The Geometry of Murder

A group of people is stuck on an island, with no way off. Stuck on the island with them is a mad, cunning killer, determined to pick off the group members one by one. It’s a race against time, a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. No, I’m not talking about Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Rather, I’m talking about a recently-published translation of a Japanese detective story: The Decagon House Murders.

The titular Decagon House is, of course, shaped like a decagon, and the island upon which it sits was recently the site of a gruesome series of murders. Naturally, a university’s mystery club (modelled on such a club at Kyoto University) decides the island is a great place for a club excursion. Thus the members meet up, each of them known by a pseudonym taken from one of the great Western Golden Age writers: Agatha, Orczy, Van Dine, Leroux, Ellery, Carr, and Poe. It doesn’t take long for murder to occur, and as the body count rises, the list of suspects gets shorter and shorter…

Murder, Murder Everywhere!

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A bunch of people are gathered together under one roof for a weekend straight from hell. You see, people begin to die one-by-one, and before long, there’s a pile of corpses and a murderer running loose. Before the weekend is out, can the guests figure out which of them is the cat among the pigeons? Can they solve the game of Nine Man’s Murder?

The scenario might strike you as yet another imitation of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Maybe you’ve read that book, and you might think to yourself that you are therefore very well-equipped to solve the crime. Well… so do the characters in Nine Man’s Murder. They are fully prepared to sidestep the mistakes made by the characters in that book (and incidentally, the solution to that book is spoiled in this one, but it’s out of necessity, so fair warning). Yet somehow, the killer manages to outfox them all and one by one the guest list gets shorter.

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.

The Sound and the Fury

Do you have any idea how long it’s taken me to write this post? I’ve been trying to sit down and write a review of Father Brown for months, ever since the first episode aired. I thought the first episode was decent – not particularly good, but not out-and-out terrible either. But it didn’t inspire me in any way. I didn’t feel like watching more of the show, nor could I write a half-decent review of the first episode. Along with Elementary, it’s one of the few things I’ve watched which I simply couldn’t review. I tried and I tried, but everything I wrote seemed absolutely terrible. I even tried writing a post comparing the flaws of Elementary with the flaws of Father Brown, and abandoned it after writing two pages. Even in that aborted attempt at a post (abandoned in mid-May), I complained about just how difficult it was for me to write a review about Father Brown. Here is the relevant excerpt:

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G. K. Chesterton’s original tales are remarkable works, some of the finest short stories ever written. Father Brown solves mysteries not with the dropped handkerchief or burnt cigarette ash, but with his knowledge of the human spirit and the evil of which it is capable. And how did he get this knowledge? His religion: as a priest, he has seen all kinds of evil and has heard it in the confessional booth. I’m afraid, however, that someone at the BBC missed the entire point, and like the editor in The Purple Wig, decided that “God” should be replaced by “circumstances”.

A Predicament

... You've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

– Harry Callahan, Dirty Harry (1971)

After the success of The Floating Admiral, The Detection Club soon decided to do another round-robin novel entitled Ask a Policeman. The cast list was once again comprised of all-stars, but this time they were not quite as numerous. Six novelists combined their efforts into Ask a Policeman, namely Helen Simpson, Milward Kennedy, John Rhode, Anthony Berkeley, Gladys Mitchell, and Dorothy L. Sayers.

The plot is only a semi-serious one, although the parody elements never outweigh the detection elements. A rich, despised-by-all newspaper tycoon is shot dead at his house, with a plethora of suspects playing a complex game of ring-around-the-rosy around the scene of the crime. But, as luck would have it, these suspects happen to include an Archbishop, the Chief Whip of a political party, and an Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard. But for good measure, you can throw in the dead man’s secretary and a Mysterious Lady, as well as a suspicious butler and other members of the domestic staff.

Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? : The Smackdown

A Quick Word of Introduction: I originally wrote this piece back in March, submitting it to an online publication. Unfortunately, there seems to have been a major delay in the publishing of the next issue. Being infamously impatient, I have at last decided to publish this essay on my blog to share with my readers. I have made a few more-or-less minor revisions and have added images. In this piece, I tackle Edmund Wilson's infamous essay Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? using all the tools Wilson used, particularly sarcasm. Throughout my analysis I will challenge the claim that this essay "destroyed" the typical Agatha Christie mystery by claiming the precise opposite: it is an entirely useless essay from a critical standpoint. And so, without further ado, I give you:

Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? : The Smackdown

Edmund Wilson, Professional Troll

As a university student, I was seriously tempted to sign up for a course in Detective Fiction last term. What made me decide otherwise was seeing the book list: there was no Agatha Christie nor Raymond Chandler, and in fact, all the books were contemporary. Not only was the selection highly limited, it gave no sense of the genre’s rich and varied history from what I could tell… my fears were confirmed when I found out that one of the readings for the course was Edmund Wilson’s infamous essay Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?

But why is it famous? As I recently discovered on a re-read, Wilson’s essay contains literally nothing of substance. He only proved one thing: Edmund Wilson did not like detective stories. Which is a perfectly valid point of view. But Wilson did not substantiate it even remotely. He simply looked down at the genre through the eyes of a “true intellectual” and sniffed at it. In other words, Edmund Wilson was a troll.

An Interview with John Curran: Part Two

Hello everybody, and welcome back for part two of my interview with John Curran! I posted part one yesterday on this page. Today I’m glad to share the last six videos with you all. In today’s clips you can find out what Mr. Curran thinks about the new version of Murder on the Orient Express, After the Funeral, and whether Christie was forced to change the ending of Taken at the Flood (among other things).

Again, there’s no need to worry about spoilers because I personally interrupt the video if a spoiler is coming up. Hopefully you all enjoy the conclusion to this interview; I know that I had a blast in this discussion and hopefully this sort of conversation can become a semi-regular feature on the blog!

Hail to the Queen (of Crime)!

Devoted readers of this blog (all three of them) might remember a review I did back in April of John Curran’s Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks. I concluded the review by warning readers to keep an eye out for a review of the sequel, Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making. Well, it’s been almost two months now, which for me is probably a record time.

Despite all the recent Batman reviews and a very negative Ellery Queen review, I remain a devoted fan of the traditional puzzle-plot mystery, and one of its greatest practitioners was Agatha Christie. Indeed, until I discovered John Dickson Carr I considered Agatha the greatest. Which is why I was very interested in John Curran’s two books, examining the notebooks that Agatha Christie left behind. Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making is his second volume and contains much of the material that was left out of the first book, Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks.

The Sequel to the Curious Case of the Unnecessary Butchering of Murder on the Orient Express

This review is something of a follow-up to my sarcastic play-by-play commentary on the atrocious 2001 TV adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express. I wrote many of these comments a long time ago (at least in Internet minutes) when I first saw the episode in question. I have revisited some of these thoughts and edited some. Please let me know if you enjoy reading these articles, and if there's interest, the next time I do one of these I will attempt to prove that Suchet's version of Appointment With Death is really a thinly-veiled remake of The Mummy.

Murder on the Orient Express has been an episode looked forward to by Poirot fans for a very long time. And about the first 18 minutes are as close as you can get to a total mess. The movie begins with an uninspired and boring case to account for Poirot’s presence in Istanbul, which is extremely repetitive in insisting the perpetrator lied (How inconsiderate!). All Poirot does is shout about how much dishonour this man has brought—it’s basically a 1930s way of saying “You’re a disgrace to me, you’re a disgrace to your country, and you’re a disgrace to your momma!” It gets very boring, and the actor decides to commit suicide, which finally gets Poirot to shut up and look shocked for a few seconds. Unfortunately, he doesn’t stay silent for very long…

Long live the Queen (of Crime)!

I remember the day as though it was yesterday, although it really took place on a hot summer day in 2006. The scene was a used bookstore, and I was happily browsing through the section where books were going for 25 cents. And that was when I met Agatha Christie for the first time. More specifically, I found copies of Cards on the Table and Murder on the Orient Express. I read the plot descriptions and I just knew I had to get these books—and I did! I started with Cards—to date still my favourite Christie—and moved on to Orient and then went and found a copy of Poirot Investigates… Before long, I was hooked on Agatha Christie, reading And Then There Were None, Five Little Pigs, Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, and wondering where on earth I could find a copy of Hallowe’en Party…

It didn’t take me long to read all of Agatha Christie’s novels—it took me just over a year, and the delay was due to my staying in Poland for two months, with no access to Christie whatsoever except through Polish translations… which I quickly learned were extremely subpar. But at any rate, something about the Queen of Crime has always attracted me, and until I came across the work of John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie was my favourite crime writer of all-time. And it was that passion for Christie that led me to purchase John Curran’s Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks.

Eleven little Indians wished to see Big Ben / One was all wrung out and then there were ten.

In July of last year, fellow blogger John Norris over at Pretty Sinister Books wrote an intriguing review of  a book by the French writing duo of Jacquemard-Sénécal. Originally entitled Le Onzième Petit Nègre (The Eleventh Little [Person of African Origin]), it was translated as The Eleventh Little Indian in the US, and I will refer to it under that title. John reviewed an English translation of the book, but as I am bilingual (thanks again for that, Mom and Dad!) I managed to get a hold of the original French edition of the book.

The Eleventh Little Indian has a fascinating premise. A visionary young director, Alexandre Stefanopoulos, has written his own adaptation of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, but he takes it in an entirely different direction from those adaptations that already exist. For instance, he refuses to entertain the idea of a traditional English-country-house décor—he insists (quite correctly) that Agatha Christie emphasizes the modern-ness of the house on Indian Island. He equally insists on a particular sort of expressionistic makeup (ah, theatre fads of the 70s, where are you now?) and finally, the tone of the play is faithful to that of the original novel, retaining the original ending instead of the happier one most film and stage adaptations go with.

Ten Little Indians: Vera Claythorne

One little Indian boy left all alone

He went and hanged himself and then there were none.

This article contains spoilers, which have not been blurred out. Do not read on if you have not read Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.

Patrick: Vera Claythorne is the original Final Girl—women like Laurie Strode in Halloween or Sidney Prescott in Scream, who manage to survive all the way to the end of the flick after all the other cast members (often predominantly male) have been killed off. That can often lead to a one-on-one fight with the killer, but in Christie’s book, the ending has a far more psychological twist. Either way, fans of slashers have much to thank Agatha Christie for— she practically invented what would turn into the slasher genre.

But let’s tackle the character of Vera Claythorne. I vividly recall my impressions when I first read this book, finishing it during a break in Monsieur Weston’s religion class back in Grade 9— I considered Vera to be Evil Incarnate. Of all the guests invited to Indian Island, Mr. Owen judges her to be one of the ones who deserve the most mental anguish, and so she is allowed to live. Her crime is one of the most heinous on the entire island—The Voice of U. N. Owen accuses her “that on the 11^th day of August, 1935, you killed Cyril Ogilvie Hamilton.”

The Man Who Was Dr. Fell: A Close Look at G. K. Chesterton

Hello and welcome everyone to another special edition of At the Scene of the Crime! Today, I’ve asked a very special guest to join me: Chris Chan, who often goes under the moniker of “GKCfan”. Chris, thanks ever so much for joining me!

Back when I had finished reading all of Agatha Christie’s works, I flopped around from author to author trying to find new mysteries to read. Eventually, Chris suggested that I read G. K. Chesterton. (His chosen alias of GKCfan should have told me what I was getting myself into…)

And so I found a Father Brown collection (The Innocence of Father Brown) and sat down to read… I’ve been an addict ever since, and discovering Chesterton was one of the many things that propelled me into discovering the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. (So Chris can take part of the blame for creating this out-of-control literary monster.)

It thus seemed to me appropriate that we should discuss G. K. Chesterton, who is still a very popular author today. Many have read the Father Brown tales but are entirely unaware of his other efforts, such as the books Four Faultless Felons or The Club of Queer Trades. But Chesterton was more than a mystery writer, he was also an eloquent philosopher who eventually converted to Catholicism and was one of the great defenders of his faith. (And as a Catholic myself, there are many wise things Chesterton wrote that I keep in mind while living my everyday life.)

So Chris, now I’ve shared how I became acquainted with Chesterton… how did you first come about him?

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Ten Little Indians: Captain Philip Lombard

Two little Indian boys sitting in the sun;

One got frizzled up and then there was one.

Warning: This article contains spoilers.

Curt: And Then There Were None--a novel, in which, like the play “Hamlet,” everybody dies--is singularly lacking in the typical restorative happy ending people tend to expect from their Golden Age mystery literature. 

Imperceptive readers of And Then There Were None may hold out some hope that our remaining pair of Indians, Philip Lombard and Vera Claythorne, will survive to provide the traditional happy ending, with church bells and wedded bliss just around the corner; but in fact the reason that these two are still around at all is not that they are destined  to fulfill the traditional function of providing love interest and a happy ending, but that they have been deemed the most deserving of mental torture by our sadistic mass murderer, Mr. Owen—and his assessment seems fair enough to me.  These two are the worst of the bunch.

Ten Little Indians: William Henry Blore

Three little Indian boys walking in the Zoo;

A big bear hugged one and then there were Two.

This article contains spoilers.

“It would have been equally impossible for [Golden Age detective novelists] to have created a policeman who beat up suspects, although this was a time when American newspapers wrote about the Third Degree.  Acknowledging that such things happened, they would have thought it undesirable to write about them, because the police were the representatives of established society, and so ought not to be shown behaving badly.”

 —Julian Symons, author of Bloody Murder

“Blore...was a bad hat!”

—Sir Thomas Legge, Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard

Blore in 1987's Desyat Negrityat

Curt: William Henry Blore is charged by Mr. Owen with having “brought about the death of James Stephen Landor on October 10th, 1928.  William Henry Blore is a former policeman, ex-C.I.D. (he’s now running “a detective agency in Plymouth”). 

But who was James Stephen Landor?  When queried about this after Mr. Owen has made his phonograph charges against his guests, the following exchange occurs:

Evil Lies in Wait

Arlena Stuart Marshall is a beautiful woman, and she flares up passionate emotions wherever she goes. Men adore her, or at the very least, admire her beauty. Women despise her. It’s not the most harmonious atmosphere she brings with her to the Jolly Roger Hotel, where the great Hercule Poirot is coincidentally staying. She seems to have her sight set on young Patrick Redfern, recently married to Christine, and this relationship is tearing apart the young marriage.

Someone at last decides to stop Arlena for good, by strangling her at Pixy Cove. Hercule Poirot is asked by the local police to help out with the investigation. And thus, he begins to question everyone. There’s no shortage of suspects, he soon discovers: there’s Arlena’s husband Kenneth and his daughter Linda; there’s the dressmaker Rosamund Darnley, something of a childhood sweetheart of Kenneth Marshall’s; Patrick and Christine Redfern, whose marriage was being threatened; Revered Stephen Lane, a religious fanatic convinced Arlena was the incarnation of evil… and there’s plenty more where that came from!

Ten Little Indians: Dr. Edward Armstrong

Four little Indian boys going out to sea;

A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.

Warning: This article contains spoilers.

Dr. Armstrong in Desyat Negrityat

Curt: I don’t know whether I’m alone, but I’ve always felt sort of sorry for Dr. Armstrong. 

Sure, he’s pompous and conventional (Justice Wargrave at one point contemptuously thinks of Armstrong: “These doctors are all the same—they think in clichés.  A thoroughly commonplace mind.”).  And he likes his money and his standing in society.  But these are characteristics of many of us, to some degree or another.

Yet of course the reason Edward George Armstrong was invited to meet his death on Indian Island was not for any minor character flaw or quirk he might possess, but for his having “caused the death of Louisa Mary Clees.”

Ten Little Indians: Justice Lawrence Wargrave

Five little Indian boys going in for law;

One got in Chancery and then there were four.

Wargrave in 1987's Desyat Negrityat

Patrick: Mr. Justice Wargrave is very much a respected pillar of society. As a retired judge, during his career he has condemned many men to death. From such a position, murder would be quite easy and 100% legal. And that is what Mr. Owen accuses Wargrave of having done, allegedly abusing his power as a judge and sending a man by the name of Edward Seton to his death.

Thus far in the article series “Ten Little Indians”, we have covered a remarkable amount of the victims of And Then There Were None. To paraphrase Curt, now I know how Mr. Owen felt! But at about this time, starting with this character, analyzing characters without spoilers becomes insanely tricky. So tricky, in fact, that I haven’t the slightest intention of trying to do so. This article contains shameless amounts of spoilers— please read Agatha Christie’s novel if you haven’t already done so. The reader is warned.

Murder is Our Business

James Anderson’s The Affair of the Mutilated Mink was a wonderful tribute to the finest Agatha Christie novels. You had the country house setting, the “Bright Young Things”, the ingeniously tricky plot, and plenty of respect for the original material. And in a delightful move, the book was set not in the historically-accurate 1930s, but in the universe of 1930s Golden Age mysteries, where murder among the upper classes is taken for granted and Inspectors Appleby and Alleyn are a telephone call away.

That being said, it was the second volume in a series of books and it did give some hints as to the plot of the first book, The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg Cosy. All this time later, I’ve had plenty of time (and plenty of books!) to forget these hints. So what better thing to do than to return to Alderly Hall, back to the estate of Lord Burford, back to his family and one of the all-time great butlers, Merryweather.

Ten Little Indians: Emily Brent

Six little Indian boys playing with a hive;

A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.

Miss Emily Brent in the 1987 adaptation Desyat Negrityat

Patrick: I am a Catholic and my faith is important to me— wait, don’t turn that dial! Religion plays a major part in my reasons for disliking the character of Emily Brent. Miss Brent was likely not a Catholic—the odds are that, like Agatha Christie, she was Anglican. (Why do I say this? Well, we’re in 1930s England. I have a feeling she wasn’t Baptist.) And yet Miss Brent manages to get her faith so completely and entirely wrong. Emily Brent embodies everything people dislike about religion— she loves her Bible and quotes from it as though she were shellin’ peas. When Mr. Owen’s voice accuses her of bringing about the death of one Beatrice Taylor, she says nothing until everyone falls silent, waiting for her to speak out.