A Couple of Christie Classics (No Spoilers)

I cut my teeth as a fan of mystery, detective, and thriller novels back when I was in high school and began reading the books and stories of Agatha Christie.  It began, as I have said many times, a lifetime hobby for me and it has given me endless amounts of leisure time reading pleasure over the past fifty or so years.

Recent events have prompted me to re-read a couple of Dame Agatha's classics, both of which featured her most famous creation - Detective Hercule Poirot.

First on my list....

"The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" takes place in the small English country village (surprise!) of King's Abbot, where an older Poirot has gone to spend his leisure retirement years growing and experimenting with vegetable marrows (are you kidding me?).  When one of the more prominent residents, Roger Ackroyd, gets bumped off, Poirot's neighbor, Dr. Sheppard, who also narrates the story, and the local coppers enlist Poirot's aid in determining who was the nasty bit of goods that done in the old bloke.  Before he's through and unmasks the killer, we are made aware of poisonings, blackmail, hidden romances, and the value of village gossip in assisting Poirot in his work.

This novel was published in 1926 and was quite controversial at the time.  Why?  Well, the denouement  of this story offers a kind of a twist that had never before been used or seen in detective fiction up until then.  Critics accused Christie of "not playing fair", a charge at which Christie scoffed, and because of this twist, "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" is considered one of Christie's most important and famous works.  Many critics consider it one of the top crime/detective novels of all time.  I can remember reading it for the first time when I was in college and actually figuring our who the villain of the story was before it was actually revealed to the reader, and as much as I read these stories, that doesn't often happen.

And the "twist" in the story that caused such an uproar?  Well, I said that the top "no spoilers" so you're going to have to read it yourself to find out.

I was prompted to re-read this one after watching the awful mini-series that Amazon Prime Video produced based upon it last month (you may recall that The Grandstander gave that series a Zero Star review!).   I am happy to say that this book, which I read while still in high school, and was one of the first Christie novels I ever read, remains a terrific read.   

In this story, published in 1936, Poirot receives a series of letters signed only "A B C" that tell of  forthcoming murders that will take place in a given locations.  The locations and the victims are presented in alphabetical order.  None of the victims appear to be related to the other, the locations are spread out along the countryside, no one has a clue as to who is doing these foul deeds or why.  Oh, and a book,  an "ABC Railroad Guide", has been left with the bodies of each victim.  It can only be the work of a mad man!!!  The story is narrated by Poirot's long time "Watson", the bumbling Capt. Hastings, and, of course, the Scotland Yard detectives investigating the series of murders merely tolerate Poirot's presence.  They think that old Hercule is long past his prime and may even now be slightly gaga (I love some of those early twentieth century British terms Christie uses), but guess who solves the whole thing in the end?

Like I said, stay away from that mini-series adaptation of "The A.B.C. Murders" now available on Amazon, but do make it a point to read this one.  It really is a classic.

Agatha Christie and her vast catalog of novels, plays and stories are sometimes criticized in this day and age as being too cozy and sterile, and not realistic.  However, when you read past the staid features of some of the characters, you realize that the crimes about which Christie writes are often quite brutal and violent.  And if much of the violence takes place "off camera", if you will, the perpetrators are no less evil than anyone you would find in a story by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, or current writers like John Sandford or Michael Connelly.  I have also read critics who will tell you that if social historians want to get a true glimpse of what life was like in England and Great Britain at certain points in history (in the case of these two novels, the time between the World Wars), they can get a perfect picture of it by reading the novels of Agatha Christie.

Yes, sometimes the pace of the stories may seem too leisurely, and sometimes Poirot's use of his little gray cells seem to produce conclusions that he pulls out of thin air, I maintain that if you want to spend a couple of hours with a "crackling good yarn" (as one of her characters might put it) involving an intriguing mystery, an Agatha Christie novel is a good place to start.

And re-reading "Roger Ackroyd" and "A.B.C." will no doubt prompt me to reread this one very soon...

This was the every first Christie novel that I ever read back in 1968 or so, and it is one that I have re-read every four or five years.  "And Then There Were None" was published in 1939, and it may well be the most perfect mystery story ever written.

A Week in The Arts

In the past week, I have taken in two movies, a musical play, and a streaming series.  Some quickie thoughts on each....

Oscar winning director Peter Jackson was commissioned by Britain's Imperial War Museum to take over 100 hours of film footage from the first world war, and "make something of it".  Jackson painstakingly restored film that was faded, blackened, and otherwise damaged from sitting in their canisters for over 100 years, colorized it, and turned it onto an astonishing documentary that tells of the horrors of war and its aftermath.  At the conclusion of the film itself, Jackson provides an additional film (think of it as an "extra" that comes on a movie's DVD release) that explains exactly how he and his team did what they did in creating this movie.  If you go to see the movie, please stay to see this additional feature.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

Watching last week's Super Bowl prompted me to seek out and find this 1977 thriller from director John Frankenheimer.  In this one, the Palestinian terrorist group Black September decides to launch a terrorist attack on America by loading down the Goodyear blimp with explosives and attacking Miami's Orange Bowl during the Super Bowl.  Marthe Keller plays the Black September terrorist who is spearheading the plan, Bruce Dern plays a whacko American veteran who feels like he has been shit upon by "the system" who will pilot the blimp, and Robert Shaw is the Israeli intelligence officer who has to ferret out the plan and stop it.

One of the attractions of this movie was that parts of it were filmed on location in the Orange Bowl while the actual  Super Bowl, number X, between the Steelers and Cowboys, was being played.  So you get to see real plays from the actual game.  It also serves as a time capsule of sorts for a time before the Super Bowl became, for all intents and purposes, a national holiday.  At one point, Israeli agent Shaw looks at his FBI counterpart and says "What is this super bowl?"  Can you imagine such a thing?

Anyway, I had not seen this movie since it was new in theaters forty-three years ago, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but it holds up surprisingly well as a thriller, a football time capsule, and, sadly, a preview of just what exactly terrorism was to become in our world.

Three and one-half Stars from The Grandstander.

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" the musical adaption of the Roald Dahl children's book and the Willy Wonka movie, was the fifth show in this season's Broadway Pittsburgh Series.  Honestly, of the shows in the series, this was the one for which I had the lowest expectations, and through the first act, I wasn't thrilled.  However, the second act, when the characters actually went inside Willy's chocolate factory, was terrific, and it turned the show into a most pleasant evening at the theater.  The performance of the Oompa Loompas alone, during the show and at the curtain call, was almost worth the price of admission, as was the performance of eleven year old Rueby Wood in the role of Charlie.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

I have always been a fan of Agatha Christie, and Amazon has shown some very good adaptations of Christie stories over the years, so I  was really looking forward to seeing this three part adaptation of "The A.B.C. Murders", a genuine Christie classic.

All I can say is that this proved to be three hours of my life that I will never get back.  The movie was so dark in tone and spirit as to be almost unwatchable.  John Malkovich, a very capable actor, played Hercule Poirot, and he would have been fine, i suppose, but whoever came up with this version - producers, writers, director? - gave him a version of the famous fictional detective that was nothing like you would expect.  They also gave Poirot a back story that was unconnected to anything that Agatha Christie devised to the point that the sound that you heard in the background was no doubt Dame Agatha spinning in her grave.

I have read that the Christie Estate is constantly commissioning these series and movies (the remake of "Murder on the Orient Express" of two years ago, for example) based upon her works in order to keep the name of Agatha Christie before the public, introduce younger generations to her works, and, not incidentally, keep her books moving off of bookshelves across the world.  I cannot imagine that the Estate was happy with this version of one of Christie's most famous works.

ZERO Stars from The Grandstander.