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Agatha Christie's Poirot Short Stories

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Peg H:
I too am a fan of Miss Marple.  :) On screen, Helen Hayes has my vote for the best Miss Marple.  I never cared for Poirot either until I watched David Suchet portray him.

Peg H

Ingrid:
Margaret Rutherford.  By a mile.

Not that she was anything like Miss Marple in the books.  She was what Miss Marple might have been.

James:
Geraldine McEwan's new interpretation of Miiss Marple on TV here in the UK clicks all the right icons for me. She plays the detective with a knowing smile as if she had a past. In fact, in the new TV series it is stated that she had a lover - and a married one at that - who was killed in World War 1.

I doubt if Miss Marple would have been half so knowing about human nature and what made people tick if she hadn't lived a bit when she was young, and that's why I always found Margaret Rutherford or Joan Hickson so unsatisfactory. They looked as if they had been born dried up and spinsterish.

As the perfect anitidote to Miss Marple, I do enjoy the Agatha Raisin books. Here again we have an unmarried woman (in her 50s) living in a cosy country village solving crimes - but what a difference! Lusting after all the eligible men in the village - cheating in the baking competitions - getting married to her next door neighbour before he jaunts off to France to become a monk - then finding another man to give her a good time.

The books are wickedly good fun.

B L McAllister:

--- Quote from: CathyJ on March 20, 2007, 01:01:15 PM ---The last time I read any Poirot was in a mystery reading group several years ago, and he didn't hold up well for me, but perhaps I should try the short stories.  In the novel we read in the reading group (don't remember which one, now), Poirot struck me as an annoying egomaniac.  I don't remember hating him when I read Christie 30 years earlier.

I liked Miss Marple.

Cathy

--- End quote ---

It's certainly true that Miss Marple is no egomaniac.  However, quite a few of the "standard" fictional detectives are egomaniacs, starting with Sherlock Holmes and certainly including Nero Wolfe.  Just because I can't think of another one right now doesn't mean there aren't any more.  I got over the "annoyance" part while stil  reading Holmes, and eventually decided they were egomaniacs because first of all, their writers did give them unusually capable minds (to say the least), and second, they'd have to be pretty stupid not to notice their own abilities.  (I found them a nice  change from the Superman comics I read as a child: Superman, for all his superpowers, had nothing mental to be egomaniacal about.)

Matthew S.:

--- Quote from: Ingrid on March 20, 2007, 05:04:36 PM ---Margaret Rutherford.  By a mile.

Not that she was anything like Miss Marple in the books.  She was what Miss Marple might have been.

--- End quote ---

Did you know that Dame Agatha did not like Dame Rutherford for the role of Miss Marple.  In fact, she wanted Joan Hickman, who incidently, played a cameo in one of the Rutherford Marple movies.  Years later Christie got her wish - posthumously.

For myself, I have always thought that Gideon Fell would make a great TV movie.  Did you know that John Dickson Carr's Dr. Gideon Fell was based on a real life person?  G. K. Chesterton, author of the Father Brown mysteries.

And for what it's worth, I think David Suchet did for Hercule Poirot what Jeremy Brett did for Sherlock Holmes - made him real.

Matthew S.

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