Dead Image and Avon Street

The combination of history with mystery is a beguiling one. It's hard to believe now, but when Agaaha Christie wrote a whodunit set in Ancient Egypt, Death Comes as the End, it was an unusual - and rather brave - thing to do. Now, historical mysteries abound, and a number of authors have carved terrific reputations in the field.

I first came across The History Press when they agreed to publish last year's Murder Squad anthology, Best Eaten Cold. The book appeared under a new imprint, The Mystery Press, and this is a brand which seems to be going from strength to strength.

Two recent titles from this stable deserve particular mention. Dead Image, by Joan Lock, is a paperback edition of a book which first appeared more than a decade ago. Joan Lock is a former police officer (so was her late husband Bob, a chap with a delightful sense of humour whom I first met, with Joan, at CWA conferences more than 20 years ago.) She has a great deal of expertise in the field of police history, and this book, featuring Detective Sergeant Best, is a typically well-researched and entertaining novel. Joan is definitely an author to check out, and an acknowledged expert in her field.

Paul Emanuelli, in contrast, is a new name to me. His book Avon Street, is a tale of murder in Victorian Bath. As Peter Lovesey has shown, Bath is a fascinating setting for a mystery, and Emanuelli has produced an adventure story with its roots - as a short afterword explains - in reality. There's some good stuff here, but the book is twice as long as Dead Image, and I think Joan Lock's book shows that there is often a great deal of merit in concision, even if it means excluding some interesting research material.

James on Christie

I’ve mentioned how much I enjoyed P.D. James’ new book, Talking About Detective Fiction. That does not mean, of course, that I agree with every view expressed in it. For example, I felt she was rather hard on Agatha Christie, even though she does express admiration for Christie’s mastery of her craft.

‘The last thing we get from a Christie novel is the disturbing presence of evil,’ James argues. I just don’t think that’s right, just as I’m rather surprised that James does not pay much attention to the fact that Christie’s settings were very varied indeed – she was far from being someone who specialised in village-based whodunits, even though many people associate her more or less exclusively with the Mayhem Parva type of mystery.

There has been an interesting discussion on the Golden Age Detection discussion forum about Christie and evil, and I’m with those who believe that Christie had a strong sense of evil, and let it show clearly in quite a number of her books. The closing paragraphs of Five Little Pigs and 4.50 from Paddington illustrate the point, and there are plenty of other examples.

I was also startled that James said of Christie: ‘She wasn’t an innovative writer and had no interest in exploring the possibilities of the genre.’ Blimey. What about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The ABC Murders, Death Comes as the End, Murder on the Orient Express, Endless Night, and Curtain? I’m not sure how many detective story writers have been more innovative than Christie.

But there you go. Only a dull study of detective fiction would fail to spark debate, and this is a book without a dull paragraph. No doubt there are many people who agree with P.D. James on the subject of Christie. just as I agree with her when she concludes this fascinating book by predicting that: ‘in the twenty-first century, as in the past, many of us will continue to turn for relief, entertainment and mild intellectual challenge to these unpretentious celebrations of reason and order in our increasingly complex and disorderly world.’

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….