Malice Domestic and the Poirot Award

After weeks of breathless globe-trotting, I'm back in sunny Cheshire for a while now, and I've a chance to reflect on some marvellous trips, most recently to Malice Domestic 29 in Bethesda, Maryland (a suburb of Washington DC). Malice is an exceptionally well-run and friendly convention which focuses on the traditional mystery. This was my fifth time at Malice, and after receiving one of their prized Agatha awards last year, I was extremely fortunate to be honoured again.

This time I was presented with the Poirot award; which is given in recognition of a significant contribution to the traditional mystery genre. It isn't awarded every year, and the contribution in question may be quite distinct from writing books - the very first recipient was David Suchet, and last year the Poirot went to Barbara Peters and Rob Rosenwald, whose Poisoned Pen Bookstore and Press have made such an impact over the past twenty-odd years.

It was a great honour, and I was delighted to share the evening of the awards banquet with some special guests, including Doug Greene (a past recipient of the Poirot), Steve Steinbock, and British writers Ann Cleeves and Frances Brody. Also on my table was Cathy Ace, originally from Wales but now Chair of the Crime Writers of Canada, who interviewed me about my career and did a fantastic job. I also enjoyed being part of a panel including other honorees such as Charlaine Harris and Elaine Viets, and signing copies of the Malice anthology, Mystery Most Historical, which includes a story of mine. To my delight, Crippen & Landru produced a specially published edition for convention delegates of my short story "Acknowledgments". .

As ever with conventions, I tried to fit in some sightseeing, and I can certainly recommend a river cruise on the Potomac. One of these days I'll make it as far as Mount Vernon....The weather was gorgeous, so I spent as much time as I could outside, visiting various monuments as well as the botanical garden. Washington is a great city. As for the convention, it passed all too quickly, but I was delighted to spend quality time with old friends and new, including Janet Hutchings of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Gin Malliet, Michael Dirda, and Elaine and English Showalter. It was good, too, to meet John Norris, whose blog Pretty Sinister Books I've long enjoyed, for the very first time. My thanks and congratulations go to the Malice Board, who always do such a fine job. I've already registered for next year, and if you like crime conventions, this is one I can strongly recommend.

   

Burgh Island and a Day to Remember

I love islands, and this, combined with my love of Agatha Christie's books, means that for many years I've harboured the ambition to visit Burgh Island, off the coast of Christie's native Devon. It's a small tidal island with a fantastic Art Deco hotel where she stayed, as did many celebrities of her era. Burgh inspired Evil Under the Sun and also, though less directly, And Then There Were None. The Peter Ustinov film of Evil Under the Sun was not filmed on the island - at the time, the hotel had ceased to function as a hotel, and it seems to have operated as a sort of very upmarket holiday camp. But the hotel was restored, and provided the setting for the David Suchet version of the story. These days it's very luxurious - so much so that an extended stay was financially out of the question. But when I was invited to the Agatha Christie Festival in nearby Torquay, I resolved to stay on Burgh the night before.

My excitement mounted when news came from the hotel that a tropical storm was forecast for the night of my visit. What could be more atmospheric? At low tide, you can walk across the sand from the mainland to Burgh, but at high tide there is a sea tractor, an elaborate and rather rickety-looking contraption, which ferries people back and forth. However, the storm meant that the sea tractor would be unsafe, so it was essential to get there in time for luggage etc to be taken across the sand before the water came in.

In order to break the journey, I stayed overnight in Somerset. A good idea in theory,but it proved disastrous in practice, as the hotel's breakfast cafetiere exploded, showering me in hot coffee, an incident that led to my being covered by ice packs for an hour. However, I hated the idea of giving up on Burgh, and it was actually easier to soldier on and drive there than go all the way home. And am I glad I took that decision!

The island was wonderful, and so was the hotel - my room was one used for filming Evil Under the Sun, which was a real bonus. Truly a glimpse into how the other half live. The storm didn't really materialise, but a fantastic rainbow decorated the early evening sky, and the next morning was brilliantly sunny. Mind you, fellow guests may have been rather spooked by the sight of a mysterious disfigured stranger at dinner. Never mind. It was a truly unforgettable occasion, for all sorts of reasons, most of them very pleasurable indeed..

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The Escape Artist - and Poirot's Last Case

The Escape Artist, starring David Tennant, came to an end in the same week as Agatha Christie's Poirot. Tennant and that other great David are two marvellous actors, but you'd think that there was a world of difference between the modern legal thriller and Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. However, I'm not so sure.

Both stories focused on the issue of whether murder can ever be justified. Tennant's character used his legal skills to escape justice while Poirot relied on a crafty locked rooms scenario. But they were both faced with an adversary whom the conventional legal system could not bring to justice - so they were forced to consider how best justice could be done, and they acted accordingly.

Of course, Agatha Christie's Poirot is regarded as ultra-cosy, while The Escape Artist included some fairly grim scenes. But I have to say that, overall, I wasn't sure that The Escape Artist was any more believable than Curtain. The first episode was gripping and pretty credible, but as the plot thickened, there were some increasingly unlikely twists. One or two of these jarred because of the apparent realism of the basic scenario.

I enjoyed both shows, but I think a comparison of their similarities shows that some of  Christie's storylines aren't as remote from present day writers' concerns as many people may think. And one might argue that the essential artificiality of the classic whodunit form means that the use of coincidence and the improbable can, in some cases, be more artistically satisfactory than their use in the context of a story that strives for much greater realism.

As a writer interested in blending the classic form with a contemporary approach, this is a topic that I find thought-provoking and I plan to talk about it again in the future..In the meantime, I welcome any comments. (Incidentally, I received today a fascinating email from someone who preferred not to sign up to post a comment, and of course I welcome any direct dialogue with readers.)

Agatha Christie's Poirot: Curtain, Poirot's Last Case - ITV review (no spoilers)

Agatha Christie's Poirot came to an end last night with Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, and we were treated to a suitably dark production of Kevin Elyot's screenplay. I don't want to include any spoilers at all in this particular review, but suffice to say that David Suchet's performance as the great detective was one of his very best. What a brilliant actor he is, and how wonderfully he has interpreted Poirot, transforming him from a collection of unlikely idiosyncracies into a character we actually care about , and not just because of his little grey cells. I am full of admiration.

Curtain, as most people know, was written when Christie was at the height of her powers, even though it was not published until the Seventies. I read it shortly after it was published, and I thought then - and I still think - that it is one of her finest detective novels. This is not a view universally shared, I must admit, but some of the ideas in the book strike me as breathtaking. I think the culprit's modus operandi is absolutely fascinating, while the locked room scenario and the final startling revelation are classic devices.

It can't have been easy to adapt such an unorthodox story, but Kevn Elyot made an extremely good job of it. He dispensed with the detail of the explanation that Poirot gives, early in the book, for his decision to return to Styles Court, and some viewers may, I suppose, have found this one of the more perplexing stories in the series,but I felt Elyot struck a very good balance between giving clues and not giving the game away.

The cast as a whole was very good, with Hugh Fraser giving of his best as Hastings, and Philip Glenister, an actor of great versatility, playing a part as unlike Gene Hunt as could be imagined. The series has provided us with first class entertainment for a quarter of a century, and I've enjoyed it all the way.

Agatha Christie's Poirot - Dead Man's Folly - ITV review

Dead Man's Folly, the second in the current series of Agatha Christie's Poirot, was based on a novel from the 50s, when the Queen of Crime's work was rather more variable than it had been a few years earlier. The book has some delicious elements, although the solution has always struck me as rather contrived. The ITV version with David Suchet made the most of the story's merits, notably the marvellous country house and village fete settng.

And to make things even better, a very good decision was taken to film the story at Greenway. Christie used her own home in Devon, and its marvellous grounds, in fictional form for the book, so this was a very appropriate homage. I was also reminded strongly of a marvellously sunny day last year, when I had the memorable experience of revisiting Greenway in the company of that great Christie expert John Curran.

Zoe Wanamaker was an effervescent Mrs Oliver as usual, with Sinead Cusack very good in the important part of Mrs Folliat. The early scenes, when Poirot arrives at Nasse House and meets the house guests, and when the fete takes place, were very well done. As in the book, things faltered slightly after the discovery that a teenage girl has been murdered, and the suspects were not perhaps as strongly developed as they might have been. Overall, the screenplay was faithful to the original both in its strengths and its shortcomings, with a slight change to the ending. Verdict - not a classic,but good light entertainment.

Agatha Christie's Poirot - The Big Four - ITV review

Agatha Christie's Poirot began its new run on ITV tonight with The Big Four, co-written by Mark Gatiss and Ian Hallard. Among other pleasures, the episode reintroduced Hugh Fraser, Pauline Moran and Philip Jackson as Captain Hastings, Miss Lemon, and the world-weary cop Japp, all of whom played an enjoyable part in supporting the great David Suchet in the early days of the series. The main cast members attended one of the most memorable crime events I can recall, the Agatha Christie Centenary Banquet at Torquay' s English Riviera Centre in September 1990. It was a wonderful, unforgettable night, complete with a dramatic firework display over the bay.

Now, although I'm a Christie fan, I'm the first to acknowledge that not all her detective stories are masterpieces. The Big Four was published at a low point in her life, not long after her famous disappearance, and was cobbled together from a series of lurid episodes. As a result, the book is fragementary, and the plot material pretty risible. How do you adapt something like that so as to satisfy a 21st century television audience?

The answer is to do it confidently, but with respect for the strong points in Christie's writing and the characters. Mark Gatiss, a writer I admire, is well qualified to do this, and I felt he and Ian Hallard did a pretty good job, at least until the closing scenes, which were crazier in mood than the earlier part of the story. I sensed the writers' energy flagging a bit towards the end, with Hastings disappearing from the action for no good reason..But anyone who has read the original novel will surely agree that it would be a challenge to adapt.

Some people might argue that in some ways, it is easier to make a success of adapting a poor Christie book than a good one. In support of that view, I felt that, to take just one example, the TV version of The Sittaford Mystery was hugely disappointing. Having said that, the screenplay of The Secret of Chimneys, which was another Twenties thriller in broadly the same vein as The Big Four, was over the top from start to finish. Despite that faltering in the later stages, The Big Four worked better overall..

Of course, the presence of David Suchet is a huge asset to this series. Almost everyone who has responded to my post on Joan Hickson agrees she was the best Jane Marple, and I think there's even less argument about the definitive nature of Suchet's interpretation of Poirot. He was as good as usual in The Big Four.

Agatha Christie's Poirot: Elephants Can Remember - ITV review

Agatha Christie's Poirot began its final series tonight with Elephants Can Remember, featuring David Suchet as Poirot and Zoe Wanamaker as Mrs Ariadne Oliver. The book, it has to be said, is one of Christie's worst, a rambling effort written at the end of her career when her powers were failing and her publishers were too much in awe of her to edit what she wrote with the necessary ruthlessness. I read it not long after its first publication in the early 70s, and was so disappointed that it's one of the few Christies I've never bothered to reread..

Oddly enough, the flaws of the original presented more of an opportunity than a grim challenge for the screenplay writer, Nick Dear, a BAFTA winner whose CV includes a version of Jane Austen's Persuasion. I can think of a number of Christie books that have been ruined by over-the-top adaptatons in the past few years, but Dear did a good job with this "cold case" mystery, inventing liberally to compensate for a lack of dramatic material in the book.

As with a number of other televised Christies, the action was shifted to the between the wars period that seems well suited to puzzle stories of this kind, even when they were written much later. Wanamaker was, as usual, great fun in her zestful efforts to establish the truth about the apparent murder and suicide of the parents of Celia Ravenscroft (well played by Vanessa Kirby, who was equally good in Kate Mosse's Labyrinth). It was a shock to see the super-glamorous Greta Scacchi playing the part of an ageing battleaxe, but like the rest of the cast, she was excellent.

People who don't like Agatha Christie point to flaws in characterisation and wildly unlikely plot devices, and Elephants Can Remember is a book which suffers from these weaknesses. But this lavishly produced TV version showed that sympathetic adaptation can work wonders with unsatisfactory source material. The result was decent Sunday evening entertainment, and certainly the screenplay is better than the book. But it's only fair to add that Christie cannot sensibly be judged by her last few novels. Her reputation is built on those ingenious classic mysteries she wrote long before her powers declined, and could hardly be more secure.   

Agatha Christie's Poirot - The Clocks: review

Agatha Christie's Poirot remains a real treat whenever I come across a new episode, and The Clocks has been the highlight of my holiday viewing so far (not that the competition has been hot or even warm, admittedly, given that I've never got to grips with Downton Abbey).

The Clocks is a relatively late Christie novel, first published in 1963, and it's not rated very highly by connoisseurs - though I have always liked the story. The discovery of a corpse surrounded by a mysterious array of clocks is a great plot device, and even though Christie's explanation is, some would argue, a cop-out, I find it striking and memorable. Another pleasing aspect of the book is Poirot's discussion of great detective novelists, including a passing reference to John Dickson Carr, whom Christie knew and admired. There is also mention (crucial to the story-line) of a prolific author called Garry Gregson, who I believe was based on John Creasey.

I wondered how the scriptwriter would adapt the novel for television, because the story-line does throw up a lot of challenges - not least the fact that Poirot only takes centre stage quite late in the book. Stewart Harcourt's solution was to adapt very freely indeed, and move the story back in time by a quarter of a century - a risky course. There have been all too many Christie adaptations over the years where radical changes have been made, and the result has been a bit of a mess. But that isn't always the case, by any means, and I'm not one of those purists who believes that a novel must invariably be translated to the small screen in a totally faithful fashion. The screenwriter often needs to have some licence. And in this case, I felt that the end justified the means. The mystery was pleasingly unravelled, and although I had one or two quibbles, I found the two hours passed very agreeably: Harcourt did a good job.

David Suchet, as usual, was splendid as Poirot. It was especially poignant to see the late Anna Massey playing the part of the blind but sharp-witted Millicent Pebmarsh - she was a terrific actor. And the supporting cast was good, with none of the over-the-top acting we've seen in one or two Poirots and Marples.

Christmas

As Christmas approaches - and as you can see from the photo, it's a white Christmas here in Lymmm, can I sent my very best wishes to all of you who read this blog. Have a great time!

The TV schedules look promising. But how can I choose at 9 pm between Murder on the Orient Express – the new version with David Suchet – and the classic And Then There Were None, which is my all-time favourite Christie? We’ll see!

I do plan to review the new Poirot soon in any event. And maybe the older film too, while I'm at it...

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.

Cat Among the Pigeons: review

Cat Among the Pigeons was one of the first detective stories that I read. I liked it a lot the first time round, but later I realised that it was a long way short of Dame Agatha at her best. The plot is rather cluttered, and Mark Gatiss, who wrote the screenplay for Agatha Christie’s Poirot, addressed that by making a number of pretty radical changes to the story. By and large, however, they worked, and the result was very watchable.

One change sees Poirot in at Meadowbank School from the outset. The soon-to-retire head teacher (a suitably imperious Harriet Walter) has invited him to make a speech, but then asks him to stay on at the school to assess the quality of the potential candidates to succeed her. Not very likely, but a device to allow Poirot to dominate proceedings from start to finish, and in story-telling terms, this was a good idea.

Mrs Upjohn (played by Pippa Haywood, who I used to like in The Brittas Empire, and who seems destined to be typecast as a scatty woman) recognises someone at the school who is supposed to have died years ago – but nobody follows up on this tantalising remark, and she promptly takes herself off to Anatolia. A sequence of murders and other crimes duly ensue.

The cast includes Claire Skinner (best known as the harassed mum in Outnumbered), but inevitably David Suchet turns in the most memorable performance, somehow convincing us that Poirot would be completely at ease in the (to him) wholly alien surroundings of Meadowbank. Overall, I’d say this is one of those Poirots where the television version is on a par with the book which sourced it.

Agatha Christie's Poirot - Three Act Tragedy: review

Three Act Tragedy, with David Suchet as Poirot, was shown on ITV1 last night and proved to be the best Agatha Christie adaptation I’ve seen in quite a while. The novel was one of the first mysteries I ever read, and stands out in my memory as a truly enjoyable read, so I was delighted that the screenplay by Nick Dear stayed as faithful to the original as one could reasonably hope.

The story opens at the Cornish home of a famous actor, Sir Charles Cartwright, played by Martin Shaw. Poirot is present at a party which turns to tragedy when a local vicar dies suddenly. An inquest rules out foul play, but Sir Charles is not satisfied – and neither, of course, is the typical Christie fan. A month later, in Monte Carlo, he shows Poirot a news report of the apparent murder of Bartholomew Strange (Art Malik, who seems to appear sooner or later in every detective series) at his Yorkshire home – in the middle of a party with an almost identical guest list. Sir Charles and Poirot hot-foot it to Yorkshire to investigate, and suspicion falls on an enigmatic butler, who has disappeared in mysterious circumstances. But can he really be the guilty party?

The locations in this story may not be quite as exotic as those in the Christies set in the Middle East, but they were equally sumptuous. As usual, the supporting cast, which included Jane Asher, was first-rate. It goes without saying that Suchet was great, but Martin Shaw, I thought, was as at his very best – he obviously relished the role. I was glad that the book’s excellent last line, one of Christie’s best, was retained.

The book tends not to be ranked along with Christie masterpieces, and I suspect this is because most of the characters have no compelling motive to kill either the vicar or Strange. They were equally lightly sketched in Nick Dear’s otherwise very effective screenplay (which omits altogether Mr Satterthwaite, who acts as a sidekick in the novel.) But I think the concept behind the book is marvellously cunning – especially in the way the first murder is explained – and as far as I know it is original to Christie. A clever mystery, turned into splendid Sunday evening viewing.

Agatha Christie's Poirot - Appointment with Death: review

Appointment with Death is one of my least favourite Poirot novels, but I’ve just caught up with the David Suchet version screened on Christmas Day and it made enjoyable viewing. This was the result of a number of pleasing ingredients, including good background music and excellent photography – the setting of the screenplay is Syria in 1937, and the programme was visually impressive.

The cast, needless to say, was of high quality. I’ve talked before about my admiration for Suchet’s interpretation of Poirot, but among the other performances I enjoyed was that of Paul Freeman as Colonel Carbury. I always associate Freeman with his role in The Long Good Friday, in which his unwise shady dealings lead to disaster for Harold Shand, played by Bob Hoskins. A very different role here, and he played it with gusto. Other notable cast members included Cheryl Campbell, Mark Gatiss, Tim Curry – and Beth Goddard, who is so attractive that the nun she played was instantly noticeable and therefore highly suspicious.

Guy Andrews’ screenplay took plenty of liberties with the original, but got away with it, because the criminal’s motivation in the book is profoundly unsatisfactory. I still remember being disappointed by it when, as a Christie addict, I first devoured the book as a teenager. In the tv version, the motivation is totally different, and there are two culprits working hand in glove rather than one, as well as new characters and (groan!) that now hoary old stand-by, child abuse.

Purists will say that the screenplay was wildly over the top, and this is certainly true of the climactic scene. But on the whole, this is surely forgivable in the case where the original book is very far from being a classic. Appointment with Death was fun to watch.

David Suchet and Poirot

ITV 3 repeated a documentary from 2005 the other day, which took us ‘behind the scenes’ with a year of Poirot stories for the small screen. I found it interesting, and a reminder of what a fine actor David Suchet is, and of how completely he has made the role of the Belgiam supersleuth his own.

There were clips from four episodes. One (The Mystery of the Blue Train) was based on a mediocre book, but the other three stories – Cards on the Table, After the Funeral, and Taken at the Flood, all boast high calibre plotting. But as one of the galaxy of talent in the various casts said, you can’t spot the murderer by figuring out who is the most famous star in the show, ‘because everyone is famous’!

Whenever I’ve seen Suchet interviewed, he comes across as a charming and modest man (the same seems to be true of his brother John, who was an affable news reader for many years.). It’s clear that he is a perfectionist, and that his attention to detail has helped to bring out the human side of Poirot. I think that, in original concept, he was something of a cipher, a great reasoning machine, with a personality that was largely composed of a collection of eccentric mannerisms. But out of Agatha Christie’s raw material, Suchet has fashioned a very appealing character. Among classic tv interpretations of detectives from novels, he is right up there with John Thaw’s Morse and Joan Hickson’s Jane Marple.

To my mind, Suchet is a better Poirot than Peter Ustinov, and far better than Albert Finney. One Poirot I haven’t seen is Tony Randall, who played the part in The Alphabet Murders, based on The ABC Murders. This is apparently a case of a very fine book and a rotten film adaptation, but I’ve always wanted to see it, to check whether the universally scornful reviews are justified, and just what the screenwriter did to mess up such a good story. But the film is unavailable on DVD and I’ve never seen it on telly. Maybe that speaks volumes?

Agatha Christie memories

That excellent online resource Tangled Web UK asked me to review a new, lavishly illustrated book, Hilary Macaskill’s Agatha Christie at Home. It’s one of those volumes often described as for ‘the coffee table’, but this sometimes is a euphemism, meaning that the book is nice to look at, but scarcely worth reading. But I think it’s of interest to Christie fans.

There is discussion about a range of places where Christie felt at home, starting with her birthplace in Torquay, a house called Ashfield. There’s mention of other homes, such as Winterbrook House in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, but naturally the main focus is on Greenway, Christie’s favourite house, standing above the River Dart.

Greenway has recently been donated to the National Trust, and I can’t wait to pay it a return visit. My first trip there was in 1990. The CWA’s annual conference took place in Torquay, and one of the highlights was a private tour of Greenway, conducted by Christie’s grandson. I found it truly fascinating, even though the time available did not permit a full exploration of the lovely grounds.

All in all, it was a great weekend that will long stay in my memory. Other highlights include the meeting of David Suchet and Joan Hickson, when the Orient Express pulled in to the station at Torquay, and the Centenary Dinner, when my wife and I rubbed shoulders with members of the casts of the Christie tv series, and watched, from the balcony of the Conference Centre, a dramatic fireworks display over the bay, possibly the most dazzling I've ever seen in my life.