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does he weave together many of his best Thirty years after her death, Agatha
characters and themes around the old plot Christie remains central to both detective
of a Wodehouse heroine, Florence Craye fiction and holiday entertainment genres.
and her matrimonial designs upon Bertie Christie writes simple, straightforward
-“She was one of those intellectual girls, prose with a focus on plot and dialogue.
steeped to the gills in serious purpose, They are not procedurals, since they
who are unable to see a male soul without rarely focus on a professional police officer
wanting to get behind it and shove” or detective - even Poirot is a former
-Wodehouse’s capacity to conjure laughter detective. Instead, the clues are collected
and light out of airy nothing, delights me from conversations and plot twists. The
every time I read his books. sheer ingenuity of plotting in books like
Wodehouse, in his words, preferred to ‘Murder on the Orient Express’, ‘The
spread “sweetness and light” and the titles Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ or ‘Then There
of his books - Nothing Serious, Laughing Were None’ has left me wonderstruck
Gas, Joy in the Morning speak volumes. on countless occasions. Bodies pile up,
With every sparkling joke, every farcical seeping blood on carpets of stately homes,
tussle with angry swans, pigs and pet in trains and planes, on a steamer on the
Pekingese, every tangled situation Bertie Nile, in Mesopotamia on an archaeological
finds himself and where every time he dig and even in Egypt under the Pharaohs
is extricated by the unflappable Jeeves, (Death Comes at the End). She creates
spark joy (to use a cliched modern Mary detection defying puzzles, able to deceive
Kondo phrase). Writing about being a the reader, while supplying the necessary
humourist in his autobiography ‘Over clues to solve the mystery. To carry out
Seventy’, Wodehouse quoted two people this deception Christie depended on large
in the Talmud who had earnt their place groups of characters who share motive,
in Heaven: “We are merrymakers. When opportunity and dark secrets; country
we see a person who is downhearted, we vicars and doctors, retired colonels and
cheer him up.” Some authors may want to spiteful spinsters, angry young men and
expose the world’s injustices, or elevate spirited young women are all suspects in
us with their psychological insights, but grisly murders.
Wodehouse in Evelyn Waugh’s immortal
and prophetic words, “ will continue to
release future generations from captivity
that may be more irksome than our own.”
Agatha Christie is not just an unparalleled
mystery writer, she’s the best-selling
novelist of all time. Her books have been
published in more editions, and in more
languages, than those of any other author And her two iconic detectives! No
except Shakespeare. In 2004 Christie’s adaptation of her works on screen has been
detectives appeared in Japanese anima able to capture that little Belgian detective
versions, and in 2007 Euro Comics India Hercule Poirot - best known for his iconic
began a series of graphic comic adaptations. twirling moustaches, his love for tisanes
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