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The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie: A Biographical Companion to the Works of Agatha Christie

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Osborne's thoroughness in cataloging Dame Agatha's eighty-plus re-titled, repackaged, and republished books and 147 stories in their myriad and varied collections is admirable. That alone makes this book worth buying, but his literary criticism detracts from a complete enjoyment of what is otherwise a pretty good read.

Throughout, Osborne reveals a tri-fold misunderstanding of the essence of fiction. Despite his own comment, "It is fortunate that fictional chronology can be flexible," he tediously cites examples in which it is not. Also, he assumes that each story should be consistent with the others, and that full explanations should be given for what he considers to be improbable occurrences. Let us consider each of these problems in turn.

Real Time

Rarely is fiction intended to occur in real time. Plays, novels or short stories often cover periods from a few hours to a lifetime, or longer. Regardless of the time taken to write or publish a work, it must always stand up on its own. The particular time period that elapses between the appearance of two works does not of itself imply the actual amount of time that the author intended should pass. For example, that Albert should be fifteen years old in Partners in Crime (1929) does not imply that he was only nine in The Secret Adversary (1922) as Osborne suggests (pp. 68-69). That real time is not intended is exemplified further when Miss Marple says in Nemesis (1971) that she met Jason Rafiel (A Caribbean Mystery, 1964), "just over a year ago. In the West Indies." The only chronology upon which we can rely is that provided by the author. We must take each story as a group of events in the characters' lives and avoid forcing our own sense of time on them.

Consistency and continuity

That Dame Agatha has given us clues to the actual whereabouts of her stories should be seen as remarkable, if not extraordinary. Fiction, after all, is constructed from the imaginings of the author. Unless we have been given clear evidence to the contrary, we must always assume that the people and places are made up. Because some authors appear to be more consistent from one story to another does not mean that all novelists must be. Fiction is fiction. It only has to be believable; it does not have to be true. Science fiction depends on this premise.

Of the apparent inconsistencies, Randall Toye (1980), author of The Agatha Christie Who's Who, graciously concedes that these caprices are "one more mystery for the readers of Agatha Christie to solve, a mystery for which you will have to rely on your own `little grey cells.'"

Improbables

Osborne levies a number of criticisms at the plots themselves. In his entry for Sparkling Cyanide (p. 211), for example, he scoffs at the idea that a group of guests could leave a table, forget where they sat, and then re-seat themselves on the basis of the location of a purse. Perhaps in his own sterile study, this scenario seems implausible. However, it would be easy to become confused when everyone had left a large round table simultaneously and then tried, without such a landmark, to return to his or her own chair. Although it might feel a little awkward, in a low-lit room, after some drinks and dancing, a purse could be the only thing to indicate where people had sat earlier. Doubtless, Dame Agatha actually observed this confusion on some occasion.

In Dead Man's Folly, Osborne (p. 281) doubts that someone could change his appearance so as to become unrecognizable just by growing a beard, but, the narrative is quite clear - most of those who would have recognized him had moved away. Not only that, but war changes people - sometimes quite dramatically - literally aging their appearance by more years than the duration of the conflict. Noncombatants will never understand how war can change someone. More than that, we often see what we expect to see. If having been told that someone was killed during the war, why shouldn't we believe it? Indeed, a full beard would cover the most recognizable features of a man's face.

Improbables do not demand explanations. Just because a situation seems improbable to us, doesn't mean that it is. The available facts may not be all of the facts. Even when Dame Agatha does give us clues, most of us can't identify the murderer; and her alleged peccadilloes have done nothing to dissuade readers from buying hundreds of millions of her books.

Osborne's writing style

This review would be incomplete if it failed to mention Osborne's own struggle with words: split infinitives, the odd incomplete sentence, and excessively long constructions. Here is one example of the latter: "After some months, Agatha decided to join her husband in London where, after living briefly in service flats, first in Half Moon Street and then in Park Place, `with noisy sessions of bombs going off all around,' they were about to move into their house in Sheffield Terrace, the people to whom they had rented it having asked if they could be allowed to relinquish the lease, as they wished to leave London" (p. 180).

Conclusion

A more complete table of contents would have been helpful so that entries about specific works could have been found easily. As it is, one has to look up the publication date at the back, and then search for it in the relevant section. Overall, the reader should use this book for reference only and ignore the rest of it.

I enjoyed this book. It had some third person insights that her autobiography could not contain. It also had many quotes from her husbands autobiography than rounded out her life's story nicely. It is somewhat repetitive for those of us who have already read all of her books and her life story, but Charles Osbourn did manage to give me some further insights into her work. This work includes not only her life story, but also a lot of information about her books. It does NOT include how any of her books end, lest it ruin any of her books for any of the readers who have not read all of her works. This would be a fine addition to any Agatha Christie library.

Charles Osborne's book offers a fast-paced chronicle of Dame Christie's life and unbiased critique of her works. The book highlighted many interesting tidbits of Christie's private life (engrossing account of Ms. Christie's famous disappearance in 1926; her work as an archaeologist's assistant; her love for dogs; idiosyncrasies like forever munching on apples while she wrote) to her characters (from her intolerance over sleuth Poirot to her favorite character, Caroline Sheppard, not least her alter-ego, Adraidne Oliver).

While in general affectionately and reverently written, Osbourne remained impartial and did not skim over Agatha Christie's limitations as a writer of sorts:

(1) As a Poet - "...talent for poetry was genuine, but modest and of no startling originality..."

(2) Grasp of French language - "...despite her Paris finishing school, Ms. Christie's French was to remain obstinately unidiomatic..." in reference to Poirot's characterization.

(3) Heavy-handedness - "...construction of English sentences a trifle more exotic than needs be".

(4) Subjectivity - "...you won't turn people into angels by appealing to their better nature yet awhile - but by judicious force...."

(5) Occasional propensity to not play fair by non-disclosure - "I have a certain amount of rules. No false words must be uttered by me....but it's not unfair to leave things out".

(6) Carelessness - "Mrs. Christie's carelessness again? Or simply a misprint in certain editions? Or has Poirot moved without telling even his creator?" and "She tells us that Ackroyd is nearly 50 years of age,...later it becomes clear that he could not have been older than 43" and "now in the 80s, Dame Agatha is more careless than ever. Improbabilities are not explained, certain things do not quite add up....".

(7) Recycling of plots - "Variations of one of the plot of one of the stories....will be presented in...Murder in the Mews and in the novel, Evil Under the Sun....the plot of another story...will be made use of again in the novel...an element in the plot of ....will re-occur in ....".

(8) Limited literary range - "....examine various aspects of human behavior that is impressive, rather than the actual quality of her writing, though her prose is never less than adequate to convey mood and meaning..." and "...Death by Drowning which is also one of the few occasions when Agatha Christie strayed into working class territory".

(9) Monotony & Repetition - "...for they are (Miss Marple's tales) all very sedentary stories whose action is recounted in retrospect..." and "...the reader is plunged again into Christiean nursery rhyme syndrome: a series of murders committed concurrently with the progress of the images in a nursery rhyme".

(10) Anti-Semitism - "The mandatory racial slurs...have been edited out of more recent American editions....".

I disagree with reviewers who criticized Osbourne's book for being biased for he has ostensibly studied and researched the subject matter to the point that he could thoroughly cross-reference both the good and the bad in Agatha Christie's works (read: inconsistencies/flaws/negligence/carelessness, or that of her editors*). Having personally read the entire oeuvre of Christie's crime novels, I believe Osbourne's conclusion that "the plotting of some of Poirot and Miss Marple novels which Agatha Christie wrote in the last 15 years of her life is a more than a trifle lax" is more than justified.

*Not only did Osbourne not give away the plots, he also painstakingly forewarned would-be readers of Christie's crime novels to be wary of untimely revelation of plots/true identities of murderers - "...Cards on the Table quite gratuitously reveals the solution to Murder on the Orient Express. Readers of "Cards" who have not already read "Murder" should get a friend to block out the sentence..." and "In Chapter 18 (of "Dumb Witness"), the author allows Poirot to mention the names of four delightful personalities, all of whom were murderers....the danger could be avoided by deleting 5 or 6 lines...".

It has been 20 years since I last read Agatha Christie's books. With a keen mind and depth of knowledge, Osbourne fairly documented ideas and goings-on pertaining to the Queen of Detective Stories, not least enunciated many of the thoughts and views I (and probably representative as one voice of those of her fans) concluded in passing while reading Christie's books.

In fact, Osbourne's excellent biographical companion has since reawakened my desire to re-read Dame Christie's selective works, her creme de la creme - "Murder of Roger Ackroyd", "Murder on the Orient Express", "And Then There Were None", to name just a few - written during her most prolific years in the 1930s and 40s.

I have enjoyed reading and re-reading Agatha Christie's novels for many years. In my opinion, she truly had an original mind and a keen understanding of human nature that made her characters seem to come alive, no matter what "carelessness" may have existed in the plotting out of later novels. It is in this regard that Mr. Osbornes highly analytical mind goes a bit too far in summarizing her stories (they are, after all, just stories). It is also why I did not like his "novelizations" of her plays at all; they still read like scripts, the characters moving stiffly from one side of the set to another.
But beyond delving too deep into the meaning of mystery novels, my biggest issue is that his over-analysing seems to have created plot inconsistencies where there were none. For example, when outlining "Murder on the Links" (1923) Mr. Osborne writes about how the face of the murdered man is described in detail, then Poirot tells Hastings that a piece of lead pipe discovered near the body was intended to disfigure the murdered man's face. "Poirot's theory of the crime, fortunately, does not hinge upon this point!" Mr. Osborne writes. In fact, his theory DOES hinge on that point. The man who was killed was not the intended victim. The victim had brought the lead pipe himself in order to disfigure another man's face to fake his own death. Then, ironically, he was murdered himself. This is made absolutely clear, and it was baffling to me that Mr. Osborne could make this and other such a misinformed statement about the book. It was almost as though he had been skimming through the novels for the sole purpose of discovering flaws to "catch" her at. "Look! Nobody else noticed this mistake she made but me!"
So while it is interesting to read about what was going on in her life while she was writing each work, it just feels like Mr. Osborne is trying too hard to be more clever than Agatha Christie. Sorry Mr. Osborne, but there is a reason why more people have heard of her than you!

Agatha Christie (1890-1972)is generally considered the single most widely published and read novelist in the history of publishing. Best known for mystery novels featuring such characters as Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple, she was also a noted dramatist and memorable short story writer, and under the name Mary Westmacott generated several well-regarded works as well. But for all her fame, her private life--as Lady Mallowan--was indeed private: although she made the occasional public appearance for the sake of her latest venture, she resisted public intrusion; even her autobiography, although entertaining, is somewhat uninformative.

Published in 1982, Charles Osborne's THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF AGATHA CHRISTIE is typical of the numerous "Life and Works" books re Christie: it tells you nothing you will not find in a dozen sources or more. But it does so in meticulous detail, covering what is known of Christie's life and tying it to her various works. From her earliest book to her last, the book offers dates, publishing information, plot outlines, character notes, and all the rest--and ties each work to what Christie herself happened to be doing at the time. It's a handy sort of reference.

Unfortunately, I have some issues with Osborne's skill as a critic. Or more specifically, his lack thereof. Osborne is fond of shrugging off Christie's distinctly superior works in favor of her less successful efforts. He also "toes the line" in terms of what Christie fans want to hear (and in some cases prefer not to hear) about their favorite author. So while the book is interesting, useful, and even entertaining in a factual sense, it is considerably less so in an interpretive one. Recommended, but only just.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

This book is pretty well summed up in its subtitle: "A Biographical Companion to the Works of Agatha Christie."

It is also one of those useful and occasionally indispensable volumes compiled by a natural-born plodder. Osborne is the chosen scribbler given the task of producing novelized versions of some of Christie's plays. He clearly is held in high favor by the Christie Trust. As a biographer, it very quickly becomes clear that he is concerned with presenting the Establishment picture of Dame Agatha May Clarissa Miller Christie Mallowan. There will be no surprises and no probing beneath the respectable (save for nearly two weeks in December 1926) life of the public figure.

The one lurid episode in the lady's life, her mysterious disappearance, is wrapped up on pages 51 to 57 of the hardbound edition with no more factual material than that contained in Christie's famously uncommunicative autobiography. Of speculation, there is even less. So little, in fact that the existence of "Agatha," a popular mystery novel by Kathleen Tynan that offers amusing conjectures about Christie's actions and motives, is willfully ignored. This is even more true of the movie based upon the book that featured Vanessa Redgrave as Agatha and Timothy Dalton as Archie. The index of Osborne's book does, indeed, have an entry for Ms. Redgrave, but it refers to a small part she had in the movie of "Murder on the Orient Express," not to her portrayal of Agatha Christie herself.

This ultra orthodox approach to biography does no particular harm. The essentials of Christie's public life are laid out well enough. In all probability, the inner Christie was as respectable as the outer one--but we don't know and with biographers like Charles Osborne, we never shall.

Osborne's treatment of the "Works of Agatha Christie" is that of a mystery fan, not a critic. He provides a sketch of how a work came to be written, identifies the main characters, establishes the premise of novel, story or play, but he never outlines the complete plot and he never, never identifies a culprit.

There are, of course, some critical trappings. Poirot's French, we are informed, is sometimes less than idiomatic. Christie occasionally gave voice to the casual and unthinking anti-Semitism of the class and time into which she had been born. (That deplorable fault faded away with time, particularly after a pre-World War II encounter with a Nazi official stationed in the Middle East. He was perfectly charming to her and her second husband until he shocked her by going all Dalek while talking about the Jews then in Germany: "Exterminate them!") Christie had a thrifty, want-not-waste-not bent for recycling useful plots and details of action, such as three or four occasions in which one character looking over another's shoulder suddenly observes something that will lead to grim results. As Agatha became elderly, her books became less tightly plotted and her dialogue more diffuse. All this is widely known and perfectly acceptable to the Christie Establishment. On the other hand, there is no insight offered as to why, in particular, Christie's prose continues to sell books at a quite remarkable rate while her great contemporaries, Marsh, Allingham and even Sayers have largely fallen by the wayside.

This is not a great book but, for all its plodding ways, it is a useful guide and reference. I assign four stars to it in the sure and certain expectation that I'll give it a toss when something better comes along. I don't think that will be soon.

I've had this book for a few months now and am continuously referring back to it. This is a perfect book to have on hand while reading her collection of books. Charles Osbourne presents an overview of Agatha Christie's life and works his way chronologically through each book she wrote with new insights into the storylines and other happening in her life at the time of her writing the book. Mr. Osbourne does not reveal too much, so it is safe to read his accounts before reading her books.

This is a perfect companion book to her works.

THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF AGATHA CHRISTIE is a delightful look at the great author through her vast novels, plays, and short stories. The well-written reference book is structured around major events in Ms. Christie's life, but seen through the works that are published at that time. Charles Osborne keeps the tome fresh with intriguing explanations on various topics such as titles. For instance the "final" title of THEN THERE WERE NONE reflects social trends and political correctness over the decades in England and America, and to a lesser degree France. Fans of Ms. Christie will find this work quite fascinating, but so will most mystery buffs as well as historiographers.

Harriet Klausner

'The Life And Crimes Of Agatha Christie' is a useful guide to the works of the Queen of Crime. Charles Osborne has collected information on everything Dame Agatha produced; not only her crime fiction, but also her romantic novels as well as her poetry and plays. For each entry, Osborne usually begins with a brief biographical note, followed by a summary of the plot, as well as a brief critical review of the book itself. Christie's output was enormous, over 100 published works, so a book like this is essential if only to keep track of them all.

Osborne plays fair with most of his summaries. Although obviously a Christie fan, he is honest enough to acknowledge her shortcomings. If a book is not among her best or has a nagging flaw, he'll generally concede this (e.g 'Passenger to Frankfurt' and 'Postern Of Fate'). In particular he takes aim at the patchy editing of her later books, and the frequent "casual racism" that she dropped into her earlier work. He also notes that, for all her interest in and passion for writing poetry, it was far from her strong suit.

Where I found this book particularly useful was in keeping track of the baffling array of Christie short story collections, many of which overlap or are only published in certain countries. It's also handy to note which characters appeared in which book; Christie re-used several characters apart from her regulars, so it is useful to know where, for example, Superintendent Battle or Colonel Pikeaway popped up. And while romance novels and poetry aren't my personal cup of tea, there is some interest in exploring her non-crime output, especially given love triangles and forbidden romances form the central plots of many of her crime novels.

In all, a very handy collection indeed for the dedicated Christie fan. Concise but knowledgable summaries of her work plus some personal biographical details make this well worth seeking out.

Four stars.

Charles Osborne was chosen by the Christie estate to convert some of her plays into novel form. Last week we saw the first production of "Chimneys" a long lost play adapted from the novel, THE SECRET OF CHIMNEYS. Some times this works, but not always.
THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF AGATHA CHRISTIE is a great reference work for checking publication dates and some story lines when so many titles are being reissued under a new title. It is plodding in its descriptions of the personal life of a very shy private woman. Some of the less than exemplary titles are given the same status of the great ones and any author has a flop, the one that just doesn't cut the mustard.
A writer of Dame Christie's status is to be congratulated for having so few bloopers.
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