The Stuff I Read: Agatha Christie: Just Plain Entertaining

Or: The Lists Of "You Should"s.

If you want to get started on Christie

1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles
2. The Murder at The Vicarage
3. The Secret Adversary
4. The Mysterious Mr. Quinn
5. Parker Pyne Investigates

These five books are the first for each of her detectives. Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Harley Quin (no relation at all to this person), and Parker Pyne. Christie's detectives are so fine, that if you really want to experience them fully, you should start where they start, and follow them.

If you want to read Christie's personal favourites

1. Crooked House
2. Ordeal by Innocence
3. And Then There Were None (play version...because of combination of complex story and the romantic ending. The original story doesn't have a romantic ending).
4. The Complete Quin and Satterthwaite (Mr.Quinn was her favourite character)
5. Death on The Nile

If you want to know what my favourites are

1. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: Because I haven't mentioned this book enough. The execution of the murder is done well...not brilliantly, but well. It's just the Oh Holy Crap moment in the parlour scene. I was reading Christie for a decade before I got to Ackroyd and it threw me for such a loop. Whenever I feel like Christie, I pick it up, and even though I know what's coming, it never loses its fun for me at that moment. Also, Caroline Sheppard is so neat!

2. The A.B.C. Murders: This was the first one I read, when I was eleven. I still have the same copy. I don't think it's the sentimentality that keeps me coming back, though. It's very much a story where we see Poirot's brain at the best of his ability, and I like that it's a story that spans several months with periods of inactivity between crimes. It's one of the few stories with a deliberate serial killer who calls attention to his work. In that, it's more like a lot of mainstream detective fiction, but the characters keep what could have been a tired cliché anything but. It's engaging, it's fun, and it makes you say "Ahhhhh...yesssss." at the end.

3. Death on The Nile: For the cleverly executed murder, but also for the diversity of the female characters. Rosalie Otterbourne, who is so, so unhappy, who has had such a hard life that she has "forgotten how to be nice". Mrs. Allerton, who is bright and sweet and practical and has such a great sense of humor. Cornelia Robson, ugly, uneducated, unaffected and quite possibly the most emotionally healthy person in literature. Jacqueline DeBelefort; passionate, tragic, intense and fascinating. "Tall, Golden" Linnet Ridgeway,"Linnet La Blonde!" who is so beautiful, rich, smart and admired that she is completely removed from reality. I have imagined myself playing each of these roles at one time...every time I read it, I choose a different woman and read her lines aloud in the voice I think she would use. Huh. Typed out, that sounds...a little nuts.

4. Hickory Dickory Dock: I read this in high school for the first time, and I think it resonated because several of the characters were only a little older than myself. It was also pretty cool to see that Felicity Lemon (first of all, this is where the reader learns she has a first name...and it's Felicity, of all things) is human after all. That she has a family and affections. It throws the brilliant Poirot for such a loop in the first page, and it takes the audience a minute to recover, as well. Oh, and Colin McNabb and Len Bateson are really sexy.

5. The Murder at The Vicarage: Miss Marple is so wonderful, but for me, it just doesn't get better with her than in her debut. The photographs you get in your mind of St. Mary Mead and this delicate, elderly, overlooked lady are never more vivid than the first time you see them.

Thus ends my Christie Breakdowns. I think I may do more of these "Stuff I Read" posts. I'm thinking of Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Graphic Novels (the genre, not one specific writer) for the future.