The Wall Street Journal amusedly reports:
Agatha Christie became famous in the 1920s as a mystery writer.
For younger generations, she’s the next hot thing.
Shashwata Roy, a 17-year-old fan of space and computers, tweeted in March that Ms. Christie’s 1926 novel “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” is an “absolute must read…review coming up.”
The student in Kolkata said he planned to read all her novels. “The unique way of storytelling is something I think is very rare nowadays,” he said.
The British author may be long gone, but her fictional whodunits—often solved by an elderly British lady or a fussy Belgian detective—have made her a star with fans more used to streaming Marvel movies or scrolling through TikTok—where videos labeled with the tag #AgathaChristie have racked up more than 26 million views.
“Agatha is sparking with younger readers, and I don’t see that with any other writer from her period,” said Devin Abraham, owner of the Once Upon A Crime mystery bookstore in Minneapolis. Customers who ask for books by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett—both contemporaries of Ms. Christie—are generally in their 50s or 60s, said Ms. Abraham.
“Who’s that? I have never heard of Raymond Chandler,” said Ari DiDomenico, a 17-year-old Christie fan in San Diego. She said classic novelists, such as Jane Austen, didn’t hold her attention since the “language was too old-timey[! -JDZ].”
“Agatha Christie’s writing style is more to the point, and the pacing works really well,” she said.
HT: Karen L. Myers.
Univ of Saigon 68
I could never figure out whodunnit, so I gave up on her.
Hairless Joe
Never heard of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, eh? Those youngsters need to watch them some Bogart movies.
In addition to their being very entertaining, it would be a useful tutorial on how grown-ups are supposed to dress and act.
Lee Also
I’ve been watching Agatha Christie stuff streaming. There’s a recent “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” which I thought was quite good, and really started my on the Christie kick. The short mystery series that uses Agatha Christie as a character is okay. (The first two were nice, but the third one was meh.)
I recently binge watched the Miss Marple Series from the mid-aughts (with Geraldine McEwan, who was quite cute, and then with Julia McKenzie) which was delightful, though politically correct casting started creeping in: gratuitous BIPOC or LGBQWERTY where there where highly unlikely to be in mid century village of St. Mary Mead. (They were all set post WWII.)
I also just watched the updated “Partners in Crime,” that ran in the 2015 or there about. I wasn’t that keen on it because they turned Tommy and Tuppence (but especially Tommy) into bumbling idiots who somehow manage to stumble on to the right answer.
I haven’t liked the Kenneth Brannagh films. They’re too over the top, I think.
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