Literature comes from life and is a mirror that refracts the world. There are a hundred kinds of life in this world, and there are a hundred kinds of literature; and literature is often higher than life, and the life presented in literary works is often more wonderful than the real world. Among various literary themes, the subject of detective reasoning is loved by many readers, not only because of the twists and turns in the novel, but also because it presents the good and evil of human nature.
Agatha Christie's works are best-selling worldwide.
The Strange Case of Stiles Manor.
For readers who love detective fiction, whether it is Conan Doyle or Keigo Higashino, the famous detective writers and the "famous detectives" they create in the novels are equally memorable. Among the best detective fiction writers in the world, Agatha Christie is known as the "Queen of Mystery Fiction", and her works have swept the world.
Poison and crime
This year marks the 130th anniversary of Agatha Christie's birth. Among the writers of detective fiction, her status is second only to that of Conan Doyle. In contrast to the bloody murder scenes created by Conan Doyle in the Sherlock Holmes detective series, the occurrence of murders in Agatha Christie's works is somewhat calm.
Opening Agatha Christie's work, readers rarely see the shadow of swords and swords, the scene of blood flowing, but more of a series of chemical names, such as "Shidi ning" in "The Strange Case of Stiles Manor", thallium in "The White Horse Hotel", ricin in "Criminal Gang", and of course, the "classic recipe" of Agatha's novel, cyanide.
In Agatha Christie's pen, poisoning often seems very professional. For example, in the "Strange Case of Stiles Manor", the perpetrator skillfully uses three chemicals of "Strynin", bromide, and morphine to complete a murder, which can be called an ancient and unprecedented person.
Agatha Christie volunteered at the hospital, during which time she immersed herself in pharmacy and went from nurse to becoming a legally qualified pharmacist through self-study. This is where the knowledge of chemical medicine that she demonstrates in her novels comes from. The fundamental reason why Agatha Christie likes to use drugs in her novels is that in the eyes of this great detective writer, detective novels show more amazing reasoning processes than those uncomfortable bloody scenes, focusing on the competition of intelligence rather than the contest of brute force.
The contest of intelligence is enjoyable, but it also reflects a game process, which is why Agatha Christie's novels can attract the favor of General De Gaulle of France and Queen Mary of England. As for Chinese readers, they affectionately refer to Agatha Christie as "Grandma," which is not unrelated to the wisdom and softness she shows in her detective novels.
Agatha and Poirot
On August 6, 1975, the New York Times published an obituary titled "The Belgian detective Hercule Poirot has died." In fact, the great detective Poirot did not exist in the real world at all, he was just a character in Agatha Christie's writing. Why such a fictional character has attracted so much attention has to start with the creation of Agatha Christie's Poirot series of novels.
In 1916, before Agatha Christie had even begun her creative career, she was a volunteer working in a hospital, and this experience provided her with many creative inspirations and the urge to create a wise detective. Later, Poirot, a great detective who "has a very special appearance, is less than five feet and four inches tall, but has a very noble sentiment", appears. In Agatha Christie's pen, the image of the detective is so exaggerated that it can even be described as ridiculous, "His head is shaped like an egg, always leaning to one side." The upper lip has a straight and neat figure-eight beard." At the beginning of her writing, Agatha Christie never imagined that such a character would accompany her through her long career of fiction writing. She once complained that if she had known that her creative career was so long, she would not have designed the age of the great detective to be so old.
From The Strange Case of Stiles Manor to The Curtain, almost half of Agatha Christie's work is about Poirot. From the age of 30 until the year before her death, Agatha Christie's perception of life was revealed through Poirot. If in "The Strange Case of Stiles Manor", Poirot's appearance is to show off, in order to let the reader see Agatha Christie's own rich knowledge of chemistry and pharmacy, then Poirot's appearance after "Murder on the Orient Express" is more to adjust to the conflict between emotion and jurisprudence. When the author's own life encountered crises and setbacks, Poirot and the author were reborn.
In 1926, Agatha Christie's family was destroyed, the death of her mother, the betrayal of her husband, and a series of blows that made Agatha Christie nearly collapse. On a Friday night, she drove away from home alone, and for the eleven days since, no one knows where she went, and even she herself later forgot why she lived in a hotel far away from her house under a false name. After this, Agatha Christie wrote "The Secret on the Blue Express", in which there are husbands who do not quit, the time that never returns, the perfect alibi, which seems to be writing a criminal brushstroke, but everywhere is Agatha's own sigh, and Poirot's appearance gives a real answer to all this. In fact, Poirot solves not only the mysteries of the novel, but also the confusion of Agatha Christie's life. For the most part, Poirot is the embodiment of Agatha Christie.
In the novel, Poirot likes to bring together all the characters associated with the crime and identify the real murderer in a publicly pronounced sentence. Perhaps, this is exactly the justice that Agatha Christie wants to see, justice that is not deceived, that is not hidden.
Mystery writer and detective
Agatha Christie is one of the world's three great masters of speculative literature, the other two being Conan Doyle in Britain and Kiyoharu Matsumoto in Japan. In fact, since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been countless mystery writers, and many famous detectives have appeared in their works. Conan Doyle's Holmes needless to say, Poe's detective August Durbin is regarded as the first detective in the history of detective literature, and LeBron's Yassen Robin, who combines detective and thief, has a unique personal charm. In terms of influence, the wise Kogoro written by Edogawa's chaotic steps was transformed by manga artist Masashi Aoyama Aoyama into the sometimes confused and sometimes sober Maori Kogoro in "Detective Conan", and no one knows it.
In just over a hundred years, so many detective writers and great detectives have appeared. In many detective novels, people follow the detective to uncover the mystery to find the real culprit.
In fact, China also has its own great detectives. In recent years, the costume detective drama "Detective Di Renjie" has become popular, once again arousing people's interest in domestic detective novels. In fact, detective novels have been very developed as early as the Republic of China period. In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, Lin Shu (1852-1924) translated a number of detective novels, including the story of Sherlock Holmes. Cheng Xiaoqing (1893-1976), the "father of Chinese detective fiction", portrayed a local detective, Hawthorne. Interestingly, Cheng Xiaoqing also specially arranged for Hawthorne, the Chinese Sherlock Holmes, to be an assistant similar to Watson's Bao Lang, the two people with very different personalities, and both were jealous and hateful, setting off a detective fever in the literary circles of the Republic of China. (Wu Chen)
Source: Hainan Daily