December 15 Zoom event on the work of Agatha Christie.

On December 15, Nicholas Birns and his mother, Margaret Boe Birns (both NYU), will talk about their new book, Agatha Christie Under the Magnifying Glass: Close Readings of 12 Novels, in a Zoom event. I acquired the book for McFarland and Co. and will make a few remarks. A special guest will be J.C. Bernthal, author of McFarland's Agatha Christie: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction (which I edited) and editor of The Ageless Agatha Christie: Essays on the Mysteries and the Legacy.

As Birns and Birns note in the preface, they set out 

to examine how particular characters, phrases, contexts, and plot lines contribute to the success of Agatha Christie’s authorial compositions. But we will also look at them as they tear against the seams and beg for the scrutiny that goes outside the text as traditionally conceived. Rather than concentrating exclusively on overall themes, tropes, and effects in her oeuvre (as in Tison Pugh’s 2023 Understanding Agatha Christie), our emphasis on the uncertainties of particularity leads us to also concentrate on individual works by Christie.

Works covered in the book are The ABC Murders, A Murder Is Announced, At Bertram's Hotel, Curtain, Death Comes as the End, The Hollow, The Murder at the Vicarage, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, N or M?, Third Girl, and Towards Zero.

UPDATE, Dec. 16, 2025: If you missed the event, access the recording.

Note that there's a holiday sale at McFarland until the end of December; take 20 percent off with coupon code HOLIDAY25. 

Now out: Agatha Christie companion.

Just published is Agatha Christie: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by J. C. Bernthal, vol. 12 in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit. It is a comprehensive look at the career of the popular creator of Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple, Ariadne Oliver, Parker Pyne, and a host of other memorable mystery characters and plots. The book includes discussion of never before seen material, such as an unknown Australian adaptation of a Christie short story. 

• Print
• Kobo ebook
• Kindle ebook

The Christie tapes.

Agatha Christie, 17 Sept 1964.
Photo by Joop van Bilson, Anefo.
Dutch Natl Archives

BBC Radio 4 Extra is beginning to air excerpts from tapes made by Agatha Christie as she prepared her autobiography. The first episode is "The Semi-Pro" in which she discusses the creation of Miss Marple and also states: "I was eminently a writer for entertainment."

John Curran talks about Agatha Christie.

On RTE (Ireland)'s Arena program John Curran (author of Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks) talks about Christie's childhood, her short stories and plays, her 1926 disappearance, and the genesis of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

Agatha Christie at Schiphol Airport, 17 Sept 1969
Dutch National Archives

"Improving" Dame Agatha?

Gilbert Magazine, a publication of the American Chesterton Society, has posted an "Open Letter to the Agatha Christie Estate" by Chris Chan that criticizes the latest Miss Marple adaptations now airing on PBS. Says Chan, "When productions imply that Christie adaptations are only watchable if sex and violence is added, the battle for respectability is already lost." Similar howls of outrage were heard on DorothyL after Tuppence Beresford--hardly a mess as an accomplished spy and former World War I nurse--was portrayed as a lush by Greta Scacchi in the new adaptation of By the Pricking of My Thumbs. The discussion on the Mystery! board is equally negative, not least for the fact that many of the plots bear no resemblance to the original texts (such as the adaptation of Nemesis).

Insulting is the mind-set that older works must be "updated" because today's audiences will be unable to grasp their references. The popularity of Jane Austen adaptations demonstrates that audiences can understand and appreciate works written in another era (Miss Austen's unerring eye for universal characters undoubtedly is key as well). One blogger stated that as the Joan Hickson Marples and David Suchet Poirots were definitive, remakes serve no purpose and asks, "Why have we never seen Parker Pyne on our screens, for example?" It's a good question. Private investigator Pyne, teamed with Dame Agatha's alter ego Ariadne Oliver as he was in "The Case of the Discontented Soldier," would make for an entertaining series.