Remake of 'Orient Express' Good Not Great

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My father and I went to see the new film adaptation of "Murder on the Orient Express" the other day.

It was appropriate that we did. My parents were avid readers of Agatha Christie's books, just as I am today, and I remember watching the 1974 movie adaptation of the story with them. I loved the cast; it was truly a star–studded show — Albert Finney, Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall, Anthony Perkins, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, the list went on and on. A real blockbuster.

But there was some impressive talent in the remake, too — Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe.

I asked Dad if he liked it, and he said he did. But he noted the same differences between the movies — as well as similarities — that I did — some noteworthy, some not so much.

We were both glad that Branagh, who directed the movie and played Christie's Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, didn't do an exact remake of the first movie — even though the first movie stayed pretty close to the original book while the 2017 version freely admitted in its credits that it was "based" on Christie's book.

Even the parts of the films that were essentially the same were presented differently. In general I could live with that, but the heart of the story was the kidnapping and murder inspired by the real–life abduction and murder of Charles Lindbergh's young son, and that seemed to get the short end of the stick in the remake. At least compared with the '74 adaptation.

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We agreed that the 2017 adaptation was superior to the 1974 version in its technologically aided production. It's a good thing the acting in the '74 adaptation was so impressive because the '74 movie could never stand up to the new one on technical merits.

The cinematography in both movies was superb. How could it not be with all those picturesque scenes — in the snow?

But the big problem for the latest incarnation of this classic Agatha Christie tale is exactly that — the story itself. Or, rather, the adaptation of '74. Most folks have already heard about the original — and they know about the unusual twist ending.

So it is somewhat anticlimactic when the solution is revealed at the end of the movie.

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Besides that, though, the acting was just so good and the '74 movie itself was just so memorable that the new adaptation simply couldn't compete.

I'm sure that those viewers who had no previous exposure to the earlier adaptation found the latest one to be a much more impressive movie than I did.

Not that I am saying that this adaptation was bad. I'm not saying anything like that.

I just think the '74 adaptation was better ... but I preferred the mustache on Branagh's Poirot.

The Start of a Great Writing Career

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"I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself."

Hercule Poirot, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

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Ninety–five years ago this month, Agatha Christie published the first of dozens of mystery novels — "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" — and introduced the world to one of its most enduring literary detectives, Hercule Poirot.

Christie wrote her first novel during World War I, published it in 1920, then neatly took things full circle 55 years later with "Curtain," a novel she wrote during World War II and brought Poirot and his sidekick Hastings back to Styles for their final case together.

As I have heard the story, Christie's career as a writer began a decade before "Styles" was published — when she was recovering from influenza at her family's home. Convalescence bored her, and her mother suggested that she try her hand at writing. Agatha resisted, saying she didn't think she could. Her mother observed that she had never tried, then left briefly and returned with a writing exercise book. By the following evening, she had finished her first story, a tale of "madness and dreams" that Christie herself, after re–reading the unpublished manuscript half a century later, said showed "the influence of all that I had read the week before" — which had "obviously" been D.H. Lawrence — although a biographer called her story "compelling."

Well, regardless of the merits of the story, it is beyond dispute that it launched an astonishing career. Christie has been dead nearly 40 years, but "The Guinness Book of World Records" recognizes her as the world's best–selling novelist of all time, with more than 2 billion copies of her books having been sold. Her estate claims her novels are behind only the works of Shakespeare and the Bible on the list of the world's most widely published books.

For years before her first book was published, Christie treated her writing as a hobby — like embroidery — but that hobby was preparing her for her life's work.

That tale she wrote while recovering from the flu may have been her first writing effort, but it was "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" that was her first to be published.

It wasn't the first Christie book I ever read, but I immediately recognized something in her writing that was drilled into us when I was a journalism student in college. For lack of a better term, call it the Joe Friday technique — Just the facts.

Christie let her characters speak for themselves. She resisted the temptation to suggest what the characters ought to be saying or to explain to the readers what the characters intended to say. She had the wisdom to let the characters' statements speak for themselves.

It was an element that often made for her best novels. She allowed the readers to reach their own conclusions (which were often wrong) based on what the characters said. Characters often said things that were self–serving and misleading — as they did and do in real life. Readers who reached conclusions based more on the evidence than a witness' testimony usually fared better.

If Christie received any criticism for her initial work, it was that she was perhaps a bit too clever. Critics were virtually unanimous in their verdict that it was a clever plot — but, as one critic complained, there were too many clues in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" that had the effect of canceling each other out. At times it may have been too clever for its own good.

Of course, there were plenty of red herrings in Christie's books, as there are in any good mystery. I have never tried to write a mystery, but I suppose it is tempting to connect the dots for the reader, to explain what is relevant and what is not.

I know it was often tempting in my work as a reporter to connect the dots for people, but I was guided by advice from my news writing professor, a fellow who worked for the New York Times for many years. He told me to give the readers the facts, the statements that others made, the evidence that was presented and let them make up their own minds.

That, I think, was the secret to Christie's fiction–writing success. Novelists write about the worlds they create; reporters write about the world that already exists. But the key to success for both is to let the readers reach their own conclusions.

Drawing the 'Curtain' on a Beloved Detective

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It was 40 years ago this month that Agatha Christie published her final mystery novel featuring her most popular detective, Hercule Poirot. The novel was published only a few months before Christie's death, and it really brought her lifelong odyssey with that character full circle.

Since it has been so long since the publications of "Curtain" and "Sleeping Murder," Miss Marple's last case, it is important to advise the millennial generation that, while they were the last of Christie's books to be published, they were not the last books Christie wrote. She wrote them more than 30 years earlier, during the London blitz in World War II, fearing that she would die in the daily bombing raids. She did not die, of course, and held the manuscripts in bank vaults until the mid–1970s.

As I understand it, Christie was reluctant to let either book be published, but she relented when her publisher pointed out to her that the only way to have any long–term control over her character would be to kill him off herself in print. If she didn't, some other writer might try to keep him alive — as Kingsley Amis did with James Bond after Ian Fleming's death.

I've heard it said that Christie may have had another reason for permitting "Curtain" to be published while she was still living. She always seemed to have an adversarial relationship with her beloved detective. She was irritated by the character's popularity and might have experienced considerable satisfaction from being rid of him.

I remember how excited my parents were about the publication of a new Agatha Christie novel. It was truly an event in our house, a cause for intense anticipation, and one of my parents (probably my mother) purchased a copy the day it hit our local bookstore. I don't remember now which one read it first, but one did, and then the other did, and my memory is they both liked it. (I knew they would. They were both Agatha Christie fans, and they both loved the Poirot character.)

They certainly discussed it a lot.

I guess it kind of came as a surprise to me at the time just how many Agatha Christie devotees there were. I suppose I was inclined to think of my parents' love for Christie as kind of a quirk. You know, it was a good thing they found each other and could share their passion for the same writer. That's probably how I felt about it at the time. Then I found out that there were a lot of people who shared that quirk. "Curtain" raced to the top of the best–seller lists in the United States and Great Britain and remained there for weeks.

I wanted to read it, too, but my mother told me that I would be wise to read several of Poirot's previous novels first, especially the first one, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," which was published more than 50 years earlier and was an integral part of the plot of "Curtain." That would put everything into context, my mother told me.

So I did, but it took awhile. I was a teenager, easily distracted and didn't get around to reading those novels for awhile. When I did and I felt adequately armed to face Poirot's finale, I felt almost as if reading "Curtain" was a rite of passage — my admission to the world of adults. At least, the adults in my world.

Maybe I should have waited a few years. In hindsight, I think I would have appreciated the material more if I had waited. But you know how young people are — always in a rush to grow up.

Timing, they say, is everything, and I suppose that was never truer than it was in the case of the publication of "Curtain" and the final Miss Marple mystery. If Christie had died in those World War II bombing raids and those two books had been published in the 1940s, my guess is that Christie would be remembered as a solid mystery writer from the prewar period — although many of her books most likely would be out of print today.

Instead, most of her books remain in print the world over.

"Curtain" and "Sleeping Murder," too, might be out of print — for it was after the war that Christie, producing at least a book a year almost to the end, literally added volumes to the Poirot and Marple stories. In fact, when Christie wrote "Sleeping Murder" during those bombing raids, Miss Marple had been the subject of only three novels and one collection of short stories.

The novel that ended her career and the one that ended Poirot's career wouldn't have had the same meaning if they had been published in 1943 instead of the mid–1970s. As it was, though, they were modern literary events.

Agatha Christie's Misfire

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All I know about the publication of Agatha Christie's "Hallowe'en Party" is that it was published in November 1969.

I don't know the exact date, but I suspect the book was published closer to the beginning of November (and, consequently, closer to Hallowe'en itself). Perhaps such timing would have helped. By 1969, Agatha Christie was nearly 80, and her writing engine seemed to be running out of gas. "Hallowe'en Party" was disappointing when compared to her earlier works. The plot wasn't bad, but the telling of it was weak and a bit inefficient for Christie.

The book matched Christie's most popular detective, Hercule Poirot, with Christie's caricature of herself, Ariadne Oliver. Ariadne was a rather eccentric sort, a celebrated writer who was averse to publicity, fond of apples, a teetotaler. Poirot described her as having an "original if untidy mind" — the ideal complement to Poirot's tidy gray cells.

If opposites attract, Hercule and Ariadne were a match made in heaven; in fact, I have often wondered why Christie wrote about Ariadne so seldom. Ariadne appeared in roughly half a dozen Agatha Christie books. She was an old friend of Poirot's — hence, nearly all of her appearances were in books that featured him prominently, although I think there was one book in which Oliver was featured as a sort of tangential character, but Poirot was not part of it.

Readers of "Hallowe'en Party" could be forgiven for thinking Poirot would not play a role in this one, either — at least, at first. In "Hallowe'en Party," Ariadne happened to be present when, while preparing for a Hallowe'en party, a 13–year–old girl related that she had witnessed a murder once but only recently had come to realize that it was a murder she had seen.

Not long thereafter, the girl was found dead — drowned in an apple–bobbing bucket — and Ariadne called on her old friend to solve the murder. Considering what she had heard from the girl herself, Ariadne was concerned that the murder might have been prompted by the girl's revelation.

It was a missed opportunity in many ways. At a time when many were examining the so–called "generation gap," it was a chance to remind readers that such a gap has always existed. It was an opportunity to examine the logic (or lack thereof) of teenagers, but, by the time Christie wrapped it up, "Hallowe'en Party" was still loaded with loose ends and characters who seemed promising at first but sort of fizzled out.

Well, Christie was nearing the end of her life, and she had written so many excellent books that I suppose she could be excused for making the occasional misfire.

Bringing Agatha Christie to the Big Screen

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Bianchi (Martin Balsam): You mean you saw the man? You can identify the murderer?

Mrs. Hubbard (Lauren Bacall): I mean nothing of the kind. I mean there was a man in my compartment last night. It was pitch dark, of course, and my eyes were closed in terror ...

Bianchi: Then how did you know it was a man?

Mrs. Hubbard: Because I've enjoyed very warm relations with both my husbands.

Bianchi: With your eyes closed?

Mrs. Hubbard: That helped.

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I remember the night my father took our family from our central Arkansas hometown to Little Rock to see "Murder on the Orient Express," which premiered on this day in 1974. I have read many Agatha Christie books in my life, and I have read the one upon which the movie was based, but I had not read it before I saw the movie.

So I was completely fished in by the solution — which I won't give away, in case someone reading this would like to read the book (which I recommend) or see the movie (which I also recommend). In his review of the movie, Roger Ebert reminded readers that "nothing is as it seems (and you knew that already about a movie based on an Agatha Christie book)."

"Murder on the Orient Express" wasn't the first Agatha Christie book to be brought to the big screen, but, to my knowledge, it was the first to do so with such a heavyweight cast.

My parents were Agatha Christie fans. They read most, if not all, of her books — and my memory of that night is that they were almost giddy with anticipation. Looking back, I realize they must have read articles about the movie — reviews, features about the cast members, that sort of thing — but my brother and I had not, and we were bewildered; we knew some of the stars in the movie, but we had no idea what to expect from the plot.

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I had seen Ingrid Bergman in movies on TV, but she was young and beautiful in those movies. She was nearly 60 when she made "Murder on the Orient Express" — still beautiful, as I found out later, but the role she played required her to look even frumpier than many women look at that age.

Bergman actually chose the role she played, an old Swedish missionary, even though director Sidney Lumet wanted to give her a better role, a still older yet prettier and wittier character than the missionary, a more graceful role with which he felt she could win another Oscar. But Bergman was "sweetly stubborn" about the role she wanted to play, Lumet said, and he couldn't deny her. After all, she was Ingrid Bergman.

In the end, she won an Oscar, anyway. After all, she was Ingrid Bergman.

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Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney): Mr. Ratchett, I have made enough money to satisfy both my needs and my caprices. I take only such cases now as interest me, and to be frank, my interest in your case is ... dwindling.

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Really, it was an all–star cast, befitting a story that seemed to have randomly thrown together a dozen colorful characters — until a rather tenuous link between them all and the victim was established.

Personally, I found the story's solution to be a clever twist, the kind of thing that only Agatha Christie could conceive. She put all the characters on a train that had been stopped by a snowdrift. They were confined to the train, where Poirot interrogated them all and then revealed the two conclusions he had reached about how the victim had been killed.

Must have been a delight to be on the set with all those talented people.

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Hercule Poirot: You never smile, madame la princesse?

Princess Dragomiroff (Wendy Hiller): My doctor has advised against it.

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For the quality of its production, "Murder on the Orient Express" was rewarded with half a dozen Oscar nominations — and one victory, Bergman's Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

But Bergman, when she accepted the award, apologized to the actresses she had beaten, especially Valentina Cortese, who was nominated for her performance in a film that was made in 1973. Bergman thought Cortese's performance was better.

"She gave the most beautiful performance," Bergman said admiringly as applause erupted from the audience.

Granted, but Bergman was pretty good, too. After all, she was Ingrid Bergman.

Did Loose Lips Sink Caribbean Ship?

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Sometimes I think Agatha Christie would have a case of wanderlust, and that was what inspired some of her stories. I mean, if she couldn't be somewhere, at least she could write about it.

Anyway, I have always suspected that the book that was published 50 years ago today — "A Caribbean Mystery" — originated that way. After all, she was in her 70s — which isn't too old for many people who want to travel today, but 50 years ago might have been a different story.

The fact that the story took place in an exotic locale really isn't unusual. Christie did that frequently — and for a variety of reasons. What was unusual about "A Caribbean Mystery" was not the setting but the detective who was there.

Christie's most popular detective, Hercule Poirot, spoke frequently of wanting to retire to some place in the country and raise vegetables in a rather serene setting, but he was always being pulled away by a murder some place, and he went there by plane, train and ship. Poirot truly was a world traveler.

Miss Marple, on the other hand, was a real homebody. She seldom strayed from her quaint little English village — to her, an extensive trip generally meant an outing to London for one reason or another or going on a bus tour of historic homes and gardens in Britain. She almost never went to the European continent, let alone the other hemisphere.

Yet Miss Marple was the detective in "A Caribbean Mystery." Go figure, huh? Miss Marple wasn't her most popular detective. It would make sense to put her most popular detective in a place like the Caribbean.

So how did Miss Marple wind up in the Caribbean? Well, her nephew paid her way. Her health hadn't been good, and the idea was that she would recover faster in the warm Caribbean than in cold, dreary England.

Much like Miss Marple herself, the plot sort of plodded along for awhile. Eventually, even the gossip that Miss Marple engaged in so easily became tiring, and Miss Marple was bored.

Then, as so often happened in Christie's stories — especially, it seemed, the ones that featured Miss Marple — the pace picked up quickly, almost without warning. The bored Miss Marple got into a conversation with a rather long–winded major, who failed to keep Miss Marple's interest until he brought up the subject of murder. Then he told Miss Marple a tale about a murderer who got away with it — several times. He asked Miss Marple if she would like to see a picture of this murderer. That got her full attention. But as he was looking through his wallet for the picture, he abruptly (and loudly) changed the subject, apparently after seeing something behind Miss Marple.

The next day, a maid found the major dead in his room. The death appeared to be due to natural causes, but Miss Marple was convinced that he had met with foul play. If she could see the picture he had started to show her, she might get an idea. When he changed the subject the day before, she looked around to see if anyone behind her had caused him to do so, and she had seen several people standing nearby. Perhaps the picture would contain a clue ...

Thus began a Caribbean mystery. Before it was done, there were several deaths — and a few red herrings. It wouldn't have been an Agatha Christie mystery without those.

And, after the major's body was exhumed and an autopsy was performed, it was determined that Miss Marple had been right. His death was not due to natural causes. He had been poisoned.

It was a good read. I thought it was a conventional plot that would be unremarkable in the hands of almost anyone else, but the details were handled in a style that was Christie's — and Christie's alone.

Remembering the First Time

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"And Then There Were None," the Agatha Christie mystery that was published 75 years ago today, was the first Agatha Christie book my parents permitted me to read.

I always thought that was sort of amusing. I mean, I had already read a lot of books that really were been beyond my years, as my grandmother would say. But my parents — and my grandmother, too, for that matter — were enablers, giving me books that someone my age probably had no business reading. My parents were educators. They believed in reading, and they encouraged me to read anything and everything.

Except Agatha Christie. They kind of held back on that one, maybe because they still read her books when I was young. Maybe they wanted to keep that just for themselves. I have read most of Agatha Christie's books, and they would have been far easier for me to comprehend than many of the books I read.

I suppose if my first experience with Agatha Christie had not been such a positive one, I might never have read another one of her books.

But I selected "And Then There Were None." It didn't feature any of Christie's well–known detectives. I didn't know at the time that it is regarded by many as her masterpiece. Accordingly, it is Christie's best–selling book. It is also the best–selling mystery ever — and one of the best–selling books of all time.

No, I didn't know any of that when I first sat down to read it. I was only about 12, maybe 13, and I don't remember what attracted me to it. Maybe I liked the title — which was the American version of a well–known nursery rhyme. Maybe I liked the artwork on the cover of the paperback copy I read. As I say, I don't remember now what drew me to it, but I do remember it was my first Christie book.

It really was an absorbing book. Ten people were invited to spend the weekend on a remote island. Each was lured there by a different ruse. As I recall, one was drawn by the possibility of a job, another by the offer of an all–expenses paid vacation, etc.

In fact, each was being drawn into an ambush. Each had been judged guilty (unofficially) of causing the death of another but not in a way that could lead to criminal charges. The person who had invited them to the island planned to execute all, one by one, as their punishment for their crimes.

And, one by one, each one was killed. Or so it seemed.

Actually, the person who was responsible was one of the "guests." He enlisted the help of another guest in faking his own death; he said that, believed to be dead, he would be free to search the island for whoever was doing it. Consequently, he earned the trust of that other guest, who wound up being bumped off shortly thereafter, as I recall. Moral: Be careful who you trust.

Once all the others were dead, the culprit committed suicide — but not before leaving a note explaining to the authorities what had happened.

I thought it was a clever book, and I began taking on other Christie books. I have enjoyed most of them, but I have never experienced the same thrill I got with that first book.

When Christie Was in Top Form, It Was a Pleasure to Read

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I've always felt that "Cat Among the Pigeons," the Agatha Christie mystery that was published on this day in 1959, was among the better books of her latter years.

Christie was nearly 70 when she wrote it. Considering that she had been publishing mysteries for nearly 40 years, it was a pretty successful merging of a better–than–average thriller with a rather routine detective story. It had several unforgettable characters.

In fact, it could have made a first–rate movie if someone had adapted it for the big screen. But the only adaptation of which I am aware was made for TV and broadcast in the United Kingdom a few years ago. Some changes were made to the story. I have only heard of them, but I had no objections to most of the changes save one — the detective who resolved the case, Christie's signature detective Hercule Poirot, didn't show up in the book until about two–thirds of the way through. The adaptation changed it so that character was introduced at the beginning instead.

I suppose I would have to see the adaptation to decide whether I approve of that particular change or not. It worked in the book to delay Poirot's entrance. Christie needed that running start, I guess. She had so many interesting characters to introduce to the readers. If they were regular Christie readers, after all, they were already familiar with Poirot, but they needed a little time to get used to all the characters in this cast.

The story really was visionary for its time. It began with a flashback to three months earlier, when a revolution was about to occur in a fictitious rich country in the Middle East. (Keep in mind this was written more than 10 years before Middle Eastern countries began to flex their political muscle on the strength of their oil deposits. In 1959, most were likely perceived by the West as poor — which most probably were, except for their ruling elites.) A prince's jewels, worth a fortune, were given to his trusted pilot to smuggle out of the country, but they were observed by a shadowy, sinister woman and wound up dead in a plane crash soon thereafter.

The jewels were missing, launching a search on the part of intelligence officers, and the scene shifted to an exclusive British girls' school.

The espionage angle of the story was entirely in keeping with the time when Christie wrote "Cat Among the Pigeons." It was, after all, at the height of Cold War tensions.

I may have said too much already. Let me just add that Christie's decades of mystery writing experience showed in the telling of the story and the development of the characters. She was truly on top of her game when she wrote "Cat Among the Pigeons."

'So Many Steps to Death' Wasn't Your Typical Agatha Christie

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No matter how many conversations you may have about murder mysteries (I'm speaking of books here, not TV adaptations, so I'm guessing that number is actually lower than you may first have imagined), and no matter how many of them include discussion of Agatha Christie's works, I'd be willing to wager that "So Many Steps to Death" never came up.

And, most likely, it wasn't mentioned under its original title, either, which was, aptly, "Destination Unknown."

But it was probably only possible for Christie to write it in the 1950s. Actually, it was published on this day 60 years ago. The story featured things like a missing nuclear scientist (who may have defected to the Soviet Union) and a secret scientific research facility disguised as a leper colony/leprosy research center in northwest Africa.

The story centered around a woman named Hilary Craven, one of Christie's more inspired character names, I thought — not unlike some of the names of the James Bond characters. Like Ian Fleming's spy novels, "So Many Steps to Death" was a light–hearted thriller, the kind of book Christie had written before — and reasonably successfully.

But Christie was always Bond Lite, in my opinion. I guess it wasn't really her genre. Fleming's stories always had more heft to them. They had more of everything, really — especially more rogue criminals who were just plain evil, perfect for the post–Hiroshima Cold War paranoia in which they were written.

Christie was better at writing detective stories, and hers were the gold standard of that genre. But her thrillers were like horse–drawn carriages compared to Fleming's thrillers, which were like sleek sports cars.

Anyway, back to Hilary Craven. She had been abandoned by her husband, and she was grieving the loss of a child. She had reached a point in her life where she had nothing to lose and was contemplating suicide — when she was approached about posing as the wife of the missing nuclear scientist to help investigators. She was told that it was a hazardous assignment, but she accepted, anyway. What difference did it make if she died by her own hand or someone else's?

Well, I suppose that gives you an idea of what kind of ride you're in for if you sit down to read this book. I'm not saying it isn't enjoyable because it is — but it isn't typical Christie.

Consider yourself warned.

Christie's Venture into Historical Fiction

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"It's as easy to utter lies as truth."

Agatha Christie
"Death Comes as the End" (1944)

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There is more than one reason why I have always liked Agatha Christie's "Death Comes as the End," which was published 70 years ago this month — but I think it really boils down to one thing.

It really was quite a departure for her.

As far as I know, it is the only one of her books that was not set in the 20th century. Nearly all of her books were set in or near the time of the book's publication. Whenever Christie wrote about the past, it was in the context of a character's flashback.

It had no European characters, either, being set near the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes in 2000 B.C.

It wasn't Christie's only book to be set in an exotic locale. She did that lots of times.

But, as far as I can tell, it is the only book she ever wrote that wasn't set in the 20th century — and it didn't have at least one European character. Usually, the European character(s) solved whatever crime had been committed. But there was no Europe in 2000 B.C.

It was similar to a book that Christie published five years earlier, "And Then There Were None," in the sense that there were many deaths. And it was, as far as I can tell, the first book to combine a detective story with historical fiction. I have read many historical novels in my life, and I've enjoyed most of them. I'm an amateur historian, I suppose. It was my minor in both college and graduate school, and it's always been an interest of mine.

Perhaps that is why I have always liked "Death Comes as the End."

The fact that she didn't write more historical fiction doesn't surprise me. Good historical fiction is tougher to write than ordinary fiction. It demands a lot of research to make it plausible — almost as much research as a good term paper or thesis will require.

And, as I say, in this novel, as in "And Then There Were None," there were many deaths. The first was a woman who had married the patriarch of an affluent Egyptian family. The new wife antagonized everyone — and turned up dead just when anyone would be a likely suspect.

But she wasn't the last to die. And when the identity of the murderer was revealed, it was about as surprising as the revelation in "And Then There Were None,"

I've heard it said that Christie was inspired to write "Death Comes as the End" after working with her archeologist husband in the Middle East. Makes sense to me. Christie found inspiration in her life's experiences — as all writers do. Why not an archeological dig?

Ground Zero

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Many years ago, I recall reading an article in a news magazine that traced the steps of a killer and his victim, who were strangers to each other, in the hours leading up to their fatal encounter.

Countdown style.

The victim was a clerk in a convenience store. As the story followed the killer toward the time and place, the author inserted a neat little sentence that went something like this: "The stars were coming into line."

There are times in life when it really seems to be that random, even ironic. A person walks into a convenience store, thinking about how to make a healthier choice for a snack or a drink, and finds himself in the middle of a robbery and gets shot, for instance — or perhaps a typically meek person is thrust, by circumstance or fate or what have you, into a situation in which he/she has no choice but to act heroically.

And, of course, we really don't have to look beyond the headlines in the daily paper for examples of people who had to react when someone in their midst — in a mall or on a school campus — started shooting.

That kind of thing has been happening in America a lot longer than you probably think. Thirty years ago this summer, a man killed 21 people and injured 19 more at a McDonald's in California.

Surely, we have all, at one time or another, contemplated the apparent randomness of life. If something bad is prevented or avoided, it affects not only those who are there but also other things and people in the future.

Hasn't that very "what–if" theme shown up at the movies many times? "Schindler's List" told the story of how about a thousand people were physically saved from death during the Holocaust — and from them were born thousands more, the generations that were saved. The initial generation that was saved multiplied by all the generations that came to be.

"Towards Zero," which was published 70 years ago this month, was kind of like that. Not nearly as dramatic as "Schindler's List," of course, but it kind of explored that "what–if" theme.

In "Towards Zero," Christie showed how she felt about suicide by using suicide as a plot device. In this case, a character attempted to commit suicide and was foiled. It was one of a series of apparently unrelated events that took the reader to a zero point, a murder.

Christie once told an interviewer that her philosophy about life was "any moment before the end might be the important one."

And that, I think, tells the reader everything he/she might want to know before starting to read "Towards Zero."

Along with the fact that the murder occurs comparatively late in "Towards Zero," which put off some readers. Some reviewers, too.

That could be part of the reason why, although it is written as well as others that were written in the 1940s, it has never been as popular.

Maurice Richardson of The Observer liked that element. The murder had "a deliciously prolonged and elaborate build–up," he wrote, "urbane and cosy like a good cigar and red leather slippers."

He noted the absence of Hercule Poirot, Christie's far more popular detective, and noted that it "might well have been a Poirot case," which could be another reason why "Towards Zero" never got the recognition it deserved. "Towards Zero" was the last appearance of Superintendent Battle, one of Christie's lesser sleuths.

Battle always struck me as being an early 20th–century version of TV's Columbo. I never got the impression that Battle was disheveled, but he did show remarkable good sense, which he managed to keep hidden most of the time, and he depended a lot on appearing to be stupid. It gave his adversaries a false sense of security.

Who knows? Maybe Columbo got that from Battle.

Christie's Underappreciated Classic

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I hadn't been born on this day 75 years ago, but, based on my studies of history, I think I can guess what the mood was like.

Uneasy.

Less than three months later, World War II began when the Nazis invaded Poland. In the months leading up to it, there were all sorts of global political maneuvers going on.

Five years later, almost to the day, the Allied invasion of Normandy marked the turning point in the conflict.

Most of that was looming in the future when Agatha Christie wrote "Murder Is Easy," the detective novel she published in Great Britain on this day in 1939. (When it was published in the United States in September, the title was changed to "Easy to Kill.")

With so much uncertainty in the world, I guess Christie felt compelled to return to a more traditional plot. Comfort food for mystery readers, you might say. It took place in a sleepy English village. It had a loquacious vicar and an equally loquacious old maid. It had an overbearing captain of industry and his beautiful fiancee — and others, all of whom made for a delicious list of suspects from which to choose.

It also boasted Christie's trademark brilliant plot and clue placement.

But "Murder Is Easy" often gets the short end of the stick, probably because so many other Christie books that were published in the late 1930s had more complicated stories or took place in more exotic locales.

One of Christie's prominent detectives at that time was a fellow named Superintendent Battles, and he does show up at the end of "Murder Is Easy," but nearly all the heavy lifting is done by a character named Luke Fitzwilliam, a retired policeman who, to my knowledge, never showed up in another Christie novel.

Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing depends on one's perspective, I suppose. I have heard several Christie readers say they wish she had chosen to use Fitzwilliam in other books, but Maurice Percy Ashley, writing in London's Times Literary Supplement, said Fitzwilliam, a protege of Christie's detective Hercule Poirot, was "singularly lacking in 'little grey matter.' "

In fairness to Fitzwilliam, the case was baffling. On a train to London, he struck up a conversation with an elderly lady, who told him she was on her way to Scotland Yard to report what she had concluded was a serial killer on the loose. This killer, she said, already had been responsible for three deaths, and she identified by name the person who would be the fourth.

Fitzwilliam dismissed the conversation as the ranting of an elderly woman — until he saw the name of the alleged fourth victim in the obituary column. But the problem was that the man was not the fourth victim. He was the fifth. The old woman had been the fourth.

Had I been reviewing the book 75 years ago, I would have proclaimed it a classic.

But it is an understated and underappreciated one.

There Was a Crooked House ...

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"There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house."

English nursery rhyme (published in 1846)

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On at least a couple of occasions, Agatha Christie said "Crooked House," which was published in March 1949, was her favorite work.

She said it was her most satisfying book, an opportunity to examine the dynamics of family relationships — and, as she so often did, she took her title from a nursery rhyme, but it was only symbolic. Really had little to do with the plot. The story wasn't built around the content of the rhyme, only around the idea, as expressed by one of the characters, that "we hadn't been able to grow up independent ... twisted and twining." The occupants of the house were controlled and manipulated by the elderly patriarch.

It was an interesting household that Christie created in "Crooked House," which was inspired by a nursery rhyme that was about 100 years old when the story took place. It was centered around an affluent patriarch, whose first wife died and whose sister–in–law looked after his house and children from that time.

The patriarch married a younger woman — the difference in their ages could be measured not in years alone but in decades. That, of course, was an issue for others in the household, which the old boy also shared with his sons, their wives and three grandchildren.

One of the grandchildren was engaged to be married, and the story was told by her fiance. His father, a Scotland Yard inspector, was brought in to investigate, and the fiance assisted him.

The patriach suffered from diabetes and required regular insulin injections. On the fateful day, someone apparently switched the insulin with eserine, an eye medication, and it poisoned him.

As in most good murder mysteries, there was no shortage of suspects. Just about everyone in the house had a reason to want him dead. The patriarch's much younger wife was in love with another man, the tutor for the two youngest grandchildren. There had been rampant rumors about the relationship between those two, and the rest of the household hoped it would turn out that they were guilty. The second wife wasn't liked, and there would be a public scandal if someone else was responsible.

She wasn't the only one who had motive and opportunity but no alibi — and everyone stood to gain since the old man's will left generous chunks of his fortune to each family member. Beyond that, however, the family members shared little except a common bloodline.

Christie told an interviewer in the mid–1960s that she "had difficulty" with the ending of the book because her publisher believed the resolution of the crime could not be how she had written it — presumably because her readers wouldn't accept it.

As she almost always did, Dame Agatha prevailed in spite of the book's unforeseen and controversial conclusion. I won't reveal it — although, after 65 years, it is probably pretty well known to readers of mystery novels — but I would like to point out an important difference between this kind of Christie book and the ones that featured her usual detectives — Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, or even her lesser detectives.

In this kind of book, Christie's detective made his only appearance, and that is significant. With her usual detectives, Christie would allow them to maintain their detachment from the crime and observe from a distance. In a book like "Crooked House," Christie let her detective (actually, as I say, there were two in this case, the Scotland Yard inspector and his son) get his hands dirty.

It occurs to me that it might not have been possible for one of Christie's regular detectives to resolve the case from afar. From a distance, one can miss too much. Perhaps it was necessary for the detective to be close to the family. That intimacy allows the detective to pick up on subtle things that the detached detective would be likely to miss.

Distance can distort details — especially in a crooked house.

A Ride on the Orient Express

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Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express," which was published 80 years ago today, wasn't the first Agatha Christie book I ever read.

But it was one of the first, and it remains one of the best.

(It was the first Agatha Christie novel–inspired movie I ever saw, and I was, in turn, inspired to read the book after I saw the movie.)

Its primary inspiration was the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh's infant son in the spring of 1933. When Christie wrote the novel, the case was very much in the news. In the hands of a talented writer, such a case provided the revenge motive for the murderers.

Christie also was influenced in "Murder on the Orient Express" by another real–life event — the winter of 1928–29, said to have been the harshest winter Europe had experienced in decades. Blizzards and gale–force winds hammered the continent for weeks. Transportation was brought to a virtual halt by all the snow and ice.

The Orient Express was sort of a land version of the Titanic. It boasted luxurious accommodations and was believed to be infallible so, in spite of warnings from stations all along the train's route, its owners unhesitatingly gave the go–ahead to proceed from Paris to Turkey in late January; it was hindered all the way by snow and ice on the tracks. It did make it across the Turkish border but was stopped by huge snowdrifts. The passengers were trapped for days before realizing that help was not on its way, and they tunneled their way out, then crossed the snowy Turkish countryside in search of food and a place to sleep until help did come for them.

This was fairly typical of Christie — she often used real events as the basis for her stories but rarely as well. She made some changes to the facts, enough to make it her own story, and then threw in her usual twists and turns, just to keep the reader guessing.

And there was plenty of guesswork for the reader in "Murder on the Orient Express." Each of the passengers aboard the Orient Express had some kind of connection to the Armstrong family, which had lost its little girl, Daisy, and then suffered additional tragedies as a result of the initial crime.

Poirot, who happened to be on board the train, conducted the investigation and concluded that there were two possible resolutions: either a stranger had entered the train while it was stopped by snowdrifts and committed the murder, or everyone on the train (with the exception of Poirot) had participated.

The former was too easy for Christie's creative mind, so, for one of the few times in her writing career, Christie took an option that would permit the guilty to escape justice. All of the passengers on the train (including the conductor) wanted vengeance, and Poirot, having solved the case, permitted them to have it. He told the authorities that he had concluded that a stranger was responsible for the murder.

It was an interesting twist on the usual formula for a Christie novel. More often than not, she arranged for the least likely suspect to be the actual guilty party.

I guess a least likely suspect would be hard to choose in this case. There were several plausible candidates.

Killing Time

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Agatha Christie's "The Clocks" was published 50 years ago today, and it was distinguished by several often unrelated themes.

I guess the title gives away the main theme. In the very first chapter, a stranger was found dead in a room filled with clocks, each with its own significance. All but one were set more than an hour ahead.

Clocks continued to play a rather important role in the story (although I thought it was rather clumsily woven into the resolution of the mystery), so much so that I recall wondering, as I read it for the first time, if Christie had been influenced by the classic movie "High Noon," in which clocks in every home and every place of business ratcheted up the tension.

That would go a long way toward explaining some things, like the presence of a rather obvious homage to Hitchcock's "Rear Window" late in the book — in the course of the investigation, a young girl was questioned. She had a broken leg, which kept her confined inside where she watched the neighbors from a window. Not knowing who they were, she gave them names based on her observations.

The detective of record was Hercule Poirot, and his work on this case was noteworthy because he never went to any of the crime scenes nor did he question any of the witnesses. It was entirely an intellectual exercise for Poirot, who was old and retired (although he appeared in three more Christie novels before his celebrated final case, "Curtain," was published more than a decade later) but eager to assume the role of armchair detective.

Poirot shared the story's spotlight with a British intelligence agent who did much of the actual legwork — including interviewing the girl with the broken leg — but he shared all his notes with Poirot.

There was another interesting angle to the story. Poirot actually discussed his opinions of other fictional detectives and their authors, about many of whom modern readers know little or nothing — other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Christie was careful, I noticed, not to mention her contemporaries.

There were two somewhat interlocking stories being told — the murder mystery and a spy story — and both originated in the same house although they had precious little to do with each other beyond that.

There were other times when Christie tried to merge a murder mystery with an espionage thriller, and the end result usually didn't completely succeed as she probably hoped it would. "The Clocks" did not prove to be an exception to that.

In general, though, "The Clocks" was successful as a murder mystery, and the reviews, while mixed, were pretty good. Not bad for a 73–year–old writer.

Coming to Terms Via 'Ordeal By Innocence?'

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By this date in 1958, Agatha Christie had been publishing her mystery novels for nearly 40 years.

With roughly three–quarters of her books in print by that time, it is fair to say that "Ordeal by Innocence," which was published on this day in 1958 (when Christie was 68), was a product of her later period as a writer, and it was generally well received by critics. I've always felt it was one of the best of her later works.

It was kind of unusual, really, in the sense that it did not feature either of her most popular detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. And it really didn't use some unique plot device. In fact, it was rather conventional.

I guess the most noteworthy aspect of the story was its use of amnesia as a plot device. That is something that had been used before by others, but it was noteworthy because of something that happened in Christie's personal life.

More than 30 years earlier, Christie disappeared for about a week and a half and insisted she couldn't remember anything about the unaccounted–for time. Perhaps "Ordeal By Innocence" was her way of coming to terms with that mostly unexplained period in her life.

That is purely speculation, of course, but Christie did list "Ordeal By Innocence" as one of her personal favorites — and never said why.

The role that amnesia played in the story was secondary, I suppose. It was not the murderer but the detective who suffered from amnesia — and the detective wasn't really a detective, for that matter. He was a physician who lost his memory on the night of the murder. Had it not been for that, he could have been the alibi for the person who was convicted of the murder during the doctor's — shall we say? — absence. It was while he was recovering from his amnesia that the doctor learned what had happened and tried to set things straight.

The doctor was typical, I guess, of the non–detective detectives Christie used in books that didn't feature her actual detectives. Although he had no training in law enforcement, circumstances forced him to assume that role, and he discovered he had a certain aptitude for it.

Ultimately, the thing I always liked about "Ordeal By Innocence" was the fact that, in the end, the question of whether justice would be done was left up in the air. It was a reminder that justice is neither entirely blind nor entirely fair.

Agatha Christie's Final Literary Effort

I'm quite certain you could not say that "Postern of Fate" — Agatha Christie's novel that was published 40 years ago this month — was the best thing that Christie ever wrote.

Nor was it the last book she published.

But it was the last book she ever wrote.

She lived a few more years after the publication of "Postern of Fate," and one more book was published in her lifetime ("Curtain," Hercule Poirot's last case), but it was written decades earlier (as was the last Christie book, "Sleeping Murder," Miss Marple's last case, which was published posthumously).

The story didn't deal with either Poirot or Marple, Christie's two most popular — and most frequently used — detectives. Instead, it was something of a return to her roots — to Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, early but seldom used detectives who, unlike Poirot and Marple, had aged along with Christie. That may have been her way of addressing the stages of her life.

Anyway, in "Postern of Fate," Tommy and Tuppence had purchased a property they intended to renovate into a retirement home. While they were unpacking, Tuppence happened onto a collection of children's books; it was when she was looking at a book by Robert Louis Stevenson that she noticed that portions of the text had been underlined.

This had been done in an apparently random manner — until Tuppence noticed that it wasn't words but letters that had been underlined. On closer inspection, Tuppence found that the letters formed a series of sentences that said that someone named Mary Jordan did not die of accidental causes and that the author of the sentences knew who was responsible.

Although retired, Tuppence still had a taste for intrigue and began investigating. She was convinced that the coded message was not a prank.

Turned out there had been a Mary Jordan on the property many years before, and she had died by what was considered an accident. Apparently, the cook had picked some herbs that were poisonous and put them in the salad.

The more Tuppence looked into the matter, the more she discovered. Even after many years, the gossips in the town remembered Mary Jordan and that she had been involved in something that had to do with secrets of some kind. There was even a suspicion that Mary Jordan hadn't been her real name.

Tuppence's seemingly harmless investigation took on more sinister overtones when the elderly gardener (who remembered a lot of what had happened in those earlier days) turned up dead himself.

I first read the book when I was a teenager. It wasn't until I was an adult that I began to think about certain things that had always bothered me.

For example, Tommy and Tuppence at times seemed to be suffering the kinds of effects of aging from which Christie herself probably suffered. Conversations were repeated frequently before Tommy and Tuppence seemed to grasp their significance. As a result, readers were inclined to reach some conclusions long before the detectives did.

Christie was 83 when "Postern of Fate" was published. I don't know a lot of the background of her manuscript. Perhaps she had been writing it for years and was imagining, as writers do, what things would be like for her characters, given the conditions and limitations she had imposed on them in the story. Perhaps not.

Most reviews I have read of "Postern of Fate" suggest that it was possibly the worst book she ever wrote, that she should have stopped before she did.

Maybe so.

Christie's Least Favorite Novel

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"I saw a particular personage and I threatened him — yes, Mademoiselle, I, Hercule Poirot, threatened him."

"With the police?"

"No," said Poirot drily, "with the press — a much more deadly weapon."

Agatha Christie
The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)

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On this day in 1928, Agatha Christie was a rising young writer of 38.

She had published seven novels since 1920 — including some that are still considered among her best — but she didn't have much regard for the one that was published on this date in 1928, "The Mystery of the Blue Train."

Christie called it "easily the worst book I ever wrote," although she acknowledged that "many people, I'm sorry to say, like it." Count me among them.

I guess it was irresistible for me. I read it a year or two after I first saw "Murder on the Orient Express" — and read the book upon which it was based (which, as I understand it, was one of her favorites) — and I guess I had something of a weakness for a mystery that takes place on a train.

Before I say any more, let me say a few words about writing.

I've been writing most of my life, and I've always prided myself on being able to write about many different topics. But I've admired the ability to focus on a specific niche. I've always had too many interests, I suppose, which may well mean that, when I worked as a general assignment reporter, I was in the job for which I was best suited.

But it seems to me that the writers who find a specific niche are the ones who also find the greatest success in this business. Not so much the nonfiction writers. The nature of their work requires them to be curious about many things.

A niche is particularly important, I suppose, for writers of fiction, and when one discusses the writing career of Agatha Christie, it is hard to avoid certain conclusions.

Obviously, her niche was the detective novel, but she did write other things. Not many, but a few. Nevertheless, she is still known, more than 35 years after her death, as a crime writer — odds are, she always will be.

Within that genre, she focused on Britain's well–to–do, and her plot device frequently was to have her detective (more often than not, that was Hercule Poirot — although Miss Marple was another detective who was familiar to Christie's fans) either stumble onto a murder (or, on occasion, several murders) or be asked by an old friend/colleague to investigate an existing case that was baffling others.

That detective proceeded to question each of the suspects, which supposedly provided all the clues the reader would need to solve the crime. I say "supposedly" because there have been some who have suggested that prominent mystery writers have pulled some fast ones. Among those dissenters is playwright Neil Simon, who alleged, in "Murder By Death," that some of the greatest fictional detectives of all time deceived their readers with clues and suspects that didn't appear in the books until the final pages, if at all.

That wasn't entirely fair.

Quite often, Christie's stories would have another character killed near the end — but that was usually because that character had discovered something crucial and was silenced by the original guilty party. Furthermore, those characters weren't introduced in the final chapter. They had been around for awhile.

Christie wrote more than five dozen novels, many of which were made into movies or TV adaptations. Nearly a dozen of her books have inspired video games. Most of this has come since her death in 1976.

Not bad.

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But "The Mystery of the Blue Train" has not been turned into a movie. It was an adaptation on the British TV series "Agatha Christie's Poirot" in 2005 — more than 75 years after it was published.

But that's it, and I find that surprising.

I'll grant you, I didn't think "The Mystery of the Blue Train" was her best book. But I wouldn't go as far in the other direction as Christie herself did. Neither would fellow English crime writer Robert Barnard, who has said that Christie is his favorite crime writer. Despite modest criticism, Barnard wrote in 1980 that "there are several fruitier candidates for the title of 'worst Christie'."

The victim in "The Mystery of the Blue Train" is a young heiress who is traveling to the French Riviera by train. She is found strangled in her compartment and a valuable piece of jewelry is determined to be missing.

Poirot just happens to be on the train and is approached by the victim's father and his secretary to investigate.

As usual, there were some modest differences between the book and the TV adaptation — and I say "modest" because, as far as I am concerned, they did not make significant changes in the story, only cosmetic ones designed to appeal to viewers in the early 21st century rather than readers in the early 20th century.

I'm inclined to think Christie would have approved.

A Traditional Agatha Christie Tale

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"Men always tell such silly lies."

Agatha Christie
Funerals Are Fatal (1953)

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The concept of a remake is hardly an alien one in the 21st century.

There are frequent remakes — or re–imaginings, as they are sometimes called — in the movies and on TV. Cover versions of old hit songs become hits themselves.

In fact, as I recall, remakes weren't new even in the late 20th century.
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But, although it was before my time, it seems to me that remakes were far more rare in the mid–20th century — when Agatha Christie published "Funerals Are Fatal."

"Funerals Are Fatal" was published in the United States 60 years ago — in March of 1953 — and it was something of a remake in the sense that it was Christie's return to the formula that made her so popular in the '30s and '40s — a sprawling Victorian mansion with a sprawling Victorian family and lots of money up for grabs following the death of the eldest sibling.

And a butler.

I am not the Agatha Christie aficionado that my mother was, but one of the things that stood out for me when I read "Funerals Are Fatal" was the presence of the butler.

As long as I can remember, "the butler did it" is a cliche that inevitably is dragged out whenever a murder mystery is the subject of conversation. Almost without exception, all the murder mysteries that I read that were published after about the mid–1900s had no butlers.

In fact, in my lifetime, it seems that, whenever a butler has shown up in a book or a movie about a fictional murder, it has been as the setup for jokes based on the cliche.

"Funerals Are Fatal" actually did have a butler, but he was a rather minor character in the story. He had been the butler of the mansion when the now–deceased head of the house was bringing up his orphaned siblings, but the butler was a very old man by the time of the story so he was never a very plausible suspect as a multiple murderer.

And that, essentially, was what Hercule Poirot, Christie's most famous (and most lucrative) detective, faced in this story.

First, the eldest sibling died suddenly but apparently from natural causes, causing the scattered family to be summoned for a reading of the will — at which the dead man's only surviving sister ponders, "but he was murdered, wasn't he?"

Initially, that point wasn't clear — but what was clear was that the dead man's sister was herself murdered — in her own bed the day after her brother's funeral.

And then her paid companion nearly died from arsenic poisoning from a sliver of wedding cake. The niece of the dead man had declined to share the cake with her.

(Paid companion seemed, on the surface, to refer more to a business relationship, but as one so often had to do with Christie's works, it was necessary to read between the lines. I haven't read all of Christie's works, but it sees to me this was the first of her books — at least, it is the earliest one in which Poirot was a character — that mentioned lesbianism, even indirectly.)

In the course of his investigation, Poirot encountered the usual assortment of red herrings tossed in his way by Christie. All part of the formula.

Another part of the Christie formula involved having Poirot gather all the principal characters together for observation, and that happened in this book, too, but then there was a twist. The widow of the dead man's brother was struck on the head as she was about to reveal by telephone what she found odd on the day of her brother–in–law's funeral.

Two dead, two others who appeared to have dodged a bullet.

In typical Christie fashion, the explanation for everything was complex, but that must have been what longtime Christie readers liked about it. It had all the elements of the traditional Christie tale that her fans loved so much.

As I say, it was a remake — or, perhaps more accurately, a rehash — of the things that had worked for Christie in the past.

So it is ironic, I suppose, that very few screen adaptations of the story have been made.

Ten years after the book was published, a movie that was based on it was made — but the movie was called "Murder at the Gallop," and the detective was not Poirot but Miss Marple, Christie's second most popular detective (but her personal favorite).

More than 40 years later, a TV adaptation was made, but it, too, had numerous character and plot changes.

To date, no adaptation of "Funerals Are Fatal" that is true to the story has been made — not even under the original title Christie gave it, "After the Funeral," under which it was published in the United Kingdom in May 1953.

Agatha Christie's Change of Pace

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"Question — What is your Christian name?
Answer — N. or M.
Question — When did you receive this name?
Answer — At my baptism when I was dedicated to God and received into the visible Church of Christ.

Catechism from Book of Common Prayer

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As long as I can remember, my parents were fans of Agatha Christie.

Between them, I'm sure they must have read every one of the 80 detective novels she wrote in her lifetime. If they didn't read them all, it wasn't because they didn't try. When I was a child, I thought nothing of finding an Agatha Christie paperback just about anywhere in the house.

To an extent, I think I inherited their fondness for the genre. I have dozens of copies of her books that I inherited from my parents — my father gave them to me after my mother died. He said he had already read them and probably wouldn't read them again. I must confess that I haven't read all of them, but I have read most of them.

I am a writer myself, and I am intrigued by the many sources from which Christie drew her inspiration. Seventy years ago this month, for example, the Book of Common Prayer was the inspiration for what many critics of the time called her best work to date.

That was saying something, given the fact that Christie had already published at least 30 books by that time.

Most of her previous books dealt with one of two main characters — Miss Marple, an elderly spinster and amateur sleuth, and Hercule Poirot, a professional (and semi–retired) detective from Belgium. And, if you ask someone today to name one of Agatha Christie's detectives, those are the names you are most likely to hear — especially Poirot's.

As I understand it, Poirot was featured in nearly half of Christie's books, and he was the central character in all the movie adaptations of Christie's books that I have ever seen. Many well–known actors — including Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov and Tony Randall — have portrayed him on the silver screen.

But not all of Christie's books focused on Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, and N or M? was one of those exceptions.

The story was centered around an English couple, Tommy and Tuppence, who first appeared in a Christie novel nearly 20 years earlier and a collection of short stories that was published a few years after that. They showed up again in a couple of novels near the end of Christie's life, but, in 1941, they must have been all but forgotten.

If they were mostly forgotten by 1941, they couldn't have been too recognizable to Christie's readers — and not only because of their rare appearances in her books. Most of Christie's characters — like many recurring characters in other writers' books — never really seemed to age. You could read a book featuring Hercule Poirot that was written in the 1930s and then read one that was written 30 years later and there would be virtually no difference between the characters, but Tommy and Tuppence clearly went through life phases.

When they first appeared in the early 1920s, they were seen as "bright young things," former intelligence workers living by their wits in post–World War I England. By 1941, they were in middle age, not quite as impulsive, more deliberate and dealing with the realities of World War II England.

(It should be noted at this point that a story with a specific wartime setting was unusual for Christie.)

They were feeling left out of things when Tommy was approached about doing some undercover work, and Tuppence decided to join him. She didn't wait for him to invite her.

And so they embarked on a mission to find a German agent who may have been male or female.

N or M? got its name from a 16th–century catechism that asks for one's Christian (given) name. The response that is requested is "N or M," with N being a male and M being a female.

To understand the title, it helps if you know that fact. It also helps if you read the book — and it's a pretty quick read. My old paperback copy is less than 200 pages, and much of the story was told via dialogue, as so many of Christie's books were.

One of the things I liked about the book was the way it referred to events from World War I that may have been widely known in their day but seem to be largely forgotten today — at least in this country.

I've always been something of a history buff.

For example, N or M? mentioned the case of British nurse Edith Cavell, who came to the aid of anyone who needed her help during the hostilities.

She was a pioneer of modern nursing techniques in Belgium before the war. After Belgium came under German occupation, she helped hundreds escape.

The Germans arrested her in 1915, tried her, convicted her of treason and executed her. Cavell's death became an effective propaganda tool for the Allies. Stories portrayed her as a heroic and patriotic individual who said, "I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved."

If N or M? was an accurate depiction of the times, people were still discussing Cavell's role in the conflict a quarter of a century after her execution.

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Mrs. Sprot had just said in her thin fluting voice:

"Where I do think the Germans made such a mistake in the last war was to shoot Nurse Cavell. It turned everybody against them."

It was then that Sheila, flinging back her head, demanded in her fierce young voice: "Why shouldn't they shoot her? She was a spy, wasn't she?"

"Oh, no, not a spy."

"She helped English people to escape — in an enemy country. That's the same thing. Why shouldn't she be shot?"

"Oh, but shooting a woman — and a nurse."

Sheila got up.

"I think the Germans were quite right," she said.

Agatha Christie
"N or M?" (1941)

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In fact, nearly a century after Cavell's execution, the evidence that supported/refuted the claim that she was a spy remains ambiguous.

But that is really another story. N or M? wasn't about Cavell and World War I. It was about uncovering German agents in the early days of World War II.

I gather that the essentially spy story was somewhat welcome escapism for Britons who had already been through the Battle of Britain.

And, while the references to people like Nurse Cavell may be obscure to modern readers, they were no doubt familiar — and relevant — to readers in 1941.

Fresh death was all around them then. It may well have been refreshing to read about a death that was practically ancient history by that time.

And it may have been a refreshing change of pace for my parents, who were born long after Nurse Cavell was executed.