A Criminally Good Break

When Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, by John Curran, was published, I felt that it was the most fascinating book about the genre that I had read for a long time. The notebooks that John Curran has so painstakingly transcribed give a fascinating insight into the thought processes of the most successful crime writer of all time.

So when John invited me to attend the launch in Dublin of his follow-up volume, Agatha Christie's Murder in the Making, I seized the chance to combine the get-together with a long weekend in the Irish capital. And it all worked out marvellously well – even the weather was pretty kind.

The launch was held at a prestigious venue, the Civic Offices on the banks of the River Liffey, and was attended by well over 100 people. The following evening saw a private party hosted by friends of John at their house in Clontarf, which was another highly enjoyable event. Amongst the highlights, as the photograph shows, was the production (and consumption!) Of a cake featuring a facsimile of the book. Mathew Prichard, Christie's grandson (and the father of James Prichard, whose Langtail Press I have featured a few times in this blog) was present on both evenings, and there's no doubt that his support of the project has been crucial to the success of John's work, and that it has been absolutely justified by the dedication John has shown.

I'll be reviewing the book shortly, and I'm delighted that its publication gave me the excuse (if one were needed) for a brief but fascinating break. Dublin is a fairly compact city, and we covered a lot of ground in a short time. And, as unexpected bonus, whilst I was there I not only dreamt up a new short story, but got an idea for the title for my next Lake District Mystery.

John Curran

When you attend a crime fiction convention, there is a pleasurable dilemma about how you spend your time. Do you go to as many panels as possible? Do you network avidly? Or do you try to carve out some time for longer conversations, especially with people whom you seldom have the chance to meet? Of course, there isn't a definitive right answer, but in recent years I've done a bit less manic flitting about, and spent more time indulging in a range of fascinating conversations with some of the very interesting people whom I've encountered.

At the recent Crimefest convention in Bristol, I had the pleasure of talking to a number of people for quite a while, among them the Irish writer and researcher John Curran. John is best known as the author of Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, a wonderful book which has a follow-up volume due out later this year. He is currently researching detective fiction written in the period between 1930 1950, and his knowledge of the genre is encyclopaedic. Not surprisingly, he was one of the contestants in this year's Crimefest Mastermind.

On the Saturday of the convention, John and I had lunch together and talked endlessly about Golden Age detective fiction, a subject close to both our hearts. So endlessly, in fact, that when the cafeteria at Bristol Cathedral closed, we continued our conversation in the delightful Cathedral garden, where I took this photo of John. And when the garden closed, we carried on the discussion, walking along the very pleasant Bristol waterfront in the sunshine.

John has been researching the Golden Age in the copyright library at Trinity College, Dublin, and has come across all manner of rare books. He told me, for instance, about an Australian book called Murder Pie which was inspired by the Detection Club's The Floating Admiral, and which I'm tempted to try to track down. Because of work commitments, I wasn't able to join the party which John took around Agatha Christie's former home Greenway, much to my regret. Next year, perhaps! In the meantime, the chance to spend a few hours with a fellow enthusiast for long forgotten detective fiction (as well as for the unforgettable Agatha Christie) remains one of the memories I'll take away from this year's Crimefest.

Agatha Christie's Poirot - Hallowe'en Party

Hallowe’en Party is the latest instalment of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, due to be shown in the UK at 8 p.m. tonight, and as I’ll be away, I’ll be setting my recorder with a view to doing a review soon. For although the original book is one of Agatha’s least impressive, in my opinion, I am told by John Curran that the TV adaptation is excellent. And John, as the author of Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks, is a very good judge of these matters.

This brings me to the question of whether TV adaptations can actually improve on the original book. The acting is crucial, of course, and David Suchet is always good value as Poirot. Much also depends on the quality of the screenplay, and Hallowe’en Party is written by Mark Gatiss, whose many credits include Sherlock and Doctor Who, as well as previous Christie stories. He’s a talented writer, to put it mildly, and more respectful, I think, of the source material than some other TV writers. But with Hallowe’en Party, the challenge unquestionably is to improve on the original, since Christie was nearing the end of her life when she wrote it, and I recall my disappointment as a teenager when I read the first edition. It simply wasn’t a good mystery.

Of course, only a major writer is ever likely to have his or her unsuccessful books adapted for TV. With Christie, the name is a brand, an assurance of enjoyable mystification, and such a strong brand that the quality of the original isn’t the key issue. Several of her masterpieces have been butchered by others over the years (The Sittaford Mystery was one of the most dismal recent examples) and so it will be a pleasing irony if Hallowe’en Party proves to be a triumph.

Good as Colin Dexter’s books were, I think the TV versions did improve upon them, and the same is true of some of the later and weaker Sherlock Holmes stories. On the other hand, the consensus seems to be that the first DCI Banks show did not live up to the standard of the books, while Tim Heald, Liza Cody, Marjorie Eccles and Frances Fyfield were not especially well served by the TV versions of their books. It’s all the luck of draw, I guess.

Mike Hodges and John Curran

Two highlights of Crimefest for me were first meetings with two men whose work I admire for very different reasons. One of the advantages of spending a bit of time in the bar at conventions is that you meet some very interesting people, and this was never more the case than when Maxim Jakubowski and his wife introduced me to Mike Hodges, whose first novel is being published by Maxim’s new imprint.

Mike Hodges is, of course, the legendary film director whose masterpiece is Get Carter. I’ve mentioned before in this blog that Get Carter is in my opinion one of the finest British crime films ever made, and it was a real pleasure to have a lengthy chat with Mike, who at 77 is a lively and entertaining companion. He told me a bit about his working relationship with Roy Budd, who composed the brilliant score for the film. He also mentioned that his fee for the film was a princely £7000. Not much for creating a classic, even allowing for inflation.

I also met up with John Curran, author of the wonderful Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks. I’d been listening to Marcel Berlins, a top crime reviewer, interviewing John and Matthew Pritchard, Agatha’s grandson, whom I’ve met a couple of times before. John, Matthew and I then had lunch together – for a Christie fan like me, this was a terrific experience.

I was glad to hear that John is bringing out a follow-up to his book next year. And very interested to learn that he has given up his job to do a PhD on Christie and other Golden Age writers. To spend your time having a wonderful excuse to read classics of the genre! It sounds enviable to me. But John deserves it; he has done crime fans a real service with his original work on the notebooks, which not only expand our knowledge of Christie, but cast light on the plotting process in a way that is hugely thought-provoking.

Fiddlers Five (or Three)

Agatha Christie was not just the best-selling novelist of all time. She also achieved, among other things, extraordinary success as a playwright. Some of her plays were based on novels, or short stories, while others were originated for the stage.

Her final play was written for the theatre, and it has a special significance for me. As my 16th birthday approached, my parents discovered that a new Christie play was to be performed in Manchester. And because they knew of my passion for Christie, I was therefore taken to the Palace Theatre to see it as a birthday treat.

The play was called Fiddlers Five. It starred Colin Bean, best known as Private Sponge, a supporting character from ‘Dad’s Army’ and nobody else of any note at all, so far as I can remember. I was rather baffled by the play. It seemed to be intended to be a sort of comedy, and the mystery complications took ages to develop. I enjoyed the experience, but it was not a great play with a great plot, and that was a surprise and a disappointment.

I wasn’t alone in my dubious reaction. In fact, most critics were less kind. Christie re-wrote the play as Fiddlers Three, but it doesn’t seem to have effected much of an improvement. It never reached the West End. John Curran devotes some space to Christie’s planning of the play in Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks and it seems she started work on it as early as 1958. But he is right to describe it as ‘a sad curtain call’. Apparently, it’s never even been published.

Five Little Pigs

In Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks, John Curran hails Five Little Pigs as the greatest of her ‘murder in the past’ plots. He suggests that it is her most impressive combination of detective and ‘straight’ novel. I agree, though I’d add that some of the books in which she focuses essentially on a creating a complex mystery are even more brilliant. But Five Little Pigs is an impressive book, with more effective characterisation than in much of her work.

Christie often found inspiration for her plots in nursery rhymes, and the ‘five little pigs’ rhyme is there at the beginning – but Curran points out that before the detail of the story took shape, ‘she had considered a different murder method, a different murderer and different suspects.’

Not until she had indulged in a good deal of trial and error did Christie come up with the scenario she eventually chose. And what a chilling scenario it is – with the culprit watching the victim die. It’s much more horrifying, to my mind, than most of the graphic torture scenes so commonly found in modern books about serial killings. I would have assumed it was Christie’s starting point for the story, but far from it.

Writers like me can learn a lot from seeing how Christie played around with ideas, trying them out for size, discarding many plot twists that had superficial appeal in favour of alternatives that worked more effectively in the particular context. It’s a reminder that writing involves endless revision – and not just once one has completed the first draft.

I don’t work in the same way as Christie, but I empathise with many of her methods. When writing The Serpent Pool, I struggled over one aspect of the story for a long time. At a late stage, a way forward occurred to me. I am fairly confident that when people read the book, that late twist will seem fundamental to the whole story. As soon as it struck me, it felt ‘right’. But I confess – it did take an awfully long time to strike me!

The ABC Murders

Everywhere you look in Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks by John Curran, there are insights into the thought processes of an extraordinary writer that I find truly fascinating. One of the points that emerges very clearly is that good plots do not necessarily come into a writer’s mind fully formed. They often evolve over time.

This is something I needed to learn as a young writer. When, in my twenties, I wanted to write a murder mystery, I was daunted by the challenge of dreaming up a complex plot. Only when I realised that you can build up your story bit by bit did I really make progress.

A good example of the Christie technique is provided by her notes on The ABC Murders, which I believe is one of the finest whodunits ever written, with a central device that has been borrowed by many later writers (including several of real distinction.) It turns out that Christie flirted with the idea of having the murderer as one of the supposed victims of a serial killer. She pondered having a house party in the story – there isn’t one in the book. And, remarkably, her early notes make no mention of the alphabetical sequence which is at the heart of the novel. This seems to have occurred to her later.

It turns out that the first ‘A’ murder was originally due to take place in Aberystwyth, a resort I know and like. But for some reason she changed her mind and shifted the crime to Andover. It was left to Malcolm Pryce to make Aberystwyth a name to be reckoned with in crime fiction….

Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

I’ve already expressed my enthusiasm for John Curran’s analysis of Agatha Christie’s plotting notebooks. One of the many insights that fascinated me is the way in which Christie played around with ideas, sometimes for years, before coming up with an approach to a story that satisfied her.

Something that Christie’s critics foolishly overlook when they dismiss her as a ‘cosy’ writer whose characters were ‘cardboard cut-outs’ is her determination to experiment, and to push the boundaries of the whodunit. Her originality of approach is one of the explanations for her enormous success. Curran rightly points out, for instance, that relatively few of her novels are set in the cosy English villages with which she is so often associated. Her range of settings was remarkable.

One of her most interesting ideas was to set a murder mystery in Ancient Egypt. Death Comes as the End is in some ways a flawed book, although I do like it. I was intrigued to learn from Curran that Christie toyed with a number of different possible culprits.

But most intriguing of all is the revelation that Christie toyed with having a modern day story running in parallel to the ancient one. Shades of Possession or The French Lieutenant’s Woman – but this is not a concept that (so far as I know) has ever been adopted in a murder mystery. It’s a great idea, and someone really ought to give it a crack, even though Christie didn’t. I’m almost tempted myself….

John Curran

I’ve been reading the recently published Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks (‘Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making’) by John Curran. It’s an extraordinarily interesting book, and I will post a variety of thoughts about some of the material it contains in the coming days and weeks.

But first I want to express my admiration for the work of John Curran in ensuring that this material has seen the light of day. I don’t know John Curran personally, but I do know of him as someone with a great love of the work of Christie, and that enthusiasm is apparent in every page of this book.

Curran got to know Mathew Prichard, Christie’s grandson, and became a regular visitor to Christie’s old home, Greenway, in Devon. There he became immersed in the handwritten notes that Christie had crammed, over many years, into no fewer than 73 cheap exercise books. He deciphered her handwriting with painstaking care – a task that could only be accomplished efficiently by someone who knew the novels and stories intimately and could thus understand the many obscure references. According to Prichard’s foreword, ‘had to be prised out for meals, sometimes spending 12 hours a day immersed in the history of Agatha Christie’s work.’

This truly has been a labour of love. To uncover and interpret such a treasure trove of material – which I am sure must, in its scope and range, be unique in the history of crime fiction, given Christie’s fame, productivity, and mastery of plot – is an extraordinary achievement. Curran must have felt like a child put in charge of sweet shop. A wonderful experience, and he is a lucky chap to have had it. But he deserves that luck, and the gratitude of all Christie fans, for he has done a magnificent job. I have found his book absolutely enthralling – not only as a lifelong admirer of Christie myself, but as a crime writer fascinated by plot and puzzle. I can heartily recommend Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks to anyone who loves traditional mysteries and would like to learn more about the creative process.