Invisible Adjunct

How annoying do you find Dorothy Sayers' Jewish characters? because they're shown according to stereotype, but I don't think Wimsey is unfriendly. Of course, generous condescension isn't the most challenging of virtues.

Yes, Christie's well worth reading. That article mentions some of her books with unusual solutions, and I'd go with those.

I never cottoned much to Christie (which says nothing about Christie, just about my taste in mysteries). I preferred Poirot to Miss Marple, although Captain Hastings is annoyingly thick-skulled--a bad misreading of Dr. Watson. IIRC, Dorothy L. Sayers (who I do like) tones down the anti-Semitism very noticeably in the late Wimseys.

Of the Golden Age mystery novelists, my own favorite is probably John Dickson Carr, who specialized in locked room mysteries.

I wouldn't take Hari's piece too seriously. Quoting French intellectuals doesn't help his case. They liked, still like, as far as I know, Edgarpoe (and there are some similarities between Poe and Christie). Nor do his strawman dismissals of Christie. Both Wilson and Burgess (similar figures, too) are just emitting irritated belches.

He's built a rather too large structure on a simple truth: detective stories are consoling. There is great reassurance in seeing this vast machinery move and all come right at the end. Apparently they're also consoling to their writers. Carolyn Heibrun (to bring the conversation back to the ills of academe) wrote a series of mysteries under the name Amanda Cross in which she took out her frustrations on her Columbia colleagues. In one of them a character very much like Edward Said (though, of course, not in any way meant to be Edward Said) gets thrown through a window. Ah.

Burgess' evaluation of Christie strikes me as dead on. An incredibly overrated writer. But conceptually there's no reason she can't be both a bad mystery writer and Burkean.

BTW, if you're interesting in thrillers, try Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. A remarkable book.

"But conceptually there's no reason she can't be both a bad mystery writer and Burkean."

Exactly. Which is why I'm wondering: Is it Burkean in an interesting way, or in a merely formulaic manner that might apply to anything with cosy English villages and clever old spinsters?

So far, comments seem to be running 2 to 1 against Christie. I'll probably give her a try, but also appreciate the other suggestions.

"In one of them a character very much like Edward Said (though, of course, not in any way meant to be Edward Said) gets thrown through a window." Which novel is this?

"A Trap for Fools"

People at Columbia claim to be able to identify the window.

I found the Poirot and Marple novels good fluff reading; I haven't had the strong urge to reread any of them (except Murder on the Orient Express), but it's at least worthwhile to check a few out from the library. And the film adaptations starring David Suchet as Poirot are definitely worth watching.

Well, Miss Marple/Burkean mysteries are consoling, because they return practically everything to the state of Right Order; the evil deed is usually attached to an evil person, and they're excised together. Wedding of innocents ensues, curtain down.

Some mysteries are only temporarily consoling, because the investigation has shown inherent flaws in the original state, or the crime was something anyone could be driven to, or the Furies have required blood to be washed out with blood. That seems realistic to me. Is it Paine?

Christie is a terrible writer who can be utterly addictive. One of my brothers went through an Agatha phase, and I picked up The Murder of Roger Ackroyd out of curiosity, devoured it, and ran through a dozen or so more before (feeling slightly sickish) I put her down for good. Now that I think of it, it's like the summer I spent hooked on All My Children (my mother's favorite soap). If you're in the mood for trashy fun, give it a shot -- but if you can't take the wooden prose and cardboard characters, you can turn away without any nagging guilt that you're missing something of importance.

Her books aren't exactly long or difficult; you're not going to waste much time if you find you dislike them. I certainly agree that the adaptations with David Suchet are worth watching.
Start with Murder on the Orient Express or The Murder of Roger Ackroyd -- though the article has ruined much of the point of them for you. Or even And then there were none/Ten little Indians.
My fondness is always for her play, which my grandparents took me to when I was about 8. I was scared every time I heard "three blind mice" for years after. (It was a very effective performance.)

My advice would be to give Agatha Christie a try, but for Christ's sake give up Johann Hari. I've never read such windy pseudery.

Christie's books are actually fairly repetitive and after reading a few, you can almost always see the end coming.

Like a lot of mediocre writers of thrillers and mysteries (John Grisham, Tom Clancy etc.), her books translate to film really well. In fact, I'd say watch the films of her books (outrageous cliches and simple plot devices tend to work better on screen than in novels).

I'd also agree with the person who made the comment abt Dorothy Sayers (the same is true of John Buchan who wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps). Sayers and Christie were writing in inter-war Britain---the period of Oswald Mosley, the Cliveden Set etc. Britons were (and to some degree, still are) not especially open-minded abt those whom they regard as foreign. I love the British deeply (I'm a British historian) but they are an incredibly xenophobic people (all that business of being an island). This xenophobia translates into a dislike of Jews, the French, the Italians (who are also skewerd in Christie's works as greasy etc.), the Germans and yup, even the Belgians (look closely at Poiret and you'll see Christie's contempt for his Continental weirdness).

As a mystery fan, there are a lot better writers I'd suggest. If you want to keep it British, try: Reginald Hill, Ruth Rendell (aka Barbara Vine), Gwendolyn Butler, Ann Graham (don't know if she is available here) etc.

Josephine Tey: there's another one. I was reading the first book, "Man in the Queue"(?), after a friend recommended her. At one point, Tey's detective speculates that because the crime struck him as "oriental" in nature he should seek a Middle Eastern man. (The crime was stabbing someone in the back.) For a second, I thought that Tey was either joking or portraying her detective as a total idiot. But then I realized this was a logical deduction for her and would lead to something in the plot. I'm willing to put up with outdated racialist notions like that in old books but not when it stoops to this level of idiocy. I put that book down and never picked it up again.

Rendell/Vine: uneven but at her best she is great.

If you want to get a funny look at British culture and the inter-war fascination with murder mysteries (Christie included), read Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of The Dog. It's brilliant (a parody of Jerome Jerome's Three Men and A Dog but also a hilarious look at British culture). And if you want to understand British xenophobia, check out David Ives' wonderful children's book, Monsieur Eek.

Current British mystery authors: also Minette Walters. The earlier stuff is better. For non-British, my first suggestion is Carol O'Connell.

Ditto on Walters (although the last two were not so good) and also Reginald Hill. Stephen Booth, sort of a sub-Hill, is also quite enjoyable (in a grim, tortured sort of way). And Ian Rankin, if you don't mind unpleasant protagonists.

Christie was great fun when I was 12. She's still fun, but really annoying. I think she was best summed up in "Murder by Death", when IIRC, her characters were accused of cheating because they always had access to knowledge the audience doesn't. Sayers is much better (although the complaints above are valid), and definitely Minette Walters.

I second the vote for Reginald Hill -- but prefer Joe Sixsmith to Dalziel and Pascoe. For real fun, I go for Caleb Carr (smart books by a historian) and I've heard Janet Evanovich is a hoot.

Like ADM, I read stacks and stacks of Christie at 12 and 13 years old...I used to have a huge collection in paperback, which has vanished under the burden of many moves. Everyone talks about Miss Marple or Poiriot (I agree with the person who said that she writes with a sort of contept for him), but I had a soft spot for Tommy & Tuppence.

I'd agree that they're good for an afternoon's read, and in fact, the discussion makes me nostalgic enough for those days of my youth (so to speak!) that I may go put some on reserve at the library. :)

Minette Walters: I have read three of her books and NOT ONE has a plot that will hold up to any level of scrutiny. "The Breakers" was the best one but even that... Highly overrated -- and preachy, too.

The problem with Christie is that her language, sentence by sentence is simply deadly. Flat.

This morning I was introducing 20 18-year-olds to one of the original mysteries, Oedipus Rex. And though we are reading it in translation (Fitts & Fitzgerald) I noted the importance of the details of the language. Christie has no details. One is reminded of the rich American woman who came to Freud for analysis. After a brief interview the master informed her that he could not psychoanalyze her because she "had no unconscious."

Or perhaps we could think of Christies novels as murder-comedies. It's Nietzsche, isn't it, who notes that comedy begins in disorder & ends in order, usually represented by marriage, while tragedy begins with a settled state of affairs & ends in chaos, dissolution & death? Christie's novels make a comedy of death. Perhaps there is a deep Christianity here that echoes Dante. Nah.

No, I don't think that Christie's books are Burkean in any interesting way. Actually, they always struck me as being subversive in spite of themselves. Because Christie, unlike some other "classic" mystery writers, was genuinely committed to making the culprit a surprise, the message winds up being that anyone, not just the "Other" (sorry for the jargon) can be a murderer. Frequently the murderer turns out to be someone whom she appeared, up to that point, to thoroughly sympathize with. And--a point that Hari missed--the reason Miss Marple is so "wise" is that all the crimes she's asked to solve have had their counterparts in the cozy village where she lives. (But I prefer the Poirot books anyway.)

Aside from the books mentioned above, "Cards on the Table" is particularly ingenious. (The murder took place during an evening of bridge, and the only clues are the scoresheets.) And "Pale Horse," a late, non-series book, genuinely creeped me out when I read it.

Picking up on the Christie's books as comedies, in almost all the ones I've read a young couple either gets together or reaffirms a strained relationship in the course of the book. It's never a major plot strand, but she nearly always sticks it in.