Agatha Christie: the world’s favourite novelist.
Except for me. I bloody hate her. Apart from putting together novels populated by ciphers, who are mere components in intellectual exercises with no resemblance to reality, she single-handedly reduced most of British crime-writing to the same level – a state it didn’t recover from for decades, leaving the US to take over and monopolise proper crime-writing.
Even on its own terms though:
- Miss Marple: pages of no proper clues whatsoever then three pages before the end. "Have you ever noticed the extraordinary resemblance between cipher x and cipher y?" No we bloody haven’t because it’s a book, Miss Marple, and we haven’t had any decent descriptions that would reveal this familial connection and motive for murder.
- Hercule Poirot: pure anti-Belgian xenophobia.
And let’s not get started on The Mousetrap as the ultimate example of inter-changeable Christie characters.
Some people disagree. Bah, and indeed, humbug to them. They’re wrong. I will brook no disagreement on this one. They must think about what they’ve done until they realise the sheer depth of their wrongness. Yes, even my wife. I won’t be telling her that though.
Anyway, this week’s Doctor Who. It seems when you want to do an ‘homage’ to an author, you call Gareth Roberts. Writer of last year’s slightly uninvolving Shakespeare Code, he’s back again with a moderately better but still similar effort, this time a blatant piece of recidivist pro-Christie propaganda.
Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 4×7 – The Unicorn and the Wasp”
