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Books So Bad They're Good: Dame Agatha's Forgotten Sleuths [1]
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Date: 2025-02-08
My mother hated Jessica Fletcher.
Perhaps “hate” is too strong a word. There were definitely people and things Mum hated (union busters, cruelty to animals, my Aunt Betty’s occasional threats to put gum in her hair during road trips, tent show religion), but she didn’t precisely hate the lead character of Murder, She Wrote. Mum enjoyed mysteries, especially Mysteries So Cozy She Could Nap During the Show, and Angela Lansbury’s star vehicle was a fine way to do this. It had all the ingredients she liked in a cozy mystery: a quirky amateur sleuth who lived in a quirky little tow, bloodless murders, quirky people living in the quirky little town, clues that were obvious enough without being insulting, and cooperative police officers who might carp but eventually came to see that yes, Jessica Fletcher really did know better.
All of this was well and good, and pleasant enough in its own formulaic way. No, what Mum found ludicrous, and highly annoying, was Jessica Fletcher’s body count.
For it seemed that, in the best cozy murder tradition, anyone and everyone associated with Jessica Fletcher found themselves accused of a murder, friends with someone accused of a murder, in love with someone accused of a murder, or even sometimes the victim of a murderer. Jessica, who was allegedly a best selling mystery writer, was so apt to encounter a dead body and then have to free a wrongly accused relative/friend/acquaintance/random stranger that it wasn’t apparent how she had the time to eat, sleep, purchase groceries, or bathe, let alone write her books. Worse, Jessica’s hometown, the sleepy coastal village of Cabot Cove, Maine (pop. 3560), had what appeared to be the highest per capita murder rate in the continental United States, with 60 killings over the course of Murder, She Wrote’s twelve years on the air.
Five murders per year may not sound like much if you live in a major city. But a small fishing village in Maine? A place the size of Cabot Cove would probably be lucky to have one or two murders a decade. Five in a single year, all associated with a single individual, would be enough for the Select Board to send a delegation asking her to move before she took out half the high school during a Career Day lecture, or decimated the Fall Festival during a book signing. Even Midsomer Murders, the legendarily lethal British murder series, is based in a county, not a single town.
At least Jessica Fletcher never had to solve a death involving a giant wheel of cheese, but they were probably saving that for a spin-off set in Vermont.
I asked Mum once why she kept on watching Murder, She Wrote despite constantly complaining about it being ridiculous, repetitive, and just plain unrealistic. Her taste ran much more to the British fare on Masterpiece Theater or well-written sitcoms like The Bob Newhart Show, and I simply did not understand why she continued to watch the likes of Murder, She Wrote. Was it her lifelong love of cozy mysteries, like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories? Was she secretly an Angela Lansbury fangirl? Did Murder, She Wrote airing right before Masterpiece Theatre (her favorite show, especially during the run of the Robin Ellis-Angharad Rees version of Poldark) have anything to do with it?
She fixed me with a knowing, somewhat weary eye. “It’s better than nothing, kid,” she said, and then settled down on the sofa for another sleepy hate-watch.
Thanks to Mum’s fine example, I have never been much for cozy mysteries. I read them from time to time, but after four or five odd little murders set in the same tiny town, starring the same quirky little person who runs a knitting shop/cafe/bookstore/hardware store/church and watches their friends/relatives/high school sweethearts/rival shop owners join the choir invisible thanks to whatever random object the author thinks would make a good murder weapon, I reach my limit. I live in a small quirky New England town, after all, and when I say that even one murder solved by an amateur muffin baker/diner owner/cat rescuer/thrift shop clerk would be enough to have the city council calling a special meeting, I speak only the truth.
That includes the sun source of cozy amateur detectives, the best known, best loved, most imitated, most filmed cozy sleuth of all: Miss Jane Marple, the second-greatest creation of legendary Golden Age mystery writer Dame Agatha Christie.
Miss Marple, an elderly, sharp-witted spinster from the little village of St. Mary Mead, was the star of a dozen novels and several collections of short stories. Ordinary in every way, she had an extraordinary ability to suss out a villain based on observation, intelligence, and intuition, and thanks largely to Dame Agatha’s clever plots and skill with ringing changes on a very well worn formula, what drove Mum (and me) nuts about Jessica Fletcher is bearable with Miss Marple.
The same can be said about Dame Agatha’s greatest creation, Hercule Poirot. Professional investigators were nothing new in crime fiction — Sherlock Holmes himself is a private detective — and neither were detectives with what we’d now call a behavior disorder or a crusty personality. Poirot himself was inspired by two other detectives — “Mr. Poiret” and “Hercule Popeau,” and now I want someone to write about “Hercule Popeil,” an amateur detective whose day job is shilling for automatic egg-scramblers on QVC infomercials — but Dame Agatha’s brilliant ability to come up with believably unusual plots led to Poirot becoming a legend while Messrs. Poiret and Popeau soon retiring to the Unpopular Detectives’ Rest Home and Country Library in Badbookistan, just outside of Textiletown, near the turn-off for Loveydoveyville and its mega-cute Valentine-themed Main Sstreet.
There’s little chance of either Miss Marple or M. Poirot taking up residence at the UDRH&CL any time in the next century or two. Both have been extensively filmed, starred in popular television shows, and the books featuring them are still in print. Kenneth Branagh, who directed and starred in three less than wonderful Hercule Poirot films, has even announced plans to bring Miss Marple back to the silver screen.
The same cannot be Dame Agatha’s other detectives. Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent, heroine of two books (The Secret of Chimneys and The Seven Dials Mystery) is already resident in the wing devoted to Flapper Girl Detectives, her existence punctuated by occasional visits from friends at the GK Chesterton Knockoff Club, and Colonel Race spends most of his time avoiding Superintendent Battle, who is a crashing bore and simply will not shut up about What He Did on the Force. They all envy Captain Hastings, who only dips in now and again because he’s Hercule Poirot’s bestie and really doesn’t qualify for residence, but is so good-hearted that he can’t abandon his former bookmates to their fate.
Then there are the sleuths who could be residents in the UDRH&CL but have so far managed to stay out of Badbookistan. Two of them are a married couple, one never married but helps the lovelorn, and the third...well, you’ll just have to find out:
Partners in Crime — Tommy Beresford and his wife, Tuppence (true name “Prudence,” and who can blame her for going by something else?), are perhaps the most amusing, self-aware, and just blame charming detectives Agatha Christie ever created. Introduced as childhood pals at loose ends in The Secret Adversary, they began as amateur (and somewhat inept) spies who became involved in stopping an espionage ring at the very highest level of government. At the end of the book they had exposed the enemy agent, fallen in love, and thoroughly impressed their government handler, although it’s not quite clear why.
This book is somewhat different. Tommy and Tuppence are now happily married but bored stiff without the excitement of semi-pro espionage. When their old government handler offers them the chance to help track yet another spy by running a detective agency that had been a cover for a Russian espionage ring, they jump at the chance. Soon they’re accepting cases on their own, hunting down the author of mysterious “blue letters,” and generally whooping it up in a series of light-hearted romps through post-war London, much to the delight of their government contacts and the reader.
Best of all, Dame Agatha took full and gleeful advantage of the episodic nature of the book by having Tommy and Tuppence very deliberately solve each case by parodying some of the most popular fictional detectives of the day (“We read the Classics,” Tuppence tells another character, and she isn’t wrong). Dr. Thorndyke, The Old Man in the Corner, Father Brown, Sherlock Holmes himself — they all get an affectionate nod at one point or another, and readers with a love of Golden Age detectives will be highly amused. There’s even a parody of Hercule Poirot himself, which sounds preposterous until Dame Agatha somehow pulls it off.
Some of the other Tommy and Tuppence stories are decent — N or M? in particular is fun, and not just because Dame Agatha got herself investigated for naming a minor character “Bletchley” = but this is a fizzy, high-spirited delight. Definitely check it out!
Parker Pyne Investigates — Mr. Parker Pyne, a retired bureaucrat, could not less like the Beresfords. Large, bald, and on the late side of middle age, he is neither a semi-pro like the Beresfords or a professional like Hercule Poirot. Oh no no. Mr. Pyne, a self-proclaimed “detective of the heart,” is a very different sort of sleuth: he helps the lovelorn.
Yes. Really.
Mr. Pyne believes there are five types of unhappiness, all of which can be alleviated through the use of logic, reason, and the judicious use of deception. He attracts clients via an ad in the agony columns that reads: “Are you happy? If not consult Mr. Parker Pyne, 17 Richmond Street,” and with his associates (Claude Luttrell and Madeline de Sara, the lounge lizard and femme fatale, respectively), staff (Miss Felicity Lemon, who eventually works for Hercule Poirot), and friends (crime writer Ariadne Oliver, who also falls into M. Poirot’s orbit) Mr. Pyne sets out to make his clients happy.
At least he does in the first six stories in this odd little dozen. After that, he goes on an extended vacation, much of it in the Middle East, and if anyone thinks this is because Dame Agatha had married archaeologist Max Mallowan and was soaking up the local color she later used in Murder in Mesopotamia and Death on the Nile, you’re probably not wrong. There’s even a story entitled “Death on the Nile,” which has little to do with the Poirot novel but is still a decent read.
The Mysterious Mr. Quin — of all Dame Agatha’s characters, perhaps the most intriguing is Mr. Harley Quin. An insightful young man who flits in and out of the life of small, emotionally repressed, middle aged Mr. Satterthwaite, n one seems to know much about him, beyond his ability to turn up when needed. Tall, slender, and dark-complected, Mr. Quin has a penchant for standing near enough to a stained glass window that his otherwise ordinary clothing glows with the colors of a Commedia dell’ arte character, or positions himself so that a shadow falls across his face like a mask.
These stories are like nothing else Dame Agatha ever wrote. Atmospheric, moody, and finely written, they more often concern thwarted love, unjust accusations, and setting wronged lives right than solving a crime. Mr. Satterthwaite, cautious by nature, finds himself becoming more and more involved in the lives and emotions of those around him than he ever dreamed, and by the time he fails to save a fragile, doomed woman in “The Bird with the Broken Wing,” he is as vulnerable and human as any character in detective fiction.
Mr. Quin is equally complex; one never knows if he’s a real man with a knack for solving crime, a supernatural entity sent to guide the earthbound Mr. Satterthwaite, or the emotional, empathetic aspect of his personality that he has repressed all his life. By the last story he is actually somewhat menacing as he challenges Mr. Satterthwaite, a lifelong bachelor, to defend his decision not to “walk down Lovers Lane,” and it’s hard to put down the book without the merest shiver.
One reviewer compared these stories to fairy tales. I would say they more closely resemble the once-popular short stories that appeared in up-market magazines where a character might be an angel (or a demon, or a spirit of some sort) but then again might not. Either way, they’re perfect for a dark, quiet night, especially if there’s a stained glass window nearby to turn the light from the street into the diamond pattern of a harlequin costume.
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Have you read any of these books? Heard of these detectives? Is your acquaintance with Agatha Christie confined to one of the many film or TV adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express? Have you ever been to a commedia dell’arte show? If any of these apply, come to the fire, pour yourself a cup of hot tea, and share….
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