Of Shoes and Ships and Cereal

I might as well have tried to explain to a man dying of thirst that the water was being saved to do the laundry with.

- Archie Goodwin, The Silent Speaker

If you’re a regular visitor to this blog, you of course know by now that I love the work of Agatha Christie. She is the original Queen of Crime, the woman who introduced me to the world of detective fiction. For a long time she was my favourite author; with books like A Murder is Announced, Five Little Pigs, And Then There Were None, and Murder on the Orient Express to her credit, I consider her one of the most important figures in all of detective fiction.

Unfortunately, her popularity and historical importance have one major drawback, in that they’ve spawned a group of haters who mindlessly claim that Christie is psychologically shallow, a hackneyed writer repeating old clichés, “cozy”, naïve about sexual matters, or just plain “bad”. The most cursory look at Christie’s work is enough to dispel these notions, but the public perception of Christie has been influenced by many factors. And one of the most fatal is that Christie’s grandson, Matthew Prichard, is willing to put his grandmother’s name on just about anything.

Perhaps you’ve guessed what the subject of this article is going to be. If not, perhaps you haven’t heard the news yet. Well, last week reports surfaced that the Agatha Christie estate (read: her grandson, Matthew Prichard) has commissioned a brand-new Hercule Poirot novel, to be written by author Sophie Hannah. This book is expected to hit bookshelves next year. And if you look really carefully at the publicity photos, you can see that Matthew Prichard’s eyes have dollar signs in place of their pupils.

Quite simply put, Matthew Prichard has stooped to an all-time low point. He has already sold his grandmother’s name to ITV’s Sub-Par Scripts Department. Never heard of it? Well, let me explain their job: they take a sub-par television script, slap the Christie name onto it, and then film the blasted thing. Don’t believe me? Then please explain who in their right minds could have written the adaptation of Murder is Easy having read the book first. And Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?. And The Sittaford Mystery. And The Secret of Chimneys. And The Mystery of the Blue Train. The list goes on.

A reminder of what ITV's Sub-Par Scripts Department is capable of.

This has accomplished only one thing: it has cheapened Agatha Christie’s name. Nowadays, it is slapped onto something in order to sell it. For instance, last year HarperCollins reissued the novel Ask a Policeman, a round-robin novel written by The Detection Club. This was a novel written by John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Gladys Mitchell, and Helen Simpson. Agatha Christie got the top billing, despite having contributed nothing to the book. How did they manage that? They simply took an essay of hers, stuck it at the beginning, claimed it was the first time it was being published (it wasn’t), and hey presto! You have a book that’ll sell well. They didn’t even proofread the Kindle edition properly; it has so many recurring spelling mistakes that it quickly became irritating.

Unfortunately for Matthew Prichard, Christie’s work is not an unlimited cash cow. David Suchet has just wrapped up the Poirot series, and only a handful of episodes remain. The Marple series is similarly close to the end of its lifeline, with very few stories left to film and not much demand for more of them. How on earth can we rake in more money from Poirot if the TV series is finished? The answer is simple: make more novels!

I have nothing against Sophie Hannah. From what I’ve read, she genuinely admires Christie and I’m glad she does. But the truth of the matter is that Christie is much admired for her ingenuity. Her best novels are often her most ingenious, and they hold up remarkably well even when you know the solution beforehand. The only way Hannah can produce something remotely comparable to Christie’s work is by producing something that is mind-blowingly ingenious, and that’s very unlikely. It’s not a reflection on Hannah, that’s just how good Christie was at plotting. Nowadays, when lazy and slapdash plotting is praised as “Realistic”, few authors even try to be ingenious, let alone succeed. There are some exceptions, but that’s just the problem: they are the exceptions and come along only once in a while.

Quite apart from that, there is no legitimate reason to write more Poirot novels. In the news article by the Guardian, Sophie Hannah is quoted as saying: "I know some people will say, 'Once a writer's dead, leave their characters alone.' But so many famous dead writers are having this done – James Bond, Sherlock Holmes – it becomes a kind of weird omission if Agatha Christie doesn't have that done for her. It almost feels it needs to be done. I think it is great that beloved characters from fiction don't have to die." That is terrible reasoning. If the only reason you’re doing this project is because “everyone else is doing it”, then that doesn’t bode well for the finished product. Here, two can play this game: “I know a lot of people want Agatha Christie to stay in print. But so many dead mystery writers are being forgotten – John Dickson Carr, Helen McCloy, Ellery Queen – it becomes a kind of weird omission if Agatha Christie doesn’t have that done for her. It almost feels it needs to be done.”

Just because other estates have approved of pastiches doesn’t mean that Christie should have them written. I can name dozens of terrible Sherlock Holmes pastiches, but very few that keep the spirit of Conan Doyle’s original tales. My only attempt to read a James Bond continuation was absolutely terrible, far worse than anything Ian Fleming ever put to a page (and yes, I’m thinking of The Spy Who Loved Me when I say that). The fact of the matter is that most continuations are derivative, don’t match the spirit of the original, and have no reason to exist. In my experience, 90% are mediocre at best. It’s just the very rare exception where a continuation actually makes sense.

For the sake of comparison, let’s look at a situation where a continuation makes sense. How about Max Allan Collins, who has taken it upon himself to complete Mickey Spillane’s unfinished Mike Hammer novels? This makes boatloads of sense. Why? Let me give you a few reasons:

(a) Mickey Spillane started to write these books and left them unfinished for one reason or another. Bottom line: they are his ideas and his unfinished work, and not someone else’s idea sold under his name.

(b) Collins is a gigantic fan of Spillane and was heavily influenced by him (see my review of True Detective). Not only that, he knew Spillane, and thus has a unique insight into what drove the man.

(c) Because of this, Collins is able to uncannily reproduce Spillane’s writing style, to the point where, reading Lady, Go Die!, I was unable to tell where Spillane stopped writing and where Collins started.

These make for far more compelling arguments than “Everyone else is doing it”. Even that’s not true. As it stands, I can name plenty of estates that have not approved continuations. There are no new Chronicles of Narnia novels. (And yes, C. S. Lewis did effectively terminate the Narnia universe in The Last Battle but Agatha Christie just as effectively killed off Poirot in Curtain.) Dr. Gideon Fell is happily enjoying retirement (Paul Halter was refused permission to write a continuation novel and ended up creating the character of Dr. Alan Twist as a result). The 87^th Precinct has closed down its operations (budget cuts). Matt Cobb hasn’t stumbled over a corpse in years (despite an unfinished novel reportedly somewhere about). And master thief Parker hasn’t joined in on the latest score, either.

“Ah, but Patrick, what about Sherlock Holmes?” Well, what about him? Most authors miss the point completely. For everything of Sherlock’s calibre, we get a dozen of “The Breath of God”s. For every René Reouven we get twenty Caleb Carrs (why yes, I did hate The Italian Secretary!). Every imaginative pastiche is followed by a hundred standard Holmes-vs.-the-Ripper stories with all the clichés. If Sherlock Holmes is to be used as an excuse for a Hercule Poirot pastiche, then we should all be very afraid…

Here’s another reason a new Poirot is a bad idea: by definition, it will be a historical novel. The press release says it will be set sometime between The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) and Peril at End House (1932). However, Sophie Hannah is a modern-day writer, and will bring that modern-day perspective to the historical period. The Golden Age is often decried as a period of racism and bigotry disguised as fiction, which is an exaggeration, but that was a common attitude at the time. Unfortunately, reading historical detective fiction today, the protagonists are never allowed to share those common attitudes. They’re always unusually enlightened for their time period (although the murderer is allowed to expresse a racist/bigoted attitude in the second act). When this kind of historical revisionism happens, you end up getting crap like Father Brown. (But this isn’t the place for me to recap my rage at that show.)

So, apart from the book sales, what reason is there to do this to Christie’s work? Poirot has been resting since the 70s. Nobody ever felt the need to do a series of continuations before. Why start now? Ah, yes: Christie has a devoted fan base and they will buy just about anything related to Christie. (They’re so devoted that they’ve patiently endured five seasons of Marple, a show that often spits in the face of a Christie fan by “reimagining” her work for a modern audience.) So this means that a new Poirot is guaranteed to sell well, whether it’s good or not. So why bother making sure it’s good? Either way, it means more money in Matthew Prichard’s pockets. And if it sells really well, we might see an entire series of these continuations! Hell, they can rope in Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, and others and have multiple series going at the same time! With the Christie name on them, they will sell like hotcakes, and someone will be able to afford a nice, long holiday.

As far as I can see, the only way out of this is for the book to flop. I don’t like saying that – I don’t want to wish people ill and I really have absolutely nothing against Sophie Hannah. But if the book succeeds, I can’t imagine Matthew Prichard not commissioning more. If not more by Hannah, he’ll rope in someone else. The only good thing about this announcement is that at least they didn’t get Dennis Lehane to write this book. (My dislike of Lehane is a story for another time, but it can be summed up in two words: Shutter Island. Wow, what a middle finger to the detective story!)

Quite frankly, I’m disappointed with Matthew Prichard. It seems that if he could, he would put his grandmother’s name on a cereal box. I’m guessing the only reason that hasn’t happened yet is because nobody’s come up with a good cereal name that has the word “Murder” in it.

OK, I stand corrected. (I honestly was not expecting that.) But still, this is yet another example of mining the Christie name for all its worth, and I’m genuinely concerned about it. The more this kind of exploitation happens, the more Christie’s credibility will erode. And it’s not a bottomless pit - there’ll come a point when all of it is sucked dry. Already, there are plenty of people out there who mock Christie and her contributions to the genre. Most authors these days are mortified if compared to Christie, and are quick to correct the comparison by putting down her work as shallow, poorly-written, or what have you. Very few authors take her seriously as do John Curran (in his two Notebooks books) or Robert Barnard (in A Talent to Deceive). And turning Christie’s name into an umbrella for pastiches will not help matters…

Oh, what the hell. Maybe I’m over-reacting. After all, it’s happening. Might as well accept the inevitable. If you can’t beat them, join them.

…

Hey, maybe Poirot should do a crossover with Fifty Shades of Grey, too! After all, he has little grey cells… and Christie wrote romance novels as Mary Westmacott! Yes, this almost feels like it needs to be done! Quick, someone get Matthew Prichard on the phone!!!

Update: Since posting this rant, I've found an audio interview with Prichard and Hannah where Prichard protests that he isn't doing this for the money and Hannah insists that she knows what she's doing. I'm afraid this still doesn't look good. Hannah apparently has no intention of copying Christie's style. I guess that means we can expect Poirot to have a 150 page existential crisis while he moans about how bad a thing murder is. This doesn't look like it'll end well...