The ABC Murders by: Agatha Christie

 

“The Final Problem” is the short story written to end Sherlock Holmes before bringing him back when Arthur Conan Doyle’s fans demanded it, introducing the world to Professor James Moriarty.  Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christies are authors with very different styles, but Christie owes her early success with the Hercule Poirot novels by following the Holmes/Watson format Conan Doyle established throughout the Sherlock Holmes stories.  As such, while reading The ABC Murders I could not help but find interesting was how this novel felt as if it was following in the footsteps of “The Final Problem” being one last story in the previous model of storytelling to move the character of Poirot largely away from the specific Holmesian dynamic between Poirot and Hastings.  While Hastings would appear in two further novels (Dumb Witness and Curtain), The ABC Murders feels like Christie writing one last hurrah for the format.  It is narrated once again by Hastings with several diversions to other characters “reconstructed” based on recollections given to Hastings, and Hastings has a role to play in the resolution of discovering the murderer.  There is also a character built up throughout the novel to essentially be a Moriarty figure of someone who could potentially beat Poirot, communicating through a series of notes announcing the murders.  This is where the comparisons to “The Final Problem” essentially end, outside of the novel opening with a sequence of Poirot and Hastings reminiscing while discussing gray hairs and hair dye giving me the initial impression that perhaps Christie intended this book to be set quite late in the detective’s career.

 

The ABC Murders actually feels more in line with a thriller instead of a typical murder mystery.  The killer is a serial killer with a fixation on killing people with alliterative names going through the alphabet from ‘A’, going so far as to choosing victims from places also beginning with the corresponding letter of the alphabet, while leaving an ABC railway guide at the scene of the crime.  There are classic serial killer notes sent to Poirot, the first of which being the inciting incident and initially dismissed by Hastings and Inspector Japp as practical jokes until a murder happens.  Christie’s prose is masterful at lulling the reader into the false sense of security despite murder being in the title, thinking that maybe it is just a false letter and the murders are going to be something completely different.  The way the chapters are broken down in this novel assist in building the tension, they’re quite short which makes the reader feel as if things are always moving while the characters aren’t actually making any real progress.  What makes The ABC Murders work is the bafflement of the characters, Poirot included, and the working with Scotland Yard.  Several police officers fulfill the role in the trope common in detective fiction of the bumbler, but never for comedic effect by Christie, generally adding to the tension.  Since this is a murder mystery, I won’t spoil the ending, but it is kind of a shame that this one has only been adapted a handful of times because it’s one of those twists Christie understands how to execute.  It’s on the level of And Then There Were None, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and Murder on the Orient Express in terms of how it works so well as a twist.

 

Overall, while The ABC Murders moves away from traditional detective fiction into thriller, this allows Agatha Christie to really dig deep and make this a mystery that stands out above many of her others.  It’s a classic which works because the genre is flexible and Christie is showing maturity as a writer, making her own strides with the genre all within the period where she will be writing some of the novels she is most well known for.  The best statement of its quality is that I initially wasn’t intending to review it but found that by the 1/3 point I had to get my thoughts on exactly what was being done here in comparison to other pieces of detective fiction and the growth of Hercule Poirot.  10/10.