This week’s
Top Ten Tuesday is about our favourite characters in X genre. As I mentioned in my post about the Top Ten Settings I’d Like To See More Of, I’m a big fan of good crime fiction in general and Agatha Christie in particular. I own 77 out of ca. 100 books written by AC; and, I’ve read ALL of them. What is more, I’ve read each of her books more than once. To put it simply, I am obsessed with AC. Hence, I thought it would be a good idea to dedicate this post to those characters developed by her whom I love the most. So, here are my Top Ten Favourite Characters in Crime Fiction:
This post may contain spoiler; so, do not read on
unless you want to!
1. Monsieur Hercule Poirot
Captain Hastings, Hercule Poirot’s loyal friend and ally, describes the great detective in the first novel in which they appear together, i.e.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles, as follows:
He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. Even if everything on his face was covered, the tips of moustache and the pink-tipped nose would be visible. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. (The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Chapter 2)
Hercule Poirot is a character with which I have much in common. We both love good food (especially chocolate and French cuisine), symmetry, and tidiness, and we are both little perfectionists. And of course, we both like to use our “little grey cells.” Certainly, there might be many people who do not consider these character traits attractive, but it is due to those that I believe that Poirot and I would get on well with one another in real life. :-) So, I cannot help but love this little Belgian sleuth.
2. Miss Jane Marple
Miss Marple is one of those characters that everybody believes to be stupid because of her outward appearance. In
A Murder Is Announced, Agatha Christie describes her character thus:
Miss Jane Marple was very nearly, if not quite, as Craddock had pictured her. She was far more benignant than he had imagined and a good deal older. She seemed indeed very old. She had snow-white hair and a pink crinkled face and very soft innocent blue eyes, and she was heavily enmeshed in fleecy wool. Wool round her shoulders in the form of a lacy cape and wool that she was knitting and which turned out to be a baby’s shawl. (A Murder Is Announced, Chapter 8)
Yet, despite being old and knitting everywhere and at any (im)possible time, Miss Marple is anything but innocent. Quite the contrary, as we learn in the
Murder at the Vicarage, she is in fact “dangerous”. That is to say, nothing escapes her attention and there’s no murderer who will sleep well, however perfect the murder he/she committed may seem, if Miss Marple is in charge of the case.
3. Lucy Eylesbarrow
Lucy Eyelesbarrow is probably my all-time favourite character in Agatha Christie. She is a thirty-two year old genius (she earned a degree in mathematics at Oxford with honours, for Pete’s sake!) who, however, refrains from pursuing an academic career. Why? It’s because she is brilliant enough to know that “a life of academic distinction was singularly ill rewarded.” But, Lucy Eyelesbarrow loves financial stability and she is also a clever businesswoman who sees that there’s always a great demand for good household employees. Thus, she enters the field of domestic labour and, as Agatha Christie tells us, she is being successful.
Her success was immediate and assured. By now, after a lapse of some years, she was known all over the British Isles. It was quite customary for wives to say joyfully to husbands, “It will be all right. I can go with you to the States. I’ve got Lucy Eyelesbarrow!” (4:50 from Paddington, Chapter 4)
Lucy appears in the above-cited novel only, as the ally of Miss Marple. It is Lucy who searches for and finds the missing body. Besides doing this she doesn’t play a huge role in the solving of the crime puzzle, because, as good fortune would have it, she is busy with sorting out her love life. . . And, whom she will marry in the end? Only Miss Marple knows, but I want to believe that the clever man who is so afraid of this smart woman will be the winner!
4. & 5. Tuppence and Tommy Beresford
 |
Francesca Annis & James Warwick as Tuppence & Tommy Beresford
in Partners in Crime (1983–84) |
Tuppence and Tommy Beresford are probably less known characters of Agatha Christie, which is a shame in my opinion, because they truly are loveable. Regrettably, they appear only in five novels—namely,
The Secret Adversary,
Partners in Crime,
N or M?,
By the Pricking of My Thumbs, and
Postern of Fate.
They make their first appearance in
The Secret Adversary, in which they’re young and restless, and unmarried yet. This is how Agatha Christie introduces them:
Tommy sat down opposite her. His bared head revealed a shock of exquisitely slicked-back red hair. His face was pleasantly ugly - nondescript, yet unmistakably the face of a gentleman and a sportsman. His brown suit was well cut, but perilously near the end of its tether.
They were an essentially modern-looking couple as they sat there. Tuppence had no claim to beauty, but there was character and charm in the elfin lines of her little face, with its determined chin and large, wide-apart grey eyes that looked mistily out from under straight, black brows. She wore a small bright green toque over her black bobbed hair, and her extremely short and rather shabby skirt revealed a pair of uncommonly dainty ankles. Her appearance presented a valiant attempt at smartness. (The Secret Adversary, Chapter 1)
By the end of the last novel in that they appear, i.e.
Postern of Fate, they’re two pensioners who have been happily married for ages and have raised three children. But, there’s something that has never changed during all those years: they’re still passionate about solving mysteries. And, they’re really good at it. Although, to me it seems Tuppence is slightly more talented, a bit cleverer... But, they are a really strong, unbeatable team who have solved together many difficult cases.
6. & 7. Lady Eileen Brent (Bundle) and Bill Eversleigh
So, who do you think was the first “it girl” ever? I will tell you. It was Lady Eileen Brent alias Bundle, one of my favourite female characters by AC. Have you never heard of her? Big mistake! Serious mistake! It could have been you whom Bill Eversleigh, Bundle’s companion, had scolded thus:
“I wish we’d got Bundle here,” murmured Bill. “You know her, don’t you, Jimmy? Oh, you’d like her. She’s a splendid girl—a real good sport—and mind you, she’s got brains too. You know her, Ronny?”
Ronny shook his head.
“Don’t know Bundle? Where have you been vegetating? She’s simply it.” (The Seven Dials Mystery, Chapter 1)
Bundle, Lord Caterham’s eldest daughter, is “tall, slim, and dark with an attractive boyish face, and a very determined manner” (
The Secret of Chimneys, Chapter 10). But what is more, she is a very clever and brave woman who plays a major part in solving the “mystery of the seven dials.”
Her faithful companion is Mr Bill Eversleigh, a Foreign Office official, who is “a very likeable young man,” and has “a pleasantly ugly face, a splendid set of white teeth and a pair of honest brown eyes” (
The Secret of Chimneys, Chapter 4). Even though Agatha Christie introduces her characters in
The Secret of Chimneys already, Bundle and Billy have only a walk-on part in that novel. By contrast, in
The Seven Dials mystery it is Bundle and Bill who are in charge of the case, and in this novel also their love story comes to a climax. . .
8. & 9. Lady Frances Derwent (Frankie) and Bobby Jones
Frankie and Bobby are the third on the list of lovebirds and “partners in crime” and I adore them just as much as the previous two. Regrettably, they make only one appearance, namely in
Why Didn't They Ask Evans?. Even though I’m no expert of literary genres and styles, I’m almost sure that this novel, like the above-mentioned Chimneys novels, owes its inspiration to the writings of P.G. Wodehouse. Also the characters bear much similarities. Frankie is very similar to Bundle in that she is a Lady, she is not breathtakingly beauty, she doesn’t mind to mix with boys from the “lower” class, and she is clever.
Her love interest and co-detective, Bobby Jones is not the
famous American golfer but, as Christie informs us at the very beginning of her novel, “merely the fourth son of the Vicar of Marchbolt.” And Bobby is, like Bill Eversleigh, neither the most handsome nor the smartest boy of the town. Agatha Christie introduces Bobby us thus:
He was an amiable-looking young man of about eight and twenty. His best friend could not have said that he was handsome, but his face was an eminently likeable one, and his eyes had the honest brown friendliness of a dog’s. (Why Didn't They Ask Evans?, Chapter 1).
So, Bobby too is a very loveable young man and what woman could withstand the charms of a man who is as faithful as a dog?
10. Mrs Ariadne Oliver
Finally, there’s Mrs Ariadne Oliver who is a very funny character that sometimes joins Monsieur Poirot or other investigators to “help” them to solve a case. She appears in seven novels—namely,
Cards on the Table,
Mrs McGinty’s Dead,
Dead Man’s Folly,
The Pale Horse,
Third Girl,
Hallowe’en Party, and
Elephants Can Remember. Admittedly, she is not very good at solving crime cases, even though she is a writer of crime fiction. Her most famous character is Sven Hjerson who is a Finnish detective. So, as you might have guessed by now, Ariadne seems to be Agatha Christie’s literary self. And, as I indicated above, Agatha Christie developed many a strong female characters, which implies that she believes that women have a unique talent for discovering the truth. The same is true, of course, to her literary alter ego, Ariadne Oliver, as the following excerpt from the
Cards on the Table shows:
Mrs Ariadne Oliver was extremely well known as one of the foremost writers of detective and other sensational stories. ... She was also a hot-headed feminist and when any murder of importance was occupying space in the press there was sure to be an interview with Mrs Oliver, and it was mentioned that Mrs Oliver had said, “Now if a woman were the head of Scotland Yard!” She was an earnest believer in woman’s intuition. For the rest she was an agreeable woman of middle age, handsome in a rather untidy fashion, with fine eyes, substantial shoulders, and a large quantity of rebellious grey hair with which she was continually experimenting. (Cards on the Table, Chapter 2)
So these are my favourite characters in crime fiction. Do you love good whodunits? Who are your favourite authors in this genre? Are you an AC fan? Or, are you rather an Arthur Conan Doyle addict?
