sure they had done it.
And of course, Agatha fooled me again. In a surprise twist
that quite literally made me shout “WHAT?” out loud. You can ask my mom for
proof. It’s not like it was impossible to predict – she’s been laying down
clues since the very first chapter. Your girl is just blind.
Another Poirot fun fact: he has a massive sweet tooth (same bro, same)
Some more background info on Agatha herself - Outsold only
by the Bible and Shakespeare, Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of
all time. Let that sink in. The only author in history who has outsold this
woman. Is Shakespeare. And God himself.
Agatha is also the writer of the world’s longest running
play! As if she needed any more achievements. It’s called the Mousetrap, and
it’s been running in London’s West end theatre since the 1950s, only being
paused temporarily in 2020 due to COVID. It’s a personal dream of mine to see
it in person someday, which is why I’ve controlled my urges to read the plot on
Wikipedia – like I said, the best part of Agatha’s books is almost always the
ending.
The final story I want to tell you guys about is called “And
Then There Were None” which is not a Poirot mystery. In fact, it doesn’t even
have a lead detective! It features ten people who are called to this island and
then trapped there. One by one, the people begin to die, based on a poem
written at the beginning of the book. You would think, with the poem
practically spelling out how the deaths occur and the order of deaths, you
would be able to guess exactly how they are carried out. But no! Each murder
stays true to the poem but still surprised me when it happened.
The catch of this story is that, like in the title, no one
on the island survives. All ten people are dead by the end of the story. Which
is like – then who is the killer? How did the killer even kill everyone if they
had to die too? Why is the killer killing everyone? It drove me absolutely nuts
reading this. I would be like, “Yes! The killer must be this person!” And
one chapter later my lead suspect is dead and it’s back to the drawing board.
Trying to solve this one was frustrating, as no one in the book can be
considered a reliable narrator. The ending, as expected, slaps you in the face
with it’s brilliance. There’s a one season TV show based on this novel, and
perhaps when I have enough free time (and peace of mind) I’ll watch it.
Agatha has become an inspiration for me, as a female mystery
writer myself, to see someone from a hundred years ago still have her works
sell so well and be so popular even after such a long time. Her personal life
was also very exciting, and the circumstances of her death, from what I’ve read
online, is something of a mystery in itself. Ultimately, I have a lot of love
for her books, and I would strongly strongly recommend you to buy one the next
time you go to a bookstore. Trust me, you won’t regret it!
Writing this was sort of a stress-relief for me – right now,
I have my first class tests going on and so I find myself losing motivation
really quickly. Doing this was a way to have something fun to do, as well as
add on to this blog since so many of my classmates kept bugging me about when I
would post next XD. Yeah, this post is quite long-winded and takes many
detours, but such is the inside of my brain when you mention Agatha Christie.
Next up: Nancy Drew, and how I could take her in a fight. Nancy may be smart,
but I’m definitely stronger. I think.
Preach it, Poirot
Talk to you later, World!
Yours,
Joy :)
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