Christie in Small Doses

As I mentioned in the previous post, I think Agatha Christie did some of her best work in her short stories. Maybe because it required her to keep everything very tight, or maybe it just gave her the opportunity to use some really ingenious tricks to fool the reader, the short stories really distill most of her best qualities into some very small packages.

While "The Tuesday Club Murders" is probably the best of her Miss Marple stories, I think "The Labors of Hercules" probably shows off Hercule Poirot at his finest. These stories, all patterned after the original twelve labors of the Graeco-Roman hero Hercules, are beautifully put together. I have more extensive notes here. They may start from a premise as trivial as the kidnapping of a woman's dog, or as serious as a murder. But they are all carefully designed to lead the reader astray, so that he/she will not see the clues as they are fairly presented - until it is too late.

I am also very fond of another of her detectives, who only appeared in a dozen short stories, all but one of them collected into a volume called "The Mysterious Mr. Quin." It's Christie bordering on the supernatural. The solutions to the mysteries are all straightforward, solved, mostly, by one of her most endearing characters, little Mr. Satterthwaite, but he solves them with guidance provided by the engimatic and mhysterious Harley Quin. I enjoy all of Christie's detectives, and the short stories are a good way to meet them - and really to appreciate the amazing skill with which she plotted and wrote these fine mysteries.

Comments

[Kerrie]

Would you like to submit this post to the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Blog Carnival? See http://acrccarnival.blogspot.com/ for details

[Les Blatt]

Thanks, Kerrie - I didn't realize you were doing a challenge on Christie. I will certainly link to it.