"A Murder Is Announced" was published in 1950, and was Agatha Christie's fiftieth published novel. This was about the time when Dame Agatha was starting to lose a bit off of her fastball, but Christie critics and enthusiasts still consider this to be, if not on the top tier of the Christie Cannon, still a pretty good example of her brilliance.
This is a Miss Jane Marple novel, and I have to confess that the Miss Marple stories are not my first choice of stories when I want to read a Christie novel. I much prefer the Hercule Poirot stories or some of her stand-alone novels. For example, 1939's "And Then There Were None" may very well be the most perfect mystery story ever written.
All that said, "A Murder Is Announced" deals with a life in a small English village called Chipping Cleghorn (don't you love it?) in the post World War II era. A classified ad in the local village newspaper announces that a murder is to take place in a certain home at a certain time, the villagers read the ad, show up at the cottage in question, and lo and behold, a murder does indeed occur. It is a classic Christie set up. And even more perfectly, it just so happens that Jane Marple is visiting the home of an old friend who currently resides in Chipping Cleghorn and was at the cottage in question at the time the murder occurred, although Miss Marple was not.
Miss Marple, of course, solves the mystery and uncovers the killer and the motive, although many of her suppositions were, in my opinion, a bit of a reach, but what the heck, it was a fun read.
More that the mystery itself, though, was the picture that Christie painted about life in a small English village in the years immediately after WW II. A Christie reference book that I have makes reference to how Christe's novels can be read by social historians to get an accurate reading of what life was like in England during the time periods in which they take place. In 1950, the British were dealing with such societal upheavals as food shortages, housing scarcities, the difficulties in hiring and retaining servants (so difficult to cut back to only a kitchen maid, and even then only for a few days a week, you know), the influx of "strangers" to villages, and the general mistrust of "foreigners". This made "A Murder Is Announced" almost, if not more, interesting than the actual mystery itself.
So, long before Julian Fellows was producing "Downton Abbey" to let us know what life in England was like for the fading British landed aristocracy in the 1920's, Agatha Christie was doing the same thing for the eras in which Miss Christie set her stories.
It was also amusing to learn that apparently, in mid-twentieth century England, it was common usage to refer to spinsterish old women by a five letter word that is synonymous with a house cat that begins with the letter "P". I'll not spell it out here since the word has also developed into a somewhat vulgar term in today's society. Kind of funny to read the staid Scotland Yard Inspector in the story referring to the elderly lady characters, including Miss Marple herself, as "a bunch of old p------" (and that is a direct quote, and it is stated more than once in this book). I suppose it touched the 14 year old school boy that still resides in me, and, be honest, in YOU, too!
Dame Agatha obviously did not have the foresight to see how that term would evolve over the course of the years.
Anyway, the bottom line is that you can always go back to the book shelf and pull out a vintage Agatha Christie book, and be assured of a good read, or as the Christie characters might put it, "a smashing good read".
No comments:
Post a Comment