Just as I started reading Murder in the Calais Coach by Agatha Christie my son butted in with, “But the end is such a cop-out” and proceeded to tell me the end (he’d forgotten my rule for this year that all my books would be first-timers for me). So now I knew who done it.  But being clued into the twisted ending took nothing away from my enjoyment of this absolutely wonderful — and perfectly crafted — murder mystery.

There is so much to love about Agatha Christie and I’ve read many of her mysteries, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Ten Little Indians being two of my favorites. I don’t know how it happened that I’d never read Murder in the Calais Coach (also known as Murder on the Orient Express) but I recognized it right away as pure and perfect Dame Agatha.  Third person narrative with a strong personality is her style and her narrator  has a  distinct voice: very dry, very observant, and very clever, spreading little clues through small details of the situation (“two rather ugly children”), of the characters (“of all classes, of all nationalities, of all ages”), and of her inspired little Belgian, Hercule Poirot (most decidedly not “the “sort of little man one could never take seriously” as one seriously mistaken character decides) .  And his “little grey matter”  is indeed Herculean; he works his brain patiently and thoroughly and always gets his murderer.  But it is not justice Poirot wants to achieve through his brain power; he wants to solve the puzzle presented.  And we are quite certain that was Christie’s concern as well.  Justice, shmustice: how is this puzzle first to be developed, with all its clues and counter-clues, and then how shall Poirot solve it so that in the end we all say “But of course! (“Mais, bien sur!”).

Agatha Christie is a delight to read, so easy to devour and she provides good, hearty brain food, as well as a strong dose of humility (example: no, I did not catch that clue about the kerchief; I was too busy congratulating myself on having caught the one about the  pocket watch!).  She is also very funny: there is a hysterical scene wherein three men lay back their heads to ponder the case but only Poirot’s brain stays focused on the matter.  Of the other two, one is soon dreaming pornographically (and not of his wife) and the other is lost in his usual narrow thoughts about the world and his place in it.

It is not easy to write such a smart, funny, and satisfying mystery, with so many personalities, each distinctly drawn both physically and mentally within just a few sentences each, and with such a case that both thoroughly mystifies and then makes sense — but Agatha Christie does it , and she did eighty times over.  Maybe I should plan a year for re-reading all the Agatha Christies, seeing all the movies made of her books, see her play The Mousetrap performed live, and call it “My Year of Living Agatha”.  It would be a wonderful year, I’m sure.

Note on Ten Little Indians:  The original title of Ten Little Indians was racially-charged  – Ten Little N—-s — and in the United States it was published as And Then There Were None.  In Great Britain the book was published under its original title through the 1980s, then it was published under Ten Little Indians. There are still foreign editions with versions of the original title, for example, Diez Negritos. The text itself was never changed, and as far as I can remember is not racially-charged or repugnant but I should re-read it, now that I know this bit of its history.  It is Christie’s best-selling book, at over 100 million copies sold.