Those Golden Age Detectives

Elizabeth Zelvin

In the Golden Age of detective fiction, several British mystery writers, all women, reigned more or less co-supreme: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, and, writing a bit later, New Zealand-born Ngaio Marsh.

Let’s take Christie first and get her out of the way, because her mysteries differ from those of the others in several respects. For one thing, the world she portrays is rather middlebrow. Hercule Poirot, one of her enduring detectives, is an eccentric Belgian, played for laughs, who stands outside the parade of English society. He has no personal life and no genuine emotions apart from a mild compassion for some of the victims of the crimes he solves and an occasional burst of vanity. The other, that unlikely sleuth, Miss Marple, is a middle-class resident of a village in which society consists of such stock characters as the vicar, the doctor and the squire—hardly elevated enough to be invited to dinner, say, at Downton Abbey, unless no other company is expected.

In Christie’s mysteries, the puzzle is all. If her plots seem clichéd to today’s readers, it’s because the twists that were fresh and original in her work have spawned so many imitators. I doubt that anyone would call her stories character driven. The Poirot and Miss Marple series have no arc; their characters are unchanging and eternal.

On the other hand, Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey, Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion, and Marsh’s Detective Chief Inspector (later Superintendent and Chief Superintendent) Roderick Alleyn have a lot in common. Lord Peter is the brother of the Duke of Devon; Campion is the pseudonymous scion of a family of unnamed but elevated rank, perhaps a ducal younger son himself. Alleyn is the younger brother of a rather stuffy baronet, Sir George. All of them mingle freely with characters across a broad spectrum of society. None of them are snobs in the conventional sense. Yet inherent in the value system and lifestyle of all three is the peculiarly English concept of being “a gentleman.”

At its best, being a gentleman implies unassailable integrity, and that, certainly, is common to all three sleuths. A sense of chivalry and/or noblesse oblige (without hairsplitting over the difference) is deeply ingrained in them by their upbringing. They solve crimes to right wrongs—as well as, in the case of Campion and Lord Peter, because it’s fun.

However, these sleuthing gentlemen take for granted an entitlement based on class. As today’s viewers of Downton Abbey are constantly reminded, traditional British class structure took some direct hits during World War I and crumbled gently thereafter during the decades in which our detectives operated. But gentlemen still knew who they were and recognized the boundaries between their class and others’. In Downton Abbey, Bates was Lord Grantham’s batman in the War, as Bunter was Lord Peter’s. In civilian life, the lords expect to be dressed, groomed, and waited on, and the intelligent and loyal far-more-than-valets cheerfully provide these services. Campion’s “man,” the cheerfully irreverent Cockney ex-burglar Lugg, is similarly both servant and sidekick. Instead of a devoted lifelong servant, Alleyn has Detective Sergeant (later Inspector) Fox.

Class distinctions carry over from the detectives’ private life to their investigations. When a murder is committed, the gentleman sleuths interview the gentry, while Fox, Lugg, and Bunter make themselves at home in the servants’ hall, chatting up the cook, the butler, and the whole roster down to the youngest tweeny, speaking the vernacular over cozy cups of tea.

In spite of these iconic characteristics, all three of these great detectives demonstrate personal growth in the course of the series—Lord Peter the most, as he evolves from silly-ass-about-town in the early books to a character of such depth, complexity, and sensitivity that it is widely believed that his creator, Sayers herself, fell in love with him.

All find partners outside the rigid social boundaries of birth. Alleyn marries Troy, an acclaimed artist; Lord Peter, a mystery writer, a doctor’s daughter he first meets when she is on trial for murder; and Campion, Lady Amanda Fitton, an aristocrat, to be sure, but one who is happiest messing about with airplanes as an aeronautics expert. Their marriages draw all three sleuths into a growing maturity that lifts their investigations far above the realm of mere puzzle.

Updating Poirot and Marple

by Sandra Parshall

During an interview on Suspense Magazine Radio (listen to it here), interviewer John Raab asked which Agatha Christie sleuth I find more intriguing, Hercule Poirot or Jane Marple. Pressed to choose, I said Poirot. But the truth is that I don’t find either of them intriguing.

Christie’s protagonists are flat characters who don’t evolve over the course of the two long, long series they anchor. We know little about the past or private life of either. Many of us have mental images of Poirot and Marple that are influenced more by actors’ portrayals than by Christie’s text.

These days, few authors of mystery series could get away with writing such hollow protagonists. Thriller writers may come close – how much does Lee Child reveal about Jack Reacher? – but mystery authors have an ingrained belief that people read their books more for the characters than the plots. Fans want to “keep up with what’s happening” in a favorite character’s life. They want to watch protagonists “grow and change” over the course of a series. Readers want to know what made characters the people they’ve become. They enjoy the secrets, big and little, that are revealed as a series goes on. They love stories in which problems from the past show up on the doorstep of the present, ready to cause trouble.

Poirot and Marple are more symbols of justice than living, breathing people.

What do we know about Poirot beyond his appearance (“a quaint, dandified little man... hardly more than five feet four inches... his head was exactly the shape of an egg... his moustache was very stiff and military), his fussy mannerisms, and his high regard for his own “little gray cells”? He “had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police," according to the first Poirot book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. In that debut novel, he walks with a pronounced limp, but the disability disappears in later installments. He comes from a large family about which we are told virtually nothing. Poirot himself provides false autobiography in a number of books, the deception always in service of his investigation. Christie said that she envisioned the detective as old from the beginning. At various times, she expressed her dislike of her creation, calling Poirot "insufferable" and a "detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep" whose popularity seemed to mystify her.

Christie apparently concocted Poirot from bits of other fictional detectives of the early 20th century, including Marie Belloc Lowndes' Hercule Popeau and Frank Howel Evans' Monsieur Poirot, a retired Belgian police officer living in London.

Christie gives us bits and pieces of Jane Marple’s background in the books, and the character in the later novels is strikingly different from the snarky village gossip in the first, The Murder at the Vicarage. However, the change was the author’s attempt to make the character more likable for readers, and it wasn’t due to any soul-shaking experiences Miss Marple endures on the page. She has never married, never held a job, has some sort of independent income and also receives help from her nephew (and only living relative), the author Raymond West. She grew up in a Cathedral Close, is well-read, and attended an Italian finishing school. She is always described as old, and she continues to age in the novels.

How would today’s editors react if they encountered Marple and Poirot for the first time in fresh submissions? A few mysteries with “senior” protagonists are being published, so careful research into niche markets might lead to a receptive editor or two. But most editors would want the characters younger, perhaps a lot younger, and intriguing back stories would be a must.

In modern cozies, maybe messy divorces would be enough to add a little color to both characters’ private lives. If the ex-spouses are nearby and keep showing up at inopportune times, all the better. Maybe there’s still a spark in both relationships, enough to disrupt any new romances.

A single/divorced woman who has never worked a day in her life is almost unheard of now, so Jane Marple needs a cute job if the books are cozies and something more substantial if they take a turn toward darker traditional mystery. Maybe her husband divorced her because she’s never gotten over her love for her first fiancé, who died in car crash three days before their scheduled wedding. Jane, of course, was driving, and she dreams about the accident at least every night, always waking with tears pouring down her cheeks. Give her a couple of cats and she’s ready to meet readers.

Poirot needs a good reason for leaving the police force. (But honestly, can you imagine this man as a cop, even in his youth?) Maybe his partner was shot and he feels responsible. Or he was shot, and now he feels like a coward because he's afraid to risk life-threatening injury again and takes refuge in solving what are essentially mental puzzles. Maybe he drinks too much. Don’t all modern detectives drink too much? Ditch the mincing walk, but the mustache might work if it’s bigger, bushier, and left unwaxed. To round him off, Poirot needs a big dog who senses his every mood and always lays a fuzzy chin on Poirot’s knee at the right moment.

What do you think? With a little updating, could Christie’s characters make it as modern sleuths?

Succumbing to Kindle

Elizabeth Zelvin

I hope I won’t regret admitting publicly that I got a Kindle for Christmas. Or was it Chanukah? As a reader, I look forward to traveling without pounds of books in my backpack or luggage and never running out of reading matter. As a writer, I feel more ambivalent. Amazon’s world-changing e-reader has permanently debased the price of books (and therefore author earnings) and cut radically into the business of the independent booksellers and librarians who are the best friends of midlist writers like me. On the other hand, it provides opportunities that didn’t exist before to share my work with readers, and affordably, at that. I don’t want to add to the millions of words on the subject of the changing publishing industry that are already floating around the Internet. Instead, let’s talk about me as a reader with my first electronic reading device.


Can the reader be separated from the writer who inhabits the same brain and body? Maybe not. My very first download was my own story, “Navidad,” currently enjoying new life as an e-story on Untreed Reads, after originally appearing in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. As I write this, it occurs to me that if I actually read the thing, I’ll have a better idea of how this e-publisher presents its material. I’ve only thought of this because I noticed flaws in the formatting of the first e-book I did read: Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the very first Hercule Poirot mystery.


I know that HarperCollins plans to publish new editions of all 80 of Agatha Christie’s mysteries. Now, there would be a grand project for a Kindle reader, if it’s not prohibitively expensive. (I can’t imagine going out and buying 80 new print novels that I’ve already read, not to mention giving them shelf space. Can you?) But what’s available now for free or close to it consists of two novels, the first Poirot and the first Tommy and Tuppence, The Secret Adversary, which I also downloaded.


The Christies were not the first. My first visit to the Kindle store (which was not involved in the acquisition of my own short story) took me to two longtime favorite authors of whom I’ve read most but not quite everything in my lifetime: in order of acquisition, Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen. My hardcover copies of Little Women (“special contents of this edition,” presumably the foreword and full-color illustrations, copyright 1946) and Jo’s Boys (Goldsmith Publishing Company, Chicago, no copyright information whatever) are falling apart. The spine of Little Women flaps precariously; the brittle brown pages of Jo’s Boys flake off as I turn them, trying to find a date. I still re-read them, and yes, I still cry every single time Beth dies. Um, is crying on a Kindle as bad as spilling coffee on a computer keyboard? If so, I might be in trouble.


I know I have my Pride and Prejudice somewhere, though I haven’t opened it in a while. It’s a trade paperback I got for an English lit class in college, which means it’s close to fifty years old. I don’t really need to re-read it to remember more than enough to enjoy P.D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberley. Yep, I treated myself to a $12.99 current read I might otherwise have reserved at the library. P.D. James is not one of the hundreds of mystery authors I know personally, so I won’t pretend I would have bought the hardcover. But I certainly wouldn’t have failed to read it, no matter what. Anyhow, as Amazon assiduously tells readers, “This price was set by the publishers.” And there I go down the primrose path, buying books again.




























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The Staying Power of Classic Mysteries

Elizabeth Zelvin

While many admirable mysteries are being written today—and a fair number of the people writing them are friends of mine—few of them have the staying power of some of the classic mysteries, whether from the Golden Age of Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie or the equally beloved reign of Ngaio Marsh and Josephine Tey in the Fifties. Not only do I get great pleasure out of re-reading those I can get my hands on, but I remember memorable lines from some of these authors’ books for decades after the last time I saw them in print.

In Dorothy L. Sayers’s Strong Poison, Lord Peter Wimsey first sees Harriet Vane during her trial for murder and saves her from the gallows after a mistrial gives him time to find the real killer. I don’t have to google or open the book to recall Harriet’s goodbye when he takes his leave after visiting her in prison:

“I am always at home,” the prisoner said gravely.

Harriet is down on men and uncomfortable with gratitude and dependence, so she leads Lord Peter a dance for several books after finally accepting his proposal at the end of Gaudy Night (with dignity and in Latin). I don’t have to look it up to tell you that Harriet says at one point, If I ever marry you, it will be for the pleasure of hearing you talk piffle.” Another scene that remains vivid for me, though I can’t quote it verbatim, is the one in which the unknown, malicious villain destroys the exquisite chess set that Peter has given Harriet. She’s devastated, and Peter tells her her reaction is precious to him because she says, “You gave them to me, and they were beautiful,” rather than, “They were beautiful, and you gave them to me,” valuing the giving above the gift itself. I believe the evolution of Lord Peter’s and Harriet’s relationship and the deepening of their characterizations to sustain it mark the beginning of the character-driven mystery novel. And it’s character, along with language, not puzzle or plot, that makes me savor, revisit, and never forget a book I’ve read.

I did have to google the exact wording of a line from Agatha Christie that I remembered as referring to moldy bread as “practically penicillin.” The passage, from Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, was even more delicious, so to speak, than I remembered:

“I didn’t get to that pudding in time. It had boiled dry. I think it’s really all right—just a little scorched, perhaps. In case it tasted rather nasty, I thought I would open a bottle of those raspberries I put up last summer. They seem to have a bit of mould on top but they say nowadays that that doesn’t matter. It’s really rather good for you—practically penicillin.”

Then there’s Ngaio Marsh’s Troy, her detective Roderick Alleyn’s wife, taking a river cruise in A Clutch of Constables. Troy’s impulsive decision to take this trip, sparked by an appealing ad, has made me believe in the romance of such voyages ever since I first read the passage in which she tells herself, “For five days, I step out of time.” What an evocative and unforgettable line!

Among Josephine Tey’s wonderful books, my favorite is Brat Farrar, about an appealing foundling who undertakes an impersonation and ends up falling in love with a family and finding his sense of belonging in their home and way of life. Given enough time on a desert island with nothing to read, I could probably reconstruct the whole book from memory.

This is not to deny that some current writers and their characters achieve that kind of power over our imaginations. I’ve never forgotten how moving it is when Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder speaks up in an AA meeting and says, “I’m an alcoholic” for the first time in Eight Million Ways to Die (1982). Granted, the topic of recovery is of particular interest to me as an alcoholism treatment professional and author of my own mystery series featuring a recovering alcoholic protagonist. But Block’s series, and that scene in particular, made me care so much about Scudder that I was thrilled when Block finally wrote his love letter to AA almost thirty years later, in this year’s A Drop of the Hard Stuff, set at the end of Scudder’s first year of sobriety.

Which of the mysteries you’re reading now have that kind of power over your imagination? What scenes or lines will you never forget, even ten or twenty years after the last reading?

A writer/reader’s take on mystery series

Elizabeth Zelvin

Most mystery readers of a certain age first discovered the genre through series, whether they cut their eyeteeth on Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie, Nancy Drew or Erle Stanley Gardner. In these early series, the protagonist never changed: Holmes always smoked his pipe and played his violin, Poirot applied his little gray cells to every problem, Miss Marple found a parallel to every evil in the world in the village life of St. Mary Mead. When Nancy got into trouble, she always had the perfect tools for the emergency about her person. Perry Mason always stood up in court to object and grandstanded a confession out of the true villain. (I’ve heard that counsel used to say, “I object!” during a trial, and that “Objection!” originated with Perry Mason. Anyone know if it’s true?)

Then, in the Golden Age of mysteries, when the airtight, fair play puzzle was at its height, Dorothy L. Sayers changed the rules by developing Lord Peter Wimsey from a Bertie Wooster-like flat character into a complex and very human being over the course of the series. And mystery reading got a lot more interesting to readers like me, who want to fall in love with their characters, root for them in adversity, and cheer when they triumph, not only by solving the murder but by resolving some genuine personal dilemma. My favorite characters feel real to me. I’ve said before that I’d like to play my guitar and sing with Judge Deborah Knott’s family and have dinner with the Vorkosigans.

What we read has changed precisely because the fashion in what we write has changed. For example, Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver, who appeared in dozens of mysteries in the 1940s and 1950s, was always described in exactly the same words, as was her home. Encountering the familiar phrases was part of the pleasure of reading the series, which is still on my list of comfort reads. Now, we wouldn’t dare repeat even the most clever way of describing a protagonist that we’ve already used. Today’s writers are exhorted to kill our darlings, not repeat them in book after book.

No longer does every mystery series, even a successful and popular one, go on ad infinitum. Part of this is due to the changing face—and economics—of publishing. In the paperback cozy world, an author may get a three-book contract. She brings her protagonist and setting to life, thousands of readers eagerly anticipate Book Four—and the publisher decides they’re not satisfied with sales and drops the series, perhaps inviting the author to start a new series under a pseudonym. In the world of hardcover mysteries, a debut author is typically offered a contract for one book or two—and the publisher’s decision not to let the series go on may be based on sales before publication of the first or second book or as little as a month after it comes out. It is notoriously hard to get another publisher to pick up a dropped series—again, for business reasons—so readers who have become attached to a series protagonist and his or her world are left disappointed and dissatisfied.

Perhaps as a result of the precarious nature of series today, many mystery writers have adopted a pattern in which, once the series gets going, they try their hand at a standalone. Until recently, I would have said that I never liked an author’s standalones as much as her series, because my love of and loyalty to the series was based on the development of the series protagonist and the family, friends, and colleagues who had sprung to life around her. Writers with successful series have written some fine standalones—and maybe I’m also getting used to the new fashion. Some standalones by accomplished series writers that I’ve loved in the past few years include Nancy Pickard’s The Virgin of Small Plains and The Scent of Rain and Lightning, Earlene Fowler’s The Saddlemaker’s Wife, the late Ariana Franklin’s City of Shadows, and Laurie R. King's Touchstone.

Another consequence of how things have changed is that writers may now conceive their series as having a limited story arc, rather than going on indefinitely. Charlaine Harris’s Harper Connelly series comes to mind. When the unresolved personal dilemma that underlies all Harper’s professional dilemmas gets resolved in Book Five, the series comes to a satisfying conclusion. With two other series behind her and the Sookie Stackhouse series going on and on, thanks to the success of the TV adaptation, True Blood, it makes sense for Charlaine to move on. And now it seems that Harper Connelly is coming to TV, so her story may continue after all.

Happy 120th, Dame Agatha!

On this day 120 years ago, a little English girl named Agatha was born. Little did her parents suspect that their innocent gurgling baby harbored one of the most devious imaginations the world has ever seen and she would one day be celebrated as the Queen of Crime. Long after her death in 1976, her books continue to sell, British TV regularly produces new adaptations of her intricately plotted stories, and her civilized sleuths, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, are known to mystery fans around the globe. In many ways Dame Agatha (she received her title in recognition of her contribution to literature and popular culture) shaped the modern mystery genre.

Today Poe's Deadly Daughters raise their glasses in celebration of this unforgettable writer's 120th birthday.

Sharon Wildwind

Even more than Nancy Drew, Dame Agatha was the first and bestest mystery author I read as a child. She left me with a life-long craving for British mysteries. Happy Birthday, dear Agatha.

Lonnie Cruse

I was a serious science fiction fan until I discovered Agatha Christie. I've read all of her books, a few of them more than once. I love the television shows and movies based on her books. The love of mystery her books fostered in me gave me the courage to write mysteries as well, and find a publisher, but mine certainly can't touch hers. Happy Birthday, Queen of Mystery, Dame Agatha!


Julia Buckley

When I was in junior high, my mom was a volunteer librarian at my school. She would sort through books that she thought I liked and then suggest them to me when I, a voracious reader, would seek something new. One day she handed me a book by Agatha Christie and said she thought I'd like it. I sat down with They Came to Baghdad and was immediately sucked into the danger and intrigue surrounding a young woman traveling in Iraq. It was exciting, romantic, fun, even funny. I loved it, and of course I ended up reading every book by AC that I could get my hands on.

Imagine my joy when I found out just how many books she'd written--it was a smorgasbord of mystery, and a stepping stone to my love of many kinds of mysteries. I've been fascinated with Agatha--her life, her legend, and her books--ever since.

Sheila Connolly

When my husband and I were first married, a few decades ago, we started collecting mysteries. Since we were both starving students, that meant haunting used bookstores. Remember, this was before the heady days of Amazon et al., where you can get almost anything, anytime, without leaving your chair.

This quest provided us with much low-cost entertainment, and we were scrupulous about hunting down all the works of various authors. And, yes, I read them all (although I can't swear that my husband did).

We have shipped this collection back and forth across the country, and when we moved into this house we built a wall of bookshelves for them. Agatha occupies an entire shelf. I did a quick inventory this week, and I have all but four of her books--which means I do have over fifty. Happy birthday, Dame Agatha!

Elizabeth Zelvin

My father was the Agatha Christie reader in my family. Those well thumbed paperbacks were a lot more fun than most of the many books my parents had on their shelves. I remember reading them over and over. I loved reading the casts of characters and the blurbs on the back cover and on the flyleaf. I read or reread all Christie's books systematically at the age of twenty-two, when I first had an apartment of my own in New York City and could do whatever I wanted. I think it's important to remember that she invented the unreliable narrator, the least likely suspect, and other plot devices that mystery readers nowadays take for granted or even think overdone. And I loved some of her memorable one-book-only women characters, like Henrietta Savernake in The Hollow and Lucy Eylesbarrow in 4:50 from Paddington.

Sandra Parshall

Like many people, I first became familiar with Agatha Christie's work through movies and television productions, and my visions of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple were formed by the actors who played them. When I began reading the books, I joined the legend of mystery fans who feel dissatisfied by the failure of all actors except the wonderful David Suchet to capture the essence of Christie's creations. Although my taste in crime fiction led me to darker stories by the likes of Ruth Rendell, I have to credit Christie with awakening my interest in mysteries and making me wonder whether I, too, could write crime fiction that others might want to read. Thank you, Dame Agatha, for bringing me into this wonderful genre.

New Kid on the Block

by Sheila Connolly


Poe’s Deadly Daughters are delighted to welcome Sheila Connolly as our new blog sister. Sheila is the author of the Orchard Mysteries, the forthcoming Museum Mystery series, and, as Sarah Atwell, the Glassblowing Mystery series, all from Berkley Prime Crime. Her debut novel as Sarah Atwell was nominated for an Agatha award for Best First Novel. The new Orchard Mystery, Red Delicious Death, is due out in March. Sheila has been an art historian, an investment banker, a non-profit fundraiser, and a professional genealogist as well as a mystery writer. Welcome, Sheila! We hope you’ll find being a Deadly Daughter as rewarding as any of your other “hats.”

Starting in February, Sheila will be blogging on the fourth weekend of every month. Liz Zelvin will continue to blog on Thursdays (except for today).



I am delighted that the writers of Poe's Deadly Daughters have invited me to join them.



That makes me the New Kid–again. Being the new kid is something I have a lot of experience with, because my family moved around a lot when I was young. No, my father was not in the military, but he frequently became impatient with jobs and bosses (like the one at duPont who told him he wasn't a big enough fish at the company to drive a Buick), and since his area of specialization–fluid mixing systems–was in demand, he could always find a new job. I don't even remember the early moves (at age one and three), but I can definitely recall the ones in pre-school, kindergarten, fourth grade and eighth grade.


As an adult, I've added a lot more moves: going off to college, then graduate school; getting married and moving to North Carolina, then California, Pennsylvania, and finally to Massachusetts. In all these places I held a variety of jobs, short- and long-term, and for a time I went back to school. As a result, I was always walking into new situations, meeting new people.


It's never easy, especially if you're not a gregarious person, which I am not. I was the shy kid but I was also the brainy one in any class. But I made friends and did well in school, and survived it all. Maybe it made me a stronger person, but that doesn't mean I liked it.


Only recently did I realize that I've become part of yet another group, thanks in large part to the Internet: the writers community. This time the entry was almost painless. I feel like I have a lot of friends, some of whom I've never met face to face and possibly never will. But in cyberspace we all share our triumphs and our disappointments, and even a lot about our lives–we "know" each other. And if you go to writers conferences you will see clusters of people gleefully greeting each other, trying to cram a whole lot of friendship into a very short time.


And there's one more community I hadn't even thought of until now. When we moved to our current house, we built in a wall of bookshelves in one room, and for the first time in many, many years, my husband and I had the space to unpack all our books. We'd been collecting mysteries since we first married, back in the Dark Ages when there was no Internet and no Amazon and you had to seek out second-hand bookstores and hunt for paper copies of the books you wanted. And we collected series–too many to mention, but you can safely assume I have all the classic mystery writers, in complete sets. Yes, I read them all, but the collecting part was fun too. The result, however, was a lot of linear feet of books, which for a long time had no place to go.


Here we finally unpacked them all and lined them up on the shelves (which quickly overflowed, but that's another story). But what hit me when I started writing this post was: I have my own little piece of shelf now, something I never expected when I started collecting mysteries. Five books of my own (plus large-print copies) have joined all the great names on my shelves. I'm up there next to my idols–Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, and more. I'm the New Kid on the bookshelf block–and I like it!

Classic Approach to Mystery: An Interview with G.M. Malliet

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

G.M. Malliet’s Death of a Cozy Writer, first in a series featuring Detective Chief Inspector St. Just of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary, has been described as "wicked, witty, and full of treats" by Peter Lovesey and hailed as "a delightful homage to the great novels of Britian's Golden Age of mysteries" by Nancy Pearl on NPR. It has been nominated for the Agatha Award for best first novel (winners will be announced at Malice Domestic on May 2) and the Left Coast Crime/Hawaii Five-O Award for best police procedural. It was selected by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best books of 2008. Her recently released second novel, Death and the Lit Chick, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist.

An American, G.M. attended Oxford University and holds a graduate degree from the University of Cambridge. She is a former journalist and copywriter and lives with her husband in Virginia.

[Note: The other four Agatha nominees in the best first novel category have also been featured on Poe’s Deadly Daughters in recent months. If you’d like to learn more about Sheila Connolly, Krista Davis, Rosemary Harris, and Joanna Campbell Slan, enter their names in the blog search box to bring up their interviews or guest blogs.]

Q. Congratulations on your Agatha and Hawaii Five-O award nominations for Death of a Cozy Writer! How does it feel to be honored this way for your first book?

A. It feels incredible—like winning the lottery, only better. In the case of awards and nominations—as you know, Sandra!—you first have to work incredibly hard before you get lucky. It is extremely satisfying to have the effort acknowledged.

Q. What inspired you to write a series modeled after the classic British cozies? Do you reread any of your favorites while you’re writing?

A. I wrote the type of book I love to read. I’d read all the “Golden Agers,” some of them several times over, and while I didn’t think I could match them, I did think I might have fun sending up some of the conventions of the genre.

When I’m writing, I read a lot of non-fiction. The third book in the St. Just series has a sculling and rowing theme, so I had the excuse to indulge my love of the sport with so-called research. I also try to read The New Yorker religiously, hoping the magnificent writing therein will wear off on me. I just discovered the “Eminent Lives” series—Bill Bryson’s contribution on Shakespeare’s life is wonderfully funny. All the writers in this series are masters.

Q. You take some chances in Death of a Cozy Writer – using omniscient viewpoint and a Golden Age tone for a modern story. Did you encounter resistance from agents or editors when you were marketing it? Were there some who just didn't get what you were doing?

A. I didn’t set out to mystify anyone with Death of a Cozy Writer, but that is what frequently happened, yes. The funny thing is, I really had no idea I was doing anything unusual. As a writer, I love omniscient viewpoint, because it allows you to get inside the heads of all the characters. That is much more entertaining, I think, for both writer and reader. The challenge for the writer comes, of course, in not getting too far inside the killer’s head and giving the game away.

Q. You’re obviously very fond of Britain. What draws you to that setting? Do you travel there often?

A. I’m not sure where the anglophilia came from: It may have started with early exposure to National Velvet or Black Beauty. I try to get back to Great Britain once a year. This year I’m hoping for an extended stay to include a pilgrimage to Wallingford, where Agatha Christie lived many years with her husband Max, and Greenway, her home in Devon. Added bonus: I just read somewhere that Wallingford is frequently used as a setting for the Midsomer Murders TV series.

Q. Death of a Cozy Writer is written in a distinctive, wryly humorous voice. Does that style came naturally to you, or do you have to consciously work at maintaining it throughout a book?

A. I have tried to “write serious” and I find I can’t maintain the tone for long. Some bit of nonsense always wants to creep in, so I let it.

Q. What do you see as the differences between the classic British mysteries and the crafts, cooking, and cats cozies being published today in the U.S.? Any thoughts on why Britain, where cozies were born, produces so few cozy writers these days?

A. I don’t know what’s going on in Britain with all the gloomy books. But I have the idea Agatha Christie—despite the humorous mannerisms she gave Poirot and Marple—felt she was accurately depicting a world fraught with evil. Perhaps nothing has changed, except that the depictions of violence have become more graphic.

Q. Was this the first book you'd written, or do you – like most of us – have a few manuscripts you weren't able to sell?

A. I have a romantic suspense novel that I didn’t try very hard to sell (I think I knew without the need of formal rejection that it was middling at best). I also have in my possession many mysteries that were abandoned at the fifty-page mark. The first fifty or so pages of Death of a Cozy Writer won the Malice Domestic grant and I wonder if, without that encouragement, I would have finished the book. It’s a scary thought.

Q. Did you, like so many authors, spend a long time writing, rewriting, and polishing your first published book before it sold? How long, altogether, did you work on it? By comparison, how long have you spent writing your second and third books? Do you plan to be a book-a-year author, and if so, how difficult has the adjustment to that schedule been?

A. A book a year seems to be the norm but I would much rather have eighteen months: I’m a stupendously slow writer and, like Oscar Wilde, I can spend a day deciding whether a comma should go or stay.

I guess it took me over a year to finish Death of a Cozy Writer once I’d won the Malice grant, and I spent a lot of time trying to sell the completed manuscript. Then for some reason I decided that even though the first book hadn’t sold, I’d start work on the second book in the series. I have no idea why I didn’t immediately register this effort as futile. But, it was a lucky thing I did something so quixotic, because when Cozy Writer finally sold the acquiring editor asked me if I had a second book planned. Well, yes, I did, as a matter of fact, so she offered a two-book contract. The third book took me a little longer than a year, and that’s because so much of the responsibility for promotion at every publishing house has fallen onto authors’ shoulders. Authors quickly find themselves on a rolling tumbrel, promoting one book or another, to the point of forgetting which book we’re supposed to be talking about. Authors need, I think, that eighteen months to do it all—especially authors with fulltime jobs and kids to raise—but I also don’t think it’s going to happen.

Q. What aspect of fiction writing gives you the most pleasure and satisfaction? Which has been most difficult for you to master?

A. Looking back and seeing that from the first tentative swipes, a manuscript is emerging—a book that has come from nowhere, and from everywhere. That process is fascinating.

What is difficult is keeping all the characters straight and even remembering what room I left them sitting in. Especially in a traditional British-type story, there tend to be a lot of suspects, and it’s easy to leave one in the bedroom dozing on a window seat only to find he’s somehow moved over to the drawing room and furthermore he’s now perched on an ottoman. Plus, he’s grown a goatee. I use schematics, sketches, lists, charts, and diagrams galore and still spend a lot of time looking for the inconsistencies that creep in.

Q. How is your life different now that you’re a published author? Is everything working out the way you expected, or have you been surprised by some aspects of publishing?

A. I now write fulltime, seven or eight hours a day once I settle into a story, and I try to take the weekends off. That is good advice from Nora Roberts I read somewhere—to treat writing as any other job and not let it consume you. When I moved to fulltime writing, I was afraid I’d develop weird, loner tics and walk around all day in my bathrobe (Louise Penny describes this as the tendency to sit around watching Oprah whilst eating gummy bears). It hasn’t happened yet (knock wood). I am living my dream and extremely grateful for it, although I do wish someone would invent a chair that is comfortable to sit in eight hours a day.

Q. Have you found writers’ organizations helpful? Would you advise aspiring writers to become active in mystery writers’ groups even before they’re published?

A. Absolutely. If you don’t join Sisters in Crime, you are probably only prolonging the agony of being unpublished. The networking, the good advice, the camaraderie—priceless.

Q. What advice do you have for aspiring writers who are still struggling to break into print?

A. I’m not sure I’ve been around book publishing long enough to be dispensing advice. But the “trite” and true advice holds: Write every day, if only for an hour. A manuscript will emerge, or a short story. Enter reputable contests; submit to anthologies—this gives you a deadline, which focuses the mind wonderfully.

Most of all, develop a Zen-like patience. If you love what you’ve written, rest assured someone else will love it, too—eventually.

Seminal and Exemplary Mysteries

Elizabeth Zelvin

I recently heard that a gentleman with an encyclopedic knowledge of the mystery genre will soon be revealing the seven mysteries he considers “the” books all mystery writers must read. I don’t know his list, but if I’m allowed to guess, I believe he will probably choose works by Edgar Allan Poe, A. Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald, and Rex Stout. (If I may hedge my bets, I’ll nominate Sheridan LeFanu, Mickey Spillane, and Erle Stanley Gardner as alternates.) As it happens, I won’t get to hear his talk. But before I realized I had a schedule conflict, I had already compiled an alternative list of works that, if not the seven progenitors of the mystery heritage, are a lot more relevant to my heritage as a mystery writer. My feminist dander is up, and I’m ready to charge to the defense of the traditional and especially the character-driven mystery, as well as the matrilineage of mysteries by women. I hasten to add that none of these have been attacked in any way. This is purely speculation on my part. But I had a lot of fun selecting my seven candidates. So here they are.

Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Dame Agatha is perhaps the most likely to appear on a male mystery historian’s list. After all, she is the mother not only of the cozy, but also of the puzzle in which the murderer turns out to be the least likely suspect. Her plots, highly original in their time although they have become clichés through imitation, are widely admired. Having to pick one book, I chose Roger Ackroyd, although it’s not my favorite, but as the exemplar of the unreliable narrator.

Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night
The presiding genius of the Detective Club during the Golden Age of mystery in the 1930s, Sayers reached her peak in this mystery without a murder that is also a richly textured novel, which I believe earned her the right to be considered the mother of the character-driven mystery. I’ve posted this opinion elsewhere, but it bears saying again. The key passage is one in which Harriet Vane asks Lord Peter Wimsey for advice about her novel.

"'Well,' said Harriet...."I admit that Wilfrid is the world's worst goop. But if he doesn't conceal the handkerchief, where's my plot?'
[Peter suggests a way to define Wilfrid's character that would give him motivation for concealing the handkerchief.] ....'He'd still be a goop, and a pathological goop, but he would be a bit more consistent.'
'Yes--he'd be interesting. But if I give Wilfrid all those violent and lifelike feelings, he'll throw the whole book out of balance.'
'You would have to abandon the jig-saw kind of story and write a book about human beings for a change.'
....'It would hurt like hell.'
'What would that matter, if it made a good book?'"

I suspect that Sayers and her muse had precisely this conversation in her head, and Gaudy Night was the result. The creation of Harriet and Sayers’s increasingly three-dimensional portrayal of her both in relation to Lord Peter and grappling with her own dilemmas regarding her work and what kind of life to choose ushered in the transition of the traditional mystery from primarily a puzzle to a puzzle embedded in a character-driven novel.

Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time
Tey’s work falls in the period between the Golden Age and what I’d like to call the age of Sisters in Crime, analogous to the Second Wave of feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. My favorite among Tey’s books is Brat Farrar, a character-driven novel that is both endearing and enduring. But The Daughter of Time stretches the boundaries of the genre by applying modern detection, by a temporarily bedridden British police detective, to a famous historical puzzle, the character of King Richard III and the fate of the Little Princes in the Tower.

Sara Paretsky, Indemnity Only
Paretsky was not only chief among the founding goddesses of Sisters in Crime, but also the mother of the American woman private eye novel, along with Sue Grafton and Marcia Muller. Paretsky’s protagonist is not only physically tough but also finds most of her cases in the “man’s world” of business, politics, and finance. Indemnity Only was the first outing of V.I. Warshawski, and it revolutionized the depiction of women in mysteries.

P.D. James, An Unsuitable Job for A Woman
All of the highly acclaimed P.D. James’s novels are works of literature as well as British police procedurals in the Adam Dalgleish series and P.I. novels in the works featuring Cordelia Gray, of which this is the first. James is one of those writers who is always being said to transcend the mystery genre, to the annoyance of mystery writers. I was dismayed to find, among the blurbs of the most recent Wexford novel by Ruth Rendell, her closest rival, a statement by James herself that Rendell “has transcended her genre.” Let us say, rather, that both these writers have set the bar high for the rest of us in our chosen form of literature.

Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
King is another superb literary stylist who earned her place on this list by stretching the boundaries of the canon of one of the progenitors and masters of mystery fiction, by giving Sherlock Holmes an apprentice and mate who is not only female, young, and feminist, but just as smart as he is: a worthy partner.

Elizabeth Peters, Crocodile on the Sandbank
A male mystery historian might find this a frivolous choice, but the first Amelia Peabody mystery by Egyptologist Peters (or Barbara Mertz, to use her real name) has it all. It’s an exemplar of the historical mystery, informed by legitimate scholarship and a shovelful of literary license, in a context of romantic suspense. Its protagonist is one of mystery’s memorable characters. And it’s tremendously funny, a welcome and crucial element in the genre.

Reading Past the Envy

Sandra Parshall

I’m often surprised at how many other writers believe all bestselling novels are bad books. I know writers who won’t touch a bestselling novel, on the assumption that any book that appeals to the masses must be junk and any writer who has made a long, slow climb to good sales has sold out, cheapened his or her product to make money.

The harshest critics, the most resistant readers, any bestselling author will have are aspiring writers and published writers who feel they aren't as successful as they deserve to be. A writer unsatisfied with his or her own status will take grim satisfaction in tearing down the books of a bestselling author. We can't change the fact that millions of people love that author's work, but we can convince ourselves that all those people are stupid or deluded for loving it.

Envy is the monster that camps out in our souls and gnaws away at us until we’re incapable of taking pure pleasure in anyone else’s work – the kind of pleasure that led us to become writers in the first place. We say the bones of the story are showing (something we would never allow in our own work). We scoff at the author for overusing favorite words (a sin we never commit), as if that habit alone ruined the book. We wail that aspiring writers trying to get published and lesser-known writers struggling to stay published are held to a higher standard while bestsellers can coast and break all the rules and still be assured of success.

I’m as guilty as anyone else of saying and thinking such things. I can do self-torture as well as anybody I know. (Ask my husband. Ask my friends Carol and Cat and Babs. They’re the ones nodding and muttering, “Ain’t that the truth” as they read this.) But in saner moments I try to refocus, look past the obvious flaws and learn from what the popular authors are doing right. Believe me, anyone whose books sell hundreds of thousands of copies is doing something right.

What bestselling writers all have in common is the ability to tell a story in a dynamic fashion. They may not be great stylists, but they are entertaining. This is the one skill that beginning writers -- and many who have been writing for decades without success -- often cannot master. The story doesn't have to be perfect. The characters don't have to be stunningly original. The plot might be over-the-top, outlandish (I think The DaVinci Code fits that description, and so do almost all of James Patterson's novels). But the author has the magical ability to tell a story in a way that will keep readers turning the pages.

Members of a mystery e-list I belong to have lately been arguing over whether Agatha Christie was "weak" in any aspect of writing. Some devoted Christie fans see her books as flawless and any criticism raises their hackles. Personally, I think Christie's books are shallow, with one-dimensional characters and static protagonists. I prefer modern crime writers like Thomas Cook, Dennis Lehane, Tess Gerritsen, Laura Lippman, Ruth Rendell, who try to produce complex stories with complex characters, even though they’re not always fully successful. Yet Christie is still read, her books are all still in print throughout the world, films and TV programs are still being made of them, and she is considered the queen of mystery. Obviously, Christie did something right. She entertained readers who wanted to be kept guessing right up to the end. I can learn something from her about constructing a puzzle and weaving in clues and red herrings. I can’t learn anything from focusing on Christie’s flaws and grumbling that she doesn’t deserve her apparently eternal success.

It’s sad but true that the more a writer writes, the more critical a reader she becomes. It’s hard to enjoy a book when part of your mind is trolling for faults to gloat over. It’s hard to banish jealousy from our hearts and accept that not everyone, perhaps not ourselves, can be wildly successful. All we can do is write as well as we know how, without imagining the book bumping the latest Patterson out of the #1 spot on the NY Times bestseller list. We can try to enjoy the writing itself. Isn’t that, after all, the reason we started doing this in the first place?

Then and Now . . .

By Lonnie Cruse

Every so often I read a book review about a mystery novel written many years ago. A book long out of print, available only on dusty antique store bookshelves or on the Internet, unless the author is popular enough to be reprinted in our time. Sometimes I'm curious enough (if the book is cheap enough) to buy a copy and read it. My, how things have changed, how writing is different now. Plots are different. Character development is different. Sometimes I'm disappointed because the mystery isn't as intricate as most mysteries today. But there are a lot of authors long gone whose work endures well beyond their passing. Authors like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and many others whose books seem to be timeless.

Agatha Christie's modern day critics sometimes claim she didn't "flesh out" her characters enough, that her books are all about the plot. Hmmm. Maybe, but I've read most of them and I haven't had any trouble picturing her characters as real. Particularly Poirot with his egg shaped head and carefully groomed mustache. Have you? Or Miss Marple, knitting and solving crime? Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter, and his great love, Harriett, aren't hard for me to imagine as real. And it was actually Sayers who inspired this post after I watched GAUDY NIGHT on DVD. I loved all of her books.

Every writer I know would love to not only have readers here and now, but somehow know that our books would be read twenty, fifty, or even a hundred years from now and still be considered well written despite any change in styles. So how did these writers do it? How did they manage to write books that would be read and loved long after they died? I haven't a clue. It's like art, I suppose, I know it when I see it, or in this case when I read it, and I suspect you do as well.

One author in particular comes to mind, Shirley Jackson. Jackson died in the mid-sixties, yet her book, WE SHALL ALWAYS LIVE IN THE CASTLE is still widely read and talked about. I read it twice, something I rarely do because there are "so many books, so little time" as most book lovers complain. Jackson's short story, THE LOTTERY still shocks readers just as much as it did when it appeared in a major magazine decades ago. Back then, many of the magazine's readers loved it while as many others unsubscribed in protest. Wow! And today, THE LOTTERY is still used in many college classes as an example of great writing. THAT is longevity. Having read most of her works, I'd have to say Jackson accomplished timelessness by the way she always surprises the reader at the end. No matter how much I've read her work, I can never guess the ending. She always catches me off guard.

As for the others, like Christie or Sayers? How did they do it? I'd have to say by creating characters the reader cares about, no matter what time period they lived in or were created in. Characters that stick with us. And story or plot lines that while common to any age (after all, there's nothing new on the earth, according to Solomon, and he said that quite a while back) today they still sound new when we read them. And last but not least, creating a place and time that we'd all like to visit or live in, no matter how long ago the book was written.

There are writers today whose works will be read and loved a hundred years from now, and boy howdy would I like to be one of them. But I'll settle for readers today.

Designing a Sleuth

Sandra Parshall

Recently I took part in a writers’ workshop where my job was to talk about creating an appealing and believable sleuth. The assignment made me realize that I’d never given any concentrated thought to the subject. Like a lot of writers, I suspect, I’ve developed my main characters through my plots, and they’ve been whatever the story demanded. However, a writer hoping to create a long-running series would be smart to focus on the character and build stories around him or her.

Editors today are looking for character-driven crime novels. You might think this has always been the case – weren’t Agatha Christie’s books built around Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot? – but the reader is actually given little information about some of mystery’s most famous sleuths. Christie never plumbed the depths of Miss Marple’s soul. She didn’t include flashbacks to Poirot’s tortured past. Her characters remain static, the same from book to book. Dorothy L. Sayers’s treatment of Lord Peter and Harriet Vane probably comes closest to the modern presentation of characters in crime novels who "grow and change" throughout a series.

A novel must have a solid plot, but character is usually more important. Plot problems can be fixed, but if you’ve written an entire novel around a dull, shallow character, meaningful repairs may be impossible. Agents and editors will tell you they “couldn’t connect with” your character, she’s too bland or too cool or too negative, she’s not different enough. We often hear that an editor is looking for series characters “unlike anything I’ve seen before.” This can lead writers to some strange choices, as they try to deliberately construct a rejection-proof sleuth. How about a blind detective who solves crimes primarily with her sense of smell? How about a guy who was in a devastating accident and now has two bionic arms that are strong enough to slay an army of bad guys? How about a flock of sheep that solve a murder? Oh, wait – the sheep mystery is a real book, published not long ago.

If your taste doesn’t normally run to the bizarre, and you doubt that you can carry it off, you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to come up with something totally outside the norm. Try instead to create a character who will feel real and whose personality and abilities will win the readers’ affections and keep drawing them back to find out what’s happening in her life.

So what are in the ingredients for sleuth-making?

Above all, you should create a character you like and respect and want to spend a lot of time with – years of your life, if you’re lucky. The reader has to care about this person, but that won’t happen if the writer doesn’t care first. Sanity wears better than a collection of odd habits and extreme opinions. When a story world is populated by wildly colorful characters, the sleuth is often the sanest person in the book. A sense of humor is always endearing and can be used effectively to show the character's clear-eyed assessment of events.

It’s a given that your sleuth must be smart enough to solve crimes. If the character is an amateur, she must be smart enough to realistically succeed where the police fail. If your sleuth is a cop or P.I., she doesn’t have to be inhumanly brilliant, but she must be intelligent enough to make a living in one of those jobs. Do your research – don’t let your character make the sort of blunders that cause readers to groan aloud.

A sleuth should be savvy about people, able to read emotions and detect deception, attuned to the often subtle clues that give away clandestine relationships and unspoken animosity.

Stubbornness is essential. Major stubbornness. This is a person whose determination is fueled by obstacles, threats, and physical attacks. You can’t let your sleuth give up and go home to watch a favorite TV show in chapter 15, when any ordinary person would do exactly that.

A special skill or a fund of specialized knowledge will come in handy if you find a way for her to use it in solving crimes.

Today’s well-rounded and realistic sleuth needs a past, at least a few friends, and a family (even if it’s a single sibling or elderly aunt). Sidekicks abound in mysteries, and you can give a sidekick the colorful quirks that might seem over-the-top in a main character.

No real person is perfect, and a fictional character can’t be idealized either. Your sleuth needs flaws – balanced by virtues, of course. Coming up with something original isn’t easy, but the effort will pay off. The tough cop who’s battling a drinking problem has become a cliche. Drug and gambling problems are less common but no more appealing. Give this aspect of your character a lot of thought. You’ll be glad you did.

Above all, your sleuth needs a compelling reason to wade into a criminal investigation. These days, even the professionals must feel a personal stake in solving crimes. Curiosity isn’t enough for the amateur, and “it’s just my job” isn’t enough for a pro. Some readers still care most about the puzzle, the plot, but the majority want a novel to be an emotional experience for them. It won’t be if the sleuth is either too distant from the crime or is putting her life in danger out of simple curiosity.

That's my take on what makes a successful sleuth. I believe Ms. Christie would agree with me on some points -- but overall, she might be appalled at the lack of privacy afforded modern mystery sleuths!

Women's Intuition

By Lonnie Cruse

“Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing that they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together—and they call the result intuition. Me, I am very skilled in psychology. I know these things.”

He swelled his chest out importantly, looking so ridiculous that I found it difficult not to burst out laughing. Then he took a small sip of his chocolate and carefully wiped his mustache.

Recognize the above quote from a rather well known mystery? It’s from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and the first paragraph is a quote from the one and only Hercule Poirot, the second quotes the thoughts of Dr. Sheppard, Poirot’s temporary Watson.

I just finished re-reading The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd because it’s one of Dame Agatha Christie’s more controversial mysteries, some readers believing she didn’t play fair with them. But I remember the surprise I felt the first time I read it, at how she told the story. And my awe at her talent.

But, to get to the point of this post, the comments by Poirot which I read again recently, really hauled me up short. Who was Hercule Poirot to put women’s intuition down to nothing more than observation and gathering facts to mull over unconsciously when we’d been famous for our intuition for centuries? Harrumph. Then I remembered, Poirot was only mouthing the words his author had written for him, and a female author at that!

I pondered the possibility. Agatha Christie *might* have been right. We all do observe and file away in our “little grey cells” tons of information from things we hear and see every hour of every day. And we form opinions based on them. See a quick “I’m interested” look pass between two people, we wonder if there is a deeper relationship there, maybe even a hidden affair. See a dark look between lovers and we wonder if there is a break-up looming on the horizon. A guilty look on the face of a child and we go check the cookie jar. But often as not, we don’t realize we are taking in the information and drawing conclusions. So, if days or weeks later, we hear that Jane and John are having an affair and/or getting a divorce, we often chalk it up to "women’s intuition."

Makes me wonder if maybe I need to develop and enhance this “intuition” thing a bit more, no matter where it comes from. Observe others, their words, body language, behavior, and what it all might mean. Then use it in my writing to make my characters more real. Even Dame Agatha was accused of not making her characters real enough. True, she didn’t give a lot of description: color of hair, eyes, what each and every character was wearing, but her body language for them was dead on, if brief. For instance, later in this same mystery, she describes a card game between four players. She doesn’t really describe the new characters who appear at the card table, but through the dialogue we learn that one lady is a lousy card player and doesn’t pay attention to what she’s doing. Christie could have “told” us that. Instead, she shows it through what the characters say to each other. And it was a humorous scene.

I realize I need to stop relying on "intuition" and more consciously gather facts, paying close attention to what I'm seeing around me. See what I can learn about those around me from words and body language. Should be interesting. Of course, I’ll have to be discreet about it. No sense getting a punch in the nose for being nosey. What about you? Are your characters "real enough?"

Even Agatha Got No Respect

by Julia Buckley
At left: Agatha Christie's beloved Torquay.

I suppose all writers like to speculate about their books as films--that is, who would play the roles of these characters who were born of our imaginations? It's a fun exercise, but I learned recently that even the great Agatha Christie was not entirely satisfied with the casting of her characters. I was reading a favorite book of mine--a picture book called In the Footsteps of Agatha Christie (Trafalgar Square Publishers, 1995), which takes the reader on a visual tour of Agatha's favorite places. The accompanying text is written by Francoise Riviere.

Riviere at one point discusses Agatha's attitude toward film:

"For a very long time Agatha Christie nursed great reservations about cinema. Over the years she nevertheless sold the film rights to some of her books, which were translated with varying degrees of success to the screen. The only real success, to my mind, remains the Hollywood adaptation of Ten Little [Indians], directed by Rene Clair in 1945 under the name And Then There Were None.

The Miss Marple films directed by George Pollock in the 1950's and 1960's provoked the displeasure of Agatha, who declared the actress Margaret Rutherford, with her determinedly comic rendering of the character, 'not much like Miss Marple' and also reputedly said, 'to me she's always looked like a bloodhound.' The two women later made their peace and Agatha even dedicated one of her books to Miss Rutherford."

The book goes on to discuss further blockbuster hits made from Christie's works: Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and The Mirror Crack'd--not to mention the many television adaptations which happened after Christie's death in 1976. At that time, Christie's works were the most read after Shakespeare and The Bible.

How ironic, then, that even someone with the audience of Agatha Christie couldn't command a say in the casting of her films, and that the REAL Miss Marple was only certain in the mind of the woman who created her.