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Post by dem bones on Oct 29, 2011 11:21:11 GMT
Anyone see the David Suchet take on Hallowe'en Party? That was borderline horror. Now, the same goes for Halloween Party which I also saw only on Poirot. (Wonderfully done, btw) The David Suchet Halloween Party is repeated on ITV3 at 10. pm on Monday, so will make an effort to catch it this time if humanely possible. i've never watched an episode through, but the glowing reports on this thread have decided me to mend my ways. incidentally, if you fancy a mind-altering experience, try alternating between chapters of Robert Myers' Cross Of Frankenstein and Christie (i should imagine any novel would do), The Myers has gone from the novel i couldn't pick up to one i can hardly put down, and Dame Agatha .... she's not bad, is she?
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Post by killercrab on Oct 29, 2011 16:00:33 GMT
I watched LORD EDGEWARE DIES last night and am Sky+ a bunch of AC over the weekend including HALLOWEEN PARTY on monday ! I figure watching all her Poirot stories is quicker than reading them -lol That said I do like reading her desert set stories like EVIL UNDER THE SUN and the that one on the Nile...
KC
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 29, 2011 17:24:44 GMT
her desert set stories like EVIL UNDER THE SUN EVIL UNDER THE SUN is not set in a desert.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 29, 2011 17:28:09 GMT
Dame Agatha .... she's not bad, is she? No, she is good! She did write some things, particularly toward the end of her career, that many people find difficult to like, like PASSENGER TO FRANKFURT, a bizarre political tract. But I find that one entertaining too, in its own way.
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Post by killercrab on Oct 30, 2011 1:50:37 GMT
EVIL UNDER THE SUN is not set in a desert.Devon indeed . KC
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Post by pulphack on Oct 30, 2011 7:33:30 GMT
absolutely agree, jojo - she's taken flak for years about how 'bad' she is from people who a) never get the clues and think she cheats (they just need to read more clearly), and b) moan about the 'quality' of her writing.
in fact, she was a writer who had a very clear idea of her strengths and weaknesses, and understood the form she chose perfectly. whodunnits are puzzle fiction and so the plot and momentum are paramount. once you have this, within the limitations of length, then you are constrained about how much detail you can have in character and setting/atmosphere. so she draws broadly, uses stock characters known to her audience, and also chooses (mostly) settings that are not only familiar, but also are very contained (ie schools, cruise ships, small villages, or social groupings that have this such as theatre groups, etc). the use of familiar territories and walled-in settings enables her to sketch detail and then concentrate on the puzzle. yet for all those who say that her characters are 'two dimensional', it must be said that her minor ones may be, but the main characters are all more carefully - if economically - drawn.
there was an interesting programme on itv4 a few years back in which linguists dissented (*) her work. her descriptions, apparently, because they are sketchy, encourage the reader to fill in the detail more than some writers and so have a broader appeal. and her chocie of vocabulary, while not limited, allows her to be translated well with ease. which may account for why it's her and shakespeare who are most sold & read english writers.
as it goes, about 18months back i was working with a guy from the ivory coast who came to the uk via france and was a huge christie fan, reading her in french. he was 30, didn't leave africa until he was in his 20's, and he had no prolems with all the 'class' and 'parochial' trappings that guardian reading leavis groupies had with her when i was growing up. mind you, he loved gaston leroux's cheri-bibi as well, so make of that what you will. naturally, we got on immediately!
apologies if i've rambled much of this before on here - i have a feeling i might.
(* - i mean disected of course, but left this as dissented looks amusing)
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Post by pulphack on Oct 30, 2011 7:37:45 GMT
sorry, forgot to add that if you read a christie with a contemporary title by ngaio marsh, who structures in a similar way and a similar social milieu, then you can see why dame ag has the 'simplicity is genius' approach down pat. i like marsh a lot (and would quite like to be as suave as roderick alleyne), but the way she uses language compared to christie marks out why she might be harder to tramslate with any accuracy and feel.
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Post by Dr Strange on Oct 30, 2011 10:18:24 GMT
I've had a few attempts at various "golden age" crime writers - including Christie, Edmund Crispin, John Dickson Carr, Michael Innes, and others. The pattern has always been the same - I think the first book I read by that writer is amazing, then I read another and am somewhat less impressed, and by the third or fourth I've had enough.
I really don't know what it is - it's more than them just being so "formulaic" - but I think that a big part is that I just start to find the detective character to be completely ridiculous. I can accept someone who has spent years studying forensic science (like Holmes) being able to solve an otherwise baffling crime (at least when nobody else is using those techniques), but the idea that (e.g.) some geriatric amateur will do it all through the power of "psychological intuition" is simply laughable. And I am so uninterested in the lives of toffs in the early 20th C that most of Christie's stuff has zero appeal anyway... and what I've seen of the TV adaptions (admittedly that's not much) hasn't changed my mind on that at all.
I think I'm with Edmund Wilson...
"Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?"
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Post by andydecker on Oct 30, 2011 11:58:19 GMT
I also used to mock Christie, but in the last years she has grown on me. Of course I love period pieces, but of course the period comes more to the foreground in the tv-stuff then in the novels. It is not as the characters would discuss then current affairs. Maybe that is also the appeal which made her so successful over the time. And of course they don´t call this kind of crime novel cozy without a reason. And she is easy to read, always a plus.
The translation question is not important. Of course she is not the most difficult writer there is, she has an easy to consume style - which is nice for a translator as he can do many pages a day. But it is not a question if you buy translation rights or not.
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Post by pulphack on Oct 30, 2011 14:47:48 GMT
you make a fair point, doc. would i have read as much golden age stuff if i hadn't been interested in the 'long weekend' interwar period since i was a kid? probably not.
as far as the 'gifted amateur' goes, well that's a non starter now with csi-levels of tech available to the law. however, i would argue that it was more feasible in that period as a lot of police investigation depended on questioning, observation, and the application of experience of criminals and psychology, which is what a lot of amateurs do in these books. pathology was becoming advanced,and there was fingerprinting, but not a lot else to set the police and the amateur apart. the only way to do it now, really, is to take the kind of semi-comic approach of the stumbling lucky amateur, ala Joyce Porter. it could just about be feasible then, but certainly not now.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 30, 2011 16:19:37 GMT
it could just about be feasible then, but certainly not now. I would go as far as saying that the invention of the cell-phone and the internet has made 90% of crime-novel-plots out-dated and unbelievable. Even if that has not much to do with reality, as far as entertainment goes it is okay if the internet has all answers and personal information as the tip of your fingers. As if every scrap of paper in the last 100 years has been scanned and digitalized. Internet and CSI in crime-entertainment has become the new magic wand. The same goes for the amateur-sleuth or even the P.I. But I have to confess that this is also one of the good things of those old books as they show a simpler time. (Or were better in ignoring the social realities of their era.) Of course Miss Marple or Poirot are unbelievable as characters today, but in their time period they appear to make sense, even if they never were much more then a fantasy. They are a comforting read where the puzzle is in the center and not the homicidal psycho.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 30, 2011 20:45:33 GMT
surely some suspension of belief is mandatory in the case of just about everything we touch upon on here, supernatural fiction for sure, but also sf, mens adventure, Confessions books, shudder pulps, even the most serious-minded dark fantasy. i'd only be surprised if the same didn't apply to crime fiction. but i take your point, Dr. S. This is the first Christie novel i've read since childhood, and true to your experience, i'm having a rare old time with it. Maybe the next one i randomly select won't make quite the same impression.
Anyway, have made some progress with Halloween Party and we've gone from zero suspects to an entire community of them in two-three chapters. I must say, on this evidence, Midsomer Murders owes no small debt to Mrs Christie. i'm almost expecting DCI Tom Barnaby to step wheezing into frame and take the Reverend to task over his "peculiar sexual liaisons."
It now seems at least possible that, incorrigible attention seeker though she was, the late Joyce Reynolds may have chanced upon a murder after all. Less than three years earlier, Janet White, a young teacher at her school, the Elms, was throttled in Quarry Wood. Janet had earlier confided to her flatmate that she was rather frightened of a particular boyfriend. Alternatively, there is the suspicious death of the fabulously rich widow Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe of Quarry House, an invalid who may or may not have been overdosed by her au pair. The girl, who vanished shortly afterwards, was the sole beneficiary of Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's will, or would have been had her weedy attempt at forgery deceived the lawyers handling the estate. A third and fourth murder, the one an unpleasant business involving a pub landlord, his randy wife and her lover, the other the battering of a shop-assistant, are ruled out on the grounds that they ended so bloodily, not even a five year-old would be in any doubt about what they'd witnessed.
The people of Woodleigh Common have yet to be convinced that Monsieur Poirot knows what he's talking about. As a rule they don't really approve of foreigners, or that's the impression i'm getting. They also seem to have a shared obsession about escaped lunatics and "bad sorts" released early from institutions. As Dr. Ferguson, A GP with a degree in advanced intolerance would have it, "A lot of people who ought to be under mental restraint, aren't under mental restraint. No room in the Asylums." The dead girl's mother reckons it was likely "some awful man who came in through one of the windows. Probably he'd taken drugs or something." Imagine how pleased they'll be if Poirot identifies one of these respectable pillars of society as the culprit.
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Post by killercrab on Oct 30, 2011 22:59:34 GMT
I think I've overdosed on Suchet's Poirot after last night's The Cornish Mystery ( which dragged). I've two more in the can but they might have to wait - The Walking Dead beckons . I've always liked Christie's books , the archeological mysteries my favourites and yes the period setting is an important aspect of that enjoyment. That said I get bored after awhile and move on but always circumnavigate back eventually. The 1930's particularly where such a vibrant era of design though oddly the Agatha Christie comic I read failed for me. She's really all about conversation ( and gleaning clues from said) . Not terribly visual.
KC
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Post by Dr Strange on Oct 31, 2011 10:36:10 GMT
surely some suspension of belief is mandatory in the case of just about everything we touch upon on here, supernatural fiction for sure, but also sf, mens adventure, Confessions books, shudder pulps, even the most serious-minded dark fantasy. i'd only be surprised if the same didn't apply to crime fiction. Absolutely true - for some reason I just find it harder to make that leap with crime fiction. I really don't know why and I have no way of justifying it. The other thing that really annoys me with the "psychological" detective is that ultimately, even after they have supposedly "worked it out", it's never really anything more than a more-or-less plausible account of what may have happened; there's rarely anything that would convince in a court of law - except the perp always at that point decides to throw in his cards and confess all. I think maybe my "problem" is that so many of these writers base everything on supposedly understanding "psychology", and then have their characters behave in such completely implausible ways.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 31, 2011 11:57:34 GMT
The other thing that really annoys me with the "psychological" detective is that ultimately, even after they have supposedly "worked it out", it's never really anything more than a more-or-less plausible account of what may have happened; there's rarely anything that would convince in a court of law - except the perp always at that point decides to throw in his cards and confess all. Yes, this is what also bugs me often about this kind of crime novel. I guess you have to accept that as face-value like the hyperspace-drive in SF. I love the early Columbo episodes, for instance, even some Murder She Wrote, but every time I think that those cases would be thrown out of court in a minute and the suspension of disbelief comes to a crashing stop. Why is it that the perp always confess because the detective confronts him with the one far-fetched clue instead of saying "f*** you and good luck convincing the authorities with that nonsense". But those are general problems for every genre with a set of rules. What about the atheist vampire who really shouldn´t be bothered by a crucifix?
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