Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie

What's the deal with all the Agatha Christie novels on your reading list?

Well OK, here's the deal, after Kate was born I had loads of time trapped on the couch at 3 am with a nursing baby and not a lot of brainpower left to ponder the deep thoughts of Western Civilization. I decided to reread all of my Agatha Christies. I have TONS of them on a bookshelf upstairs, collected since high school since I've probably read all of the novels, most of the short stories, a play or two, and her autobiography. Agatha wrote 80 detective novels (between 1920 and 1973), about 160 short stories, about 20 plays, some poems, two works of nonfiction, and a handful of romance novels under a pseudonym. Only the Bible has outsold her, and her play The Mousetrap is the longest running play ever in the world (it opened in 1952 and is still being performed).

It sounds like a daunting task, but I can rip through a Poirot or a Miss Marple in a couple of days, especially since I've already read most of them before. Surprisingly, though, I rarely remember the outcomes of the stories entirely until I get close to the end - probably because there are just so many plots to remember and because the characters tend to be very similar British upper-class stereotypes. Also, a decade of hard drinking has passed since I read some of these! :) Often, the plot twists still catch me off guard, and even when I do remember whodunit I still get to marvel at her ingenuity.

I decided from the beginning to read the books in chronological order. One of the fascinating things about Agatha's novels are that they are set in the time that they were written and her career spanned the middle 50 years of the 20th century. So much changed so drastically in Great Britain from WWI to the Cold War. The Tommy and Tuppence books are the best example of this: the series of I think about 5 books begins with a very young couple during WWI and continues through various stages of their family life together into old age with all the changes to British culture and technology happening in the background. It's great entertainment for a history lover like me. I started a year ago with The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) and now I've just finished Evil Under the Sun (1941). Here's a list of all her books, in chronological order, if you're interested to see how I'm doing. I am also reading the short stories, although I'm not doing as well at keeping them in the chronological order so I will have to catch up with them at some point, but I'm skipping the plays and other writings for now.

Next up, N or M? (a Tommy and Tuppence, by the way).