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Literary Review
Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd?
HERE are some things I've been hearing about Agatha Christie from those rather sophisticated mystery aficionados: "You feel cheated at the end — the denouement, the whodunit, comes out of the blue"; "not enough psychological depth or complexity"; "poor characterisation" and "the reader is ambushed." I suppose now that we have grander dames of mystery like P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, Elizabeth George and Martha Grimes, it's commonplace to put down Christie as a mystery writer who was too devious and who kept too much from the reader. There's something to that.
The later psychological mystery writers like Rendell & Co are the best things to have happened to contemporary detective fiction. If writers had continued in the Christie vein, wringing one twist after another at the expense of characterisation, psychological depth and plot complexity, they would have only seemed gimmicky and unconvincing. Nevertheless, I find myself nostalgic for an Agatha Christie mystery. For its sheer readability — another Christie virtue: you can't gulp James or Rendell in quite that fashion. Many years ago literary critic Edmund Wilson, in a famous essay attacking mysteries asked, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" Well, some of us do, Sir. We most decidedly do.
When you're an ace plotter like Christie, you don't pause to check if your characters ring true or if their motives have psychological complexity — you want to shock and surprise the reader with a "oh my god I would never have suspected" reaction. With every new book she got more and more audacious, trying out new ways to surprise us. She virtually invented the "least-likely-suspect whodunit". It began with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), which is a classic of sorts now for its impossible twist at the end. Ackroyd became a model for other mysteries that tried for similar reversals in narrative point of view. (The most recent mystery to use the Roger Ackroyd device is The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez -Reverte, a Spanish intellectual thriller in the tradition of the playful mysteries of Umberto Eco. If Eco looked to Conan Doyle for The Name of the Rose, Perez-Reverte looked to Christie and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd for The Club Dumas). The most recent, the most fascinating take off on the book is Pierre Bayard's astonishing novel Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?, where — using Christie's own methods with a close reading of the text — he argues that Poirot was wrong. Bayard, a psychoanalyst and professor of literature, points to a different culprit — and no, it is not Poirot).
The next audacious bit of plotting was Murder on the Orient Express (1934). It has the kind of end that you couldn't predict or guess. Dame Agatha made sure of that. And it was plausible; entirely plausible. The movie (aired often on AXN) is not only the best Christie movie adaptation but also has the definitive Hercule Poirot portrayal (on screen) in Albert Finney's grand, eccentric performance. (On the small screen, it has to be David Suchet). Director Sidney Lumet assembled a wonderful cast (Ingrid Bergman, John Geilgud — the butler did it too! — Sean Connery, Jacqueline Bisset, Michael York, Lauren Bacall, Anthony Perkins, Martin Balsam, Richard Widmark, Vanessa Redgrave) to convincingly pull off Christie's deliciously over the top denouement. "The Mousetrap" (1952), that longest running play in theatre history, runs because of that neat reversal at the end. Audience are asked not to tell anyone whodunit. It inspired Anthony Shaffer's "Sleuth" which in turn inspired Ira Levin's "Deathtrap" — two plays that pile clever twists upon twists. (Levin's "Deathtrap" is also the longest running thriller on Broadway, by the way). But if you go in looking for a twist in "Mousetrap", you'll sniff it long before it turns up; this one's rather obvious. You can't, however, spot the breathtaking reversal in "Witness for the Prosecution" (1948). In the famous movie version when the revelation takes place, I remember (sometime in the late 1970s) some in the audience actually gasping in the theatre.
The first Christie I read, coincidentally, happened to be the The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) where Poirot makes his debut. I gulped it down and remember being impressed by how clever the whole thing was. I thought if a book could do this to me every time, ambush me like this, I'd like to lay my hands on every one of them. And I more or less did: right down to Curtain (1975), where she managed to pull off one last act of legerdemain, this time with the help of her dapper Belgian and his grey cells. Later, I came to like the Miss Marple books more because they belonged to the traditional cosy English mystery. The idea of Poirot is derivative — Poe's Dupin, Doyle's Holmes etc, but Marple seemed entirely original: that an old spinster, a busybody and a gossip, can also have a gifted mind is a delightful and brilliant reversal in itself on the traditional detective. My favourite Miss Marple mystery is also the first, Murder at the Vicarage (1930).
She also had these one-offs where neither of her detectives featured, such as Death Comes At The End, set in ancient Egypt or Endless Night, a mystery that gets away with another Ackroyd-like device that knocks you out with its stunning revelation with who the actual murderer is. There are all together about 60-odd Christies in all; I've skipped her Mary Westmacott romances entirely, though, and read perhaps a couple of Tommy and Tuppence thrillers (my loss entirely, I'm sure). The least-likely-suspect formula reached new heights with Ten Little Indians (1939, versions vary: from Ten Little Niggers to And Then There Were None) which is perhaps the earliest example we have of the serial killer thriller. Even those who are not her fans agree that this is an uncommonly good suspense book. (It has even been remade both in Hindi and Tamil quite effectively; such is its sure-fire plot. The current Hollywood box office hit, "Identity" takes its inspiration from here).
That great master of suspense, Ira Levin, once said: "An Agatha Christie is, of course, a mystery novel, cleanly written and masterfully surprising. One begins it, if one is sensible, around nine p.m., and some time after midnight one smites one's brow and says, `Of course! Why didn't I see it? It was staring me in the face!' One marvels a while and falls into peaceful slumber."
pradeepsebastian@hotmail.com
PRADEEP SEBASTIAN
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