Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Reasons I Love Agatha Christie

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic from The Broke and the Bookish is Top Ten Reasons I Love X.  I went back and forth on what to fill in the blank with and suddenly the most obvious answer hit me - Agatha Christie.  I've been a huge Agatha Christie fan for just about as long as I can remember but so often I hear people talking about never having read her and not knowing where to start.  A number of years ago I bought a PC game of And Then There Were None and the cashier at the game store stared at the cover for several minutes and finally said "Agatha Christie... I think my grandmother used to read her."  (I was maybe 26 at the time.  If you're wondering my response was a blank stare followed by "uh huh") So since I'm in no way old enough to be gamer girl's grandmother I thought I'd share the 10 reasons I love Agatha Christie.

Poirot as played by David Suchet

1.  Nothing is ever as it seems.  From Poirot's fussy mannerisms and almost comical personality which hides a devastatingly logical and brilliant brain to Miss Marple's attention to detail and rich knowledge of human nature hidden behind a rather dithery and naive old lady nothing is what it seems.  There are heiresses who aren't anything of the kind, lazy young men who actually work for the foreign office, devoted mothers who are far more devoted to control than to the children, There are harmless seeming ordinary people who are in fact just wearing a mask to cover the fact that they are in fact devious and pathological murderers.  Nothing in the world of Christie is truly what it seems.

2.  Seeing 50+ years through the eyes of one person.  From 1920 when her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles to 1973 with Postern of Fate we can see the world through Agatha's eyes.  While she doesn't talk about current events, in fact she purposely didn't mention World War II in the books that she was writing during that time, we watch the changes in attitude towards crime and other social issues over those 50 years.

3.  We get a peek into the life of an archeologist during the 30s, 40s, and 50s.  Christie's second husband was renowned archeologist Max Mallowan and it was a subject that interested her as well.  Several of her books are set in digs in Iraq and other areas.  She also wrote a memoir of her experiences called Come Tell Me How You Live that is fascinating.

4.  It's fun to pick up on her jokes.  The main one is a character named Mrs. Oliver who is a well known mystery author who has a Finnish detective.  She's very outspoken in her feelings about her detective and dealing with fans and I can just hear Agatha's voice.  It's a bit like getting a peek behind the pages.

5.  Despite how well known Agatha Christie was and is she still has her mysteries.  Shortly after she rose to fame Agatha Christie disappeared.  She was found 11 days later and no one ever was able to offer a full explanation as to what happened.  Agatha herself refused to speak of it.  There are a number of theories and books and even a Doctor Who episode.

6.  I love watching a brilliant writer experiment and evolve.  Christie turned out at least one book a year as well as countless short stories and plays.  At that pace almost everything she wrote was published which becomes fascinating to see her techniques evolve and watch her play with plot ideas or characters in short stories and full length books.  A number of her books were written to fulfill contract obligations but there are a number where I can almost feel her glee as she plays with a complicated plot.

7.  She kills hundreds of people yet none of her books make me double check the locks and jump at shadows.  I love a good thriller but sometimes it's just nice to have a clean page turning murder that is more a brain exercise than scary.

8.  The mysteries are timeless.  Sure there's the occasional attitude or word that is so impossibly dated it makes you cringe but the murders themselves are timeless.  I read a mystery by another author written in the 60s and all I could think was if they'd had google the book would have been 20 pages.  I've never felt that with Agatha.

9.  The variety is huge.  Between international spy novels, classic locked room murders, and adventure romps Agatha Christie offers a little bit of everything in the mystery genre.  Even her two primary detectives - the comical confident Poirot and the dithering reserved Miss Marple - could not be more different.

10.  They're just good mysteries.  Everything else aside her mysteries are just plain good. There are a few exceptions (let's just pretend Postern of Fate and Passenger to Frankfurt never happened) but for the most part you can't go wrong with a Christie murder.  If you're looking for some to try I highly recommend Death on the Nile, The Sleeping Murder, The Tuesday Night Murder Club, And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, and Ordeal by Innocence though there are so many great ones it is hard to narrow down the list.

Are you an Agatha Christie fan?  Who is your favorite author?