A New Thought Regarding Agatha Christie's Crime Stories

Many years ago I had a friend who was going through an Agatha Christie binge. Actually, both he and his wife were thoroughly absorbed in reading her crime novels, ever trying to solve the crimes before Miss Marple or the little grey cells of Hercule Poirot could. 

At the time, I was involved in other pursuits, reading “serious literature” in preparation for a writing career. I can’t lay all the blame on Covid, but my reading in 2020 has included a long list of books from the John Sanford and Agatha Christie catalogs. In reading the latter, something dawned on me that I hadn’t noticed before.

“Ah, my friend, one may live in a big house and yet have no comfort.” — Hercule Poirot

How many of you grew up in a home with maids and butlers? As I reflect on the numerous Christie stories I’ve read, I can’t seem to recall any involving a family like my own. In addition to murders taking place in exotic places, such as the Nile or on the Orient Express, we have countless stories of people with wealth, whose servants are under suspicion, or who have both city and country homes. 

I can only guess that part of the appeal of her work may have been the voyeuristic aspect of peeking in on the lifestyles of the rich and, sometimes, famous. It was easy for her to write accurately about this lifestyle, for it was the lifestyle she was acquainted with. She didn’t have to make it up. In her autobiography she states that she herself grew up with three servants in her household.

“Servants, of course, were not a particular luxury–it was not a case of only the rich having them; the only difference was that the rich had more,” she wrote in her autobiography. 

This is a very different set of life circumstances than my father’s grandparents were experiencing in Eastern Kentucky at the time. (Agatha Christie was born in 1890.) They were illiterate and poor, but resourceful, scratching out a livelihood halfway up the side of a mountain, and even being generous.

Yet, even growing up with a nurse and nanny, Ms. Christie claims that her family was not rich. Rich people had cars. Her family did not. 

Two other areas of expertise show up in her stories. When it comes to poisons, her knowledge is vast. That is, the more stories you read, it’s surprising how many ways to poison people there are. She gained this knowledge first hand. No, not first hand by poisoning people, but by working in a dispensary during the two world wars. 

Another area of specialized knowledge came from marrying an archaeologist in 1930. While her second husband was actively exploring digs in the Middle East, she was no doubt picking his brain and digging for details that would give veracity to her murders in Egypt and elsewhere. 

She’s to be commended for her tenacity. Her first six books were rejected by publishers. Nevertheless, she persisted despite the lack of interest from editors, until a door opened in 1920 and “the rest is history.” She became a master of the craft. One title alone, And Then There Were None, sold 100 million copies worldwide.

If these are not new thoughts for you, then I suppose I'm just late to the parade. One of the first bits of advice that young writers are frequently given is this: Write about what you know. This may be why you don't find butlers and housemaids in my stories. More often than not it's just a character trying to figure out the meaning of his life.

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