This was the title I chose for May in my Facebook Reading Challenge, the theme of which was classic crime fiction. I’ve read a few Agatha Christie’s in the last couple of years, having never much delved into this genre for most of my reading life. I loved the escapism of Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express and I wanted to see if I would enjoy just as much a murder mystery set in the more prosaic location of London. I had also seen a little of the television adaptation from 2018 starring John Malkovich (though I think I only caught a couple of episodes) and it seemed altogether more grounded in the grim reality of its criminal subject. I’d love to watch it, actually, now that I’ve read the book, but sadly it’s not available at the moment. The film and television adaptations I have watched of Agatha Christie works have been more like costume dramas with more than a hint of comedy. I think I might prefer that to the darker readings of more recent years (rather like my late grandmother who was a voracious reader and loved nothing more than losing herself for a day in “a good murder”!)
In The ABC Murders Poirot is involved in a cat and mouse game with a serial killer, someone who warns in advance where and when he will strike, taunting our Belgian hero; the murderer begins with middle-aged shopkeeper Mrs Alice Ascher in Andover, then flirty young waitress Betty Barnard in Bexhill-on-sea, and so on. In this novel Poirot is past his career peak and his approach is challenged as somewhat old-fashioned in the form of Inspector Crome, an ambitious young detective who prefers more modern methods in his investigation. The murderer, however, pits himself squarely against our ageing Belgian hero; it is, unusually for the Poirot novels (it seems to me), a psychological game between perpetrator and hunter.
I also found Christie much more philosophical here than in the other Poirot novels I have read, on the criminal mind and on human nature and society more generally, such as in the following quote from Poirot:
“Speech, so a wise old Frenchman said to me once, is an invention of man’s to prevent him from thinking. It is also an infallible means of discovering that which he wishes to hide.”
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Like so many before me I have come to love the character of Poirot, though in my mind, I can only ever see him as David Suchet! This was the quintessential book to curl up in a chair with and lose myself for an hour or so. As such, it was the perfect antidote to the continuous grim news about Coronavirus which dominated this Spring for most of us. Every time I read a Christie novel I want to run away and just read more. That might take me years since she was so prolific! I have been exploring the official Agatha Christie website with interest and it has fantastic recommendations on screen adaptations of her work, though I might need another lockdown to get through them!
If you are an Agatha Christie fan, what are your favourite novels and screen adaptations?
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