The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction

Tag: Agatha Christie

  • Ariadne Oliver and Harriet Vane on the Work of Writing

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    Heidi Darroch
    in ,

    I’ve come around to appreciating Agatha Christie’s fictional crime novelist, Ariadne Oliver. She’s written broadly, as a caricature of Christie herself–a substantial woman in midlife, trailing apple cores. Like Dorothy L. Sayers’s Harriet Vane, a writer of detective novels, Ariadne is a well-regarded author of mysteries who can’t resist dabbling in a few herself. Also…

  • When the Author Expires but the Series Continues

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    Heidi Darroch
    in

    Lucy Foley, the British crime writer, recently announced that she has been selected to write new Miss Marple novels. The first in a planned series will be out in Fall 2026, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Sleeping Murder, the final Agatha Christie Marple novel. As it happens, I’m finishing up the BBC adaptation…

  • Agatha Christie in Canada

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    Heidi Darroch
    in

    I didn’t recall that Agatha Christie had visited Canada, including Victoria, in 1922. She was travelling in the company of her faithless first husband, Archie. The second spouse, Max Mallowan, sounds much nicer though his archaeological expeditions were expensive to finance. At the time of her Canadian tour, Christie had produced only two novels: The…

  • Independent Women in Golden Age Mysteries: From Evil Under the Sun to Gaudy Night

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    Heidi Darroch
    in ,

    Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun (1941) has a wonderful series of final revelations. Poirot untangles the various threads that have complicated his investigation of Arlena Stuart’s mystery, for a rapt audience of suspects and bystanders. While the crime was rather convoluted in its execution, the motives were straightforward. Then there are the last several…

  • Agatha Christie and the Character of the Victim

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    Heidi Darroch
    in

    I’ve been on a Christie binge, and yet once more. I’m re-reading Evil Under the Sun while alternating 4.50 to Paddington and Dead Man’s Folly as evening viewing. Interspersed with The Magpie Murders, which is terrific, but moves along at a very stately pace. There’s a Japanese adaptation of 4.50 to Paddington that I’d love…

  • Christmas Mysteries: New and Old

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    Heidi Darroch
    in

    I have a fondness for publishers’ efforts to package a motley collection of mostly non-holiday themed stories under a a Christmas-y title, with perhaps 1-2 actual Yuletide tales. It’s a good way to put together what is effective a miscellany of shorter works by authors who usually write novels. Since short stories can be ephemeral,…