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Agatha Christie Research Paper

976 Words4 Pages

Jaren Logan
Fairchild
English IV, 6
9 May 2018
A well written detective mystery book has the ability to hook the reader early on and keeps them on the edge of their seats. However, what separates the good reads from the classics is the incorporation of the six “unwritten rules” of detective fiction. Authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and many others have all worked to perfect their writing and characters according to these rules. Their success over the years has helped propel the genre into the spotlight as one of the most written/read and overall have shaped the detective fiction genre to what we all know and love today. A great example of these rules in action is Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles. This …show more content…

Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes. Christie herself, in her autobiography, has even stated that Holmes was her inspiration for the early Poirot novels, “I was still writing in the Sherlock Holmes tradition, eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp” (Christie Autobiography). Poirot demonstrates the same “know it all” attitude as these two, but his Belgian charm and demeanor help to lower the guard of the reader. He even goes as far as calling Arthur Hastings a “stuck pig” early in the book for not being more useful (Christie 14). Unlike Dupin and Holmes, however, Poirot sticks to using facts and does not seem to rely on the deductive reasoning method that made these two famous. He seems more interested on things that can be found out through looking around and tests. Poirot also has more notoriety than Dupin and Holmes. Dupin and Holmes are considered to be amatuer detectives, no matter how much they are able to assist the police. Poirot, though, is a “famous” detective displaced by the War, “...it seemed almost impossible to believe that, not so very far away, a great war was running its appointed course. I felt I had suddenly strayed into another world” (Christie 6). This makes people trust him more and he uses his credibility to his advantage. Hastings knows that Poirot is smart, but even he is surprised by the evidence that the detective is able to

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