The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie by Charles Osborne

I loved this book! It was one of those times when I had to decide between racing through it and treating myself to a few pages at a time – and I went largely for the latter route, reading a bit with my breakfast each morning.

I bought The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie (1982) by Charles Osborne back in 2013 in Malvern, and have been a bit nervous about picking it off the shelves. I thought it might give away the endings to all the Christies I haven’t read, which is probably about half of them. My fears were allayed as soon as I read the preface – Osborne promises not to give away any murderers or major spoilers, and he sticks to this throughout.

The book goes through Christie’s works one by one, in order. Each section gives some context about Christie’s life at the time, a few details about the set up of the novel, what the critics and public thought etc. There’s about two pages per book – which, considering how many she wrote, comes together for a very satisfying book. Osborne is so good about giving you a taste of what makes each book original. In a short space, he might tell us how it fits into Poirot’s career, how Christie was inspired to begin, how it was reviewed, whether there were adaptations. He is remarkably good at hinting at a novel’s ingenuity – or, alternatively, if it repeated a trick or wasn’t as convincing as others – without giving a single jot away. There are plenty of biographical details about Christie, even though this isn’t quite  a biography. He gets the combination of elements perfectly.

And this is a critical work, in the sense that he shares his opinions. He’s not afraid to point out some of her weaker work, but he is obviously also an avid fan – most of the time he is enthusiastic and picks out the reasons why he likes the books. It’s not quite an out-and-out appreciation, but nor is it one of those dispiriting works where the writer seems to have chosen a subject they barely respect. Osborne writes very affectionately. And he is extraordinarily knowledgeable about Christie, and I enjoyed the times where he points out that other Christie critics got things a bit wrong.

I really enjoyed Osborne’s tone of voice, and his very English sense of humour. For example…

It seems now to be generally accepted that the basic idea for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was given to Agatha Christie by Lord Mountbatten. Mountbatten certainly continued to claim, on every possible occasion, that this was so.

He’s also not afraid to point out errors in Christie’s novels, with the acuity of the superfan. This section is perhaps not quite representative, as it is more detailed than most, but…

Five minor points about The Thirteen Problems, two concerned with Christie carelessness and three with Christie parsimony: (i) in one of the stories, ‘phenomena’ is used as though it were the singular, and not the plural of ‘phenomenon’; (ii) in The Thirteen Problems, Raymond West’s fiancée is called Joyce but, in later Christie stories, after they are married, she is always referred to as Joan; (iii) variations on the plot of one of the stories, ‘The Blood-Stained Pavement’, will be presented in the story ‘Triangle at Rhodes’ in Murder in the Mews and in the novel Evil Under the Sun; (iv) the plot another story, ‘The Companion’, will be made use of again in the novel A Murder is Announced; (v) an element in the plot of ‘The Herb of Death’ will re-occur in Postern of Fate.

This is one of the few times when he names which novels/stories share traits – a little unfair, if you happen to have read one but not the other. More often he’ll just say that something appeared earlier, without specifying where.

Osborne clearly knows a lot about opera and music, and it is these areas where he often picks up on errors. Elsewhere, he teasingly decides to pretend Christie deliberately included the mistakes – for instance, suggesting that Poirot’s inaccurate French is clearly a result of spending too much time in England, or that Miss Marple has got absent-minded and forgetful when certain details don’t line up.

I mostly enjoyed Osborne’s personality shining through. It’s a little less palatable when he goes on a tangent about how longer jail terms are needed for criminals, or a very unnecessarily impassioned defence of the use of the n-word in the original title to And Then There Were None. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is cut in the revised and updated edition from 2000, that I don’t have.

But his other quibbles are all part of the charm for me, and make it feel even more like you’re listening to a keen fan discussing their favourite author.

As I say, I’ve read about half or so of Christie’s books, and I probably wouldn’t recommend this to someone who hadn’t read any or many. I definitely enjoyed reading about books I knew a bit more than those I didn’t. But to anybody who loves Christie – this is a total delight.