The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction

Tag: books

  • The Many Labours of Hercules: From Agatha Christie’s Short Stories to David Suchet’s Penultimate Poirot

    Agatha Christie’s The Labours of Hercules is a set of short stories. The prologue starts with a friend, a classical scholar and Fellow at All Souls College, who asks Poirot about his first name, which is hardly apt, as well as that of his brother, Achille. Do I not resemble the classical hero?, asks Poirot,…

  • Sophie Hannah’s Closed Casket: The Challenges of Re-Creating Christie for the 21st Century

    As I was reading Closed Casket (mostly with pleasure) last night, it occurred to me that my dissatisfaction with Sophie Hannah’s take on Hercule Poirot stems from a possibly intractable problem. In short, Hannah is a much better writer than Christie. And a very good writer trying to mimic a worse one produces challenges. I’m…

  • P.D. James and Louise Penny

    “Perhaps Adam Dalgliesh is an idealized version of what I’d have liked to be if I’d been born a man.” P.D. James, quoted in an interview by Julian Symons, NY Times, 5 October 1986. “Almost always the idea for a book comes to me as a reaction to a particular place and setting. Sometimes it’s…