Anna Castle June 2016 · out. Murder at the Vicarage. Murderer fakes an attack on him/herself to...

Anna CastleJune 2016www.annacastle.com

Plot twists of several Agatha Christie novels are revealed in the following slides. You may find out whodunit! The analysis of Christie’s clever methods is not mine! It’s all drawn from a terrific book:

Earl F. Bargainnier. 1980. The Gentle Art of Murder: The Detective Fiction of Agatha

Christie. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press.

www.annacastle.com 2

Christie is the bestselling modern author.Only the Bible and Shakespeare sell better.At the time of her death in 1976:

2,000,000,000 readers;$20,000,000 total earnings;1.5 million paperbacks/year in England alone;80 novels & short story collections; 19 plays;Translated into 103 languages.


Classic puzzle mysteries.Story question: WHO did it?A fair play mystery:

shows us all the clues as they are discovered;lets us meet all the suspects and hear their stories;

The reader’s job:distinguish real clues from red herrings;separate liars from truth-tellers;interpret the clues & stories correctly.

The author's job: make that job difficult!


Sleuth is an amateur or an odd sort of cop (Columbo, Monk).Sleuth works more from character & motive than from forensic evidence.A closed world: a village, a country house, the Orient Express…Little violence; no explicit sex.Positive tone, often humorous.Villain is always caught and punished.


Write the crime from the killer's POV. • Clues and timelines emerge from what happens.• What is everyone else doing at the critical time?• Everyone has a secret, if only a trivial one. • Killer actively works against the sleuth to confuse

the investigation. Write the story "as perceived": • What the police find: a body on the floor, suspects

in the house. Tell each one’s story.• Decide who the least likely suspect is, then revise to

make that character the villain.


Gather 6-12 people in a village.Reveal their characters, secrets, and tangled relationships.Murder a few of them here and there.Chat with everyone, have lots of tea, and receive data from police.Exercise the little grey cells.In the end, assemble the suspects in the drawing room and recount the true story. "Here's what happened."


Wrong victim: Killer got the wrong person, so we look in the wrong direction for motives. Murder at the Links.Inverse Wrong Victim: A much more plausible victim is nearby, so we look in the wrong direction again. The Mirror Crack'd.Concealed Identity: Killer pretends to be someone else. Why Didn't They Ask Evans.Misidentified body: Cousin to the Wrong Victim. Why Didn't They Ask Evans.


Faked Clue: Mostly to obscure the time of death. Explosions that sound like gunshots, a Dictaphone... Murder of Roger Ackroyd.Time Fiddles: Provide the murderer with an unbreakable alibi. Often a Faked Clue. Murder at the Vicarage.Unbreakable alibis: Chiefly by means of Concealed Identity and Time Fiddles, but beware of any chair-bound invalids! Lord Edgeware Dies.


Murderer confesses early and is let off. Or a pair confesses in turn, cancelling each other out. Murder at the Vicarage.Murderer fakes an attack on him/herself to deflect suspicion. Funerals are Fatal.Bogus Serial Killer: Extra murders point away from the important one. The ABC Murders.False motives: In One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, we're led to believe the underlying motive is political; in fact, it's personal.


"Clues emerge from the killer's mistakes."

--- Carolyn Wheat


FingerprintsFibersWounds (but don't be gory)OvercoatsEmpty vials of cyanideDogs that don't barkFurniture out of placeScraps of letters clutched in the victim's hand


Every suspect has something to hide.Every character has his or her own goals.Where were they and what were they doing?How do they relate to the victim? Oh, really?

==> Collecting and interpreting these stories is the central task of the sleuth.


A false scent laid across the trail to confuse the investigation. Like the fingerprints on the knife, the footprints on the window sill, and the missing heir in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Red herrings can also arise through simple coincidence: unrelated secrets and objectives.Think of red herrings as theories of the crime that are proved false on the way to the truth.


Reveal it before the crime is committed.Let it be revealed by an Unreliable Narrator: a liar, a dolt, or a prattler. (Percy Weasley in The Wizard of Azkaban.) Tell half-truths so the reader thinks they got all of it. (Let the Hastings make a useless list.)Focus the reader's attention on a big shiny red herring, like a silver letter opener.


Give a clue that the detective misinterprets.Let the Inspector dismiss the most important clue as irrelevant.Hide a clue in a character description.Christie's favorite clues are character traits. Sometimes they're presented as themes. Lack of imagination, vanity… “Where there is hate, there was once great love,” implying a former connection.


A sidekick whose main job is to give the detective someone to explain things to. Hastings is famous for his stupidity. He believes everyone and everything. He falls in love with all the pretty suspects. He concocts misleading lists that focus attention on the red herrings.


Most-likely suspect: the heir, the spouse. Often hidden by one of the plot twists like the Fake Attack or the Early Confession.Murderous pairs: usually a man and a woman working together. Expect impersonation!


Narrator: (Murder of Roger Ackroyd)Everyone together: (Orient Express)Police or assistants: (ABC Murders)Two murderers acting independently: (Cat Among the Pigeons) Apparent victim: (The Mirror Crack'd)Murderer is secretly the most-likely suspect; the main beneficiary. (Sad Cypress)


Three ways to get the police out of the game:They're stupid and/or lazy;They're corrupt;They're busy.

"All public things are much better done by the police. It's private and personal things like listening to Mrs. Curtis and picking up a hint from Miss Percehouse and watching the Willetts -- that's where we score."

Murder at Hazelmoor


1. Everything that is presented is true, but with vital omissions:a. character's name when his thoughts are given.

Murgatroyd's killer gets a greeting and a line of dialog with no name in A Murder is Announced.

b. enigmatic statements like "there was only one thing to do and I did it" without ever saying what "it" is. Also telegrams that the reader doesn't get to read.

c. omission of the name of the suspect from the list of suspects drawn up by the Hastings. The Moving Finger.

d. someone says they know who the murderer is, but refuses to utter the name. If that person is not the detective, he or she is sure to become the next victim.


2. Clues and their significance are separated by many pages:a. can be very subtle. In Murder in Retrospect Poirot

judges a character as having no imagination; 20 pages later, he says that the murderer is undoubtedly 'a person of rather limited imagination.'

b. Poirot measures the overcoat at the crime scene in Murder on the Links. We don't understand why until much later.


3. Clues are hidden in a group of unimportant things:a. an older woman's choker of large pearls, hidden in a sneering description made by a young woman (A Murder is Announced). b. the smell of paint in Cora's cottage in Funerals Are Fatal, hidden in description of a clutter of bad paintings.c. a significant statement lost in the stream of conversation: everyone mentioning the central heat in A Murder is Announced. d. a remark which seems to emphasize one thing while its significance is elsewhere. In Murder is Easy a character says of his late wife's final illness, 'Easterfield sent down grapes and peaches from his hothouses. And the old tabbies used to come and sit with her; Honoria Wayflete and Lavinia Fullerton.' Since the wife was poisoned, we're led to suspect the fruit; the real clue is that Honoria Wayflete was a regular visitor.


4. The false clue is a distraction:a. characters rather than physical clues. Witnesses and suspects send us off on tangents.b. the non-murderous criminal active at the murder site: all the jewel thieves and spies galloping around. Pocket Full of Rye; One, Two, Buckle My Shoe.c. characters other than the murderer are in disguise for their own reasons. A Murder is Announced.d. a character who has vowed revenge but never appears, like the orphan children in A Pocket Full of Rye.e. a person who is being framed. The ABC Murders.


5. Incorrect assumptions are forced upon the reader:a. a character's misunderstanding or lack of knowledge: In Why Didn't They Ask Evans, our sleuths assume the clinic is the key.Members of a family suspect each other, when the murderer is not a member. Funerals are Fatal.b. gender mistakes: Pip ~ Philip in A Murder is Announced. Poison pen is assumed to be a woman in The Moving Finger. c. secret relationships: The mysterious lady in Murder at the Vicarage turns out to be a suspect's mother. Irrelevant!d. false assumptions about the connection between two murders: that Cora was killed in Funerals are Fatal because of something she knew about her brother's death.e. statements which seem to exonerate the murderer: the phony threatening letters received by Movie Star in The Mirror Crack'd.


6. Both reader and detective are made to view events from a false perspective:

a. the idea that the real victim was supposed to be Mr. Blunt and the motive is political in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. b. the reader is made to see everything the wrong way round. A major feature of the apparent-victim-as-murderer plot. In Funerals are Fatal, the crucial false assumption is that the rich old man was murdered.c. narrator-as-murderer falls into this category. We assume that our narrator is reliable.


7. The murderer is permitted to conceal, distort, or falsify evidence:a. especially fun if the murderer is a more plausible character than the witness who is speaking the actual truth: sensible Miss Blacklockvs. dithery Dora Bunning in A Murder is Announced.b. murderer lays a trail of false clues: A Pocket Full of Rye, The Moving Fingerc. murderer frames another or tries to make it look like suicide: The ABC Murders, Death on the Nile


How do you make a Christie plot fresh?

Update the settings. Anything that isn't an English country house in 1935.If it's a subplot in a romance, the big crime doesn't have to be murder. Jewelry heists, espionage, kidnapping, stealing corporate secrets that were stolen by villains...If it's a murder, it could be a Good Thing. Assassination of a tyrant. But the mystery still needs to be solved.


If it's not a murder mystery, there doesn't even have to be a crime. These methods will work for any secret or big surprise. Concealed identity, concealed relationships....Update the characters. Christie novel's were pretty shallow and are now quite stale. More action! Christie's sleuths don't do anything but sit in the drawing room and talk.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropes_in_Agatha_Christie's_novelshttp://www.christiemystery.co.uk/plot.html

Bargainnier, Earl F. (1980.) The Gentle Art of Murder: The Detective Fiction of Agatha Christie. Bowling Green University Popular Press.Wagoner, Mary S. (1986.) Agatha Christie. Twayne Publishers.Wheat, Carolyn. (2003.) How to Write Killer Fiction. Palo Alto: Perseverance Press.


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