Agatha Christie was a Glorified Hack, a Snob, a Bigot, and a Racist
She wasn’t the first into the detective genre, by any means. Edgar Allan Poe wins that accolade with The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the original detective story, which was published in 1841, fifty years before Agatha Christie was born. Others who predate Christie include Louisa May Alcott, Wilkie Collins, William Russell, Arthur Conan Doyle, and even Charles Dickens with Bleak House. So Christie was hardly a pioneer of the genre, although she soon colonized it, as the British did the world at that time, and therein may lie a clue to her worldwide success, I believe.
The stories are often set in a yawn-inducing British upper-class setting. Yes, they’re a bit of a bore. They are formulaic to the degree that it is sometimes difficult to tell them apart. Many have common devices such as the gathering at the finale for the dramatic revelation of the murderer’s identity. This gets old. (For a fascinating analysis of the Agatha Christie formula, see here.)
Her characters have little depth. Often, they are simplistic caricatures with few signs of any inner life. The Poirot novels are written from the point of view of Captain Arthur J. M. Hastings, OBE, Poirot’s trusty but dense sidekick, who barely seems to think at all. (Christie clearly modeled this set-up on Conan Doyle’s Holmes-Watson partnership. Both characters are disabled veterans of the British Army, and both are buffoons.)
While her plotting is generally good, if sometimes a little far-fetched, the motivation for the crime is usually mundane (e.g. greed or gain.)
Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot are more figures of fun than brilliant detectives. (Some people may like this. I don’t.) She assumes a Christian society and morality in her stories. While this may coincide with the British culture of the day, it begs the question, “was this the limit of her imagination?”
In retrospect, her stories haven’t aged well, and now seem dated. She was a racist (see here) and a colonialist, as were most British people of her time. In several of her stories, various non-white characters are subject to gratuitous racist sneers. This is a pity. She could have risen above such attitudes, but she chose not to. Although she had no formal education — she never attended school or college — she traveled widely, and should have known better, but she was terminally inward-looking.
She was a narrow-minded snob, and a white, English, Protestant bigot who hated Jews, and wasn’t keen on Catholics either. She believed hers was a superior civilization. The Anti-Defamation League publicly complained about anti-Semitic slurs in her writing. (Of course, Shakespeare had his Shylock, but that was the 16th century.) Recently, I’ve been rereading Peril at End House and came upon the following description of Mr. Lazarus, a stereotypical Jewish shyster:
“I dismiss the long-nosed M. Lazarus who offered fifty pounds for a picture that was only worth twenty (it is odd, that, when you come to think of it. Most uncharacteristic of his race).”
The book also ends with snide comments about Mr. Lazarus’s greedy business practices. Ironically, The Agatha Christie Estate’s business practices seem somewhat greedy. It recently threatened Val McDermid with legal penalties for using the term “Queen of Crime” in her publicity.
Agatha Christie was never young. She was invented at the age of sixty. Forgive me, she was ugly inside and out.