Tangled Web UK Review September 2007
Agatha Christie: An English Mystery by
Laura Thompson
hbk out September 07
Published by Headline Review
at £20
Agatha Christie sold more books than any other novelist, yet the woman herself remains an
enigma. Everyone knows that she disappeared mysteriously for eleven days in 1926, and she
was painfully shy in public. Her posthumously published autobiography concealed as much as
it revealed and of those who have written about her life and work, the previous authorised
biographer, Janet Morgan, produced a book that was workmanlike rather than dazzling. Laura
Thompson, granted generous access to Christie's family and papers, has now given us a lively
and accessible book that expands our knowledge of a woman whose character and life were
far from cosy and, in fact, as complex as her plots. Thompson is a Christie fan, and dismissive
of some of the author's detractors (she records the dismay with which Christie's daughter
Rosalind greeted the late Michael Dibdin's mean-spirited TV programme attacking Christie's
legacy, a low point in the career of a writer capable of far better work.) Thompson's
enthusiasm helps her to write with insight and compassion – for instance, about Christie's
tricky relationship with Rosalind, and her decades of struggle with the tax man. She is
scathing about the 'friend' who helped Jared Cade to write a book about the disappearance,
and the alleged (but unsubstantiated) adultery of Christie's second husband, Max Mallowan.
Thompson indulges in some detective work of her own to disprove Cade's theories about
those missing eleven days. It must be said that some of Thompson's own assumptions seem to
rely as much on guesswork as Cade's; it is apparently taken for granted that, in 1926, trains
ran precisely to time, but where is the proof? She says things like: 'Of course, if Agatha had
remained married to Archie Christie…she might never have become "Agatha Christie" at all.
Almost certainly she would not have looked like her. Her large, comfortable, physicality was
a defence against wounds…' Well, maybe – or maybe not. Thompson's literary judgments are
often forceful and sometimes startling – for instance, she appears to rate Passenger to
Frankfurt, viewed by most critics as an embarrassment, as being on a par with another late
work, the well-regarded Endless Night, and superior to the highly competent A Caribbean
Mystery. She regards The Moving Finger as 'perhaps Agatha's most wholly satisfactory', an
opinion which I find baffling, even though it is a good story. The listing of Christie's works is
perfunctory, and, oddly, there is little or no mention of other books about her – for example,
Robert Barnard's excellent study of Christie's techniques, A Talent to Deceive. Yet despite its
flaws, I enjoyed this book and learned a good deal from it.
(
Martin Edwards
- author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries)
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