{"id":25100,"date":"2024-05-09T14:26:16","date_gmt":"2024-05-09T13:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=25100"},"modified":"2024-05-09T14:26:16","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T13:26:16","slug":"five-books-to-read-if-you-loved-the-agatha-christie-whodunnits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/arts-social-sciences\/five-books-to-read-if-you-loved-the-agatha-christie-whodunnits\/","title":{"rendered":"Five books to read if you loved the Agatha Christie whodunnits"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re a fan of Agatha Christie <\/em>Dr Anthony Howell<\/em><\/a>, Senior Lecturer in English at The Open University, and the author of the free OpenLearn short course<\/a> on the Queen of Crime has picked out five brilliant detective-fiction novels by other authors. Here\u2019s his list.<\/em><\/p>\n

Almost fifty years after her death Agatha Christie\u2019s books and the films her work has spawned on the big and small screens still command our attention.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the BBC announced <\/a>the commissioning of a new series based on her 1944 novel Towards Zero, <\/em>additionally,<\/em> the success of Kenneth\u2019s Branagh\u2019s Poirot adaptations, such as last year\u2019s A Haunting in Venice, <\/em>prove her source material remains a box-office magnet.<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re a fan of her work and want to explore more detective fiction on the page by other authors, here are five recommendations that might appeal.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Strong Poison <\/em>by Dorothy Sayers (published by Gollancz, 1930)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As one of Christie\u2019s contemporaries, featured in the Golden Age of Detective fiction on OpenLearn, Dorothy Sayers and her fictional aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey are an ideal place to start.<\/p>\n

    In Wimsey\u2019s sixth outing, Strong Poison<\/em> showcases the best qualities of the series. The accused, Harriet Vane, is given a second chance to prove her innocence in the case of her ex-lover\u2019s poisoning.<\/p>\n

    Wimsey\u2019s eccentric method of detection will be jarring at first for those used to the carefully controlled logic of Hercule Poriot or the shrewd observational style of Miss Jane Marple. With seemingly unlimited funds and an amateur sleuth\u2019s enthusiasm, he solves crimes for his own amusement or, in the case of Strong Poison,<\/em> because of his attraction to Miss Vane.<\/p>\n

    The ensemble cast and comic dialogue will at times remind readers more of a P.G. Wodehouse caper but the crime, and its solution, are as devilishly clever as Christie at her best, although you might need to visit a second-hand book sellers to find it, or seek out the Kindle edition.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Northanger Abbey <\/em>by Jane Austen (published by John Murray, 1817)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      As well as exploring the Golden Age, why not look further into the past to discover where it all began? You might not think of Jane Austen as a predecessor of Christie\u2019s but Northanger Abbey<\/em> is an important link between the Gothic novel and modern crime fiction.<\/p>\n

      Gothic romances, set in the late 18th<\/sup> century that were the backdrop of Austen\u2019s work, often featured troubling mysteries to be solved by would-be detective-heroines, like the socially na\u00efve Catherine Morland in this novel.<\/p>\n

      By the time of the British Regency, the genre had become hackneyed yet this novel is a witty pastiche of the \u2018explained supernatural\u2019 style. It is also an example of a narrative\u2019s self-awareness in the act of investigation, which we often see in Christie\u2019s own work, where characters tend to be fans of detective fiction and refer to its conventions in the midst of a case.<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. The Name of the Rose<\/em> by Umberto Eco (Harcourt, 1983)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Imagine a Christie-style whodunit set in a mediaeval Italian monastery, where monks are suddenly dying in mysterious circumstances. It was published in Eco\u2019s native Italian in 1980 and translated into English in 1983.<\/p>\n

        This unlikely bestseller was adapted into a film starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater later in the same decade. On its surface, the story references Sherlock Holmes, with its protagonist, William of Baskerville, taking his name from one of Conan Doyle\u2019s best-known tales.<\/p>\n

        But Eco\u2019s crime-solving monk perhaps owes more to Christie\u2019s Marple; both characters make informed guesses based on their knowledge of closed systems of human behaviour (whether in villages or monasteries) and are assumed to be acting on intuition.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. The Cuckoo\u2019s Calling <\/em>by Robert Galbraith (Sphere Books, 2013)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Galbraith is of course the pen name used by J.K. Rowling for her Strike<\/em> series of detective novels. In many ways, Rowling is the best candidate for an heir to Christie, being the crime author who comes closest in terms of stratospheric sales (the Harry Potter books are largely structured as whodunits, after all).<\/p>\n

          Both Rowling and Christie have a seemingly effortless style of prose with an underlying meticulousness in the construction of clue-puzzle narratives few can imitate.<\/p>\n

          The<\/em> Cuckoo\u2019s Calling<\/em> introduces both the eponymous detective, Cormoran Strike, and Robin Ellacott, who arrives as an office temp and ends up assisting in the investigation of a supermodel\u2019s death, apparently by suicide. Strike\u2019s first outing is a brilliant fusion of the British and American traditions of the private-eye narrative.<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe <\/em>by Edgar Allan Poe (<\/strong>W.W. Norton & Company, <\/strong>2004)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            Finally, perhaps the most important of Christie\u2019s forebears in the art of literary detection: Edgar Allan Poe. I\u2019ve recommended the Norton Critical Edition of his Selected Writings, <\/em>which collects his crime fiction alongside the gothic tales and poetry.<\/p>\n

            With his method of ratiocination (logical problem solving), Parisian amateur detective Auguste Dupin is maybe the earliest forerunner to the likes of Christie\u2019s Poirot.<\/p>\n

            Dupin is introduced in \u201cThe Murders in the Rue Morgue\u201d (1841) and reaches his zenith in the ingenious tale of \u201cThe Purloined Letter\u201d (1844), where he assists in a case of blackmail rather than murder. Other short stories featured here will appeal to fans of Christie, too. Take, for example, Poe\u2019s cryptographic treasure-hunt story \u201cThe Gold-Bug\u201d (1843), which broke new ground in the use of codes and clues.<\/p>\n

            Picture created using Microsoft Copilot AI<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            If you\u2019re a fan of Agatha Christie Dr Anthony Howell, Senior Lecturer in English at The Open University, and the author of the free OpenLearn short course on the Queen of Crime has picked out five brilliant detective-fiction novels by other authors. Here\u2019s his list. Almost fifty years after her death Agatha Christie\u2019s books and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":25101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3],"tags":[860,869,1525,1640],"class_list":["post-25100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-literature-music","category-arts-social-sciences","tag-faculty-of-fass","tag-fass","tag-news-home","tag-ou-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}