The Queen of Crime

I'm not a fan of the crime novel, in fact the closest I've really come to the genre is the Roman Mysteries series by Caroline Lawrence. Recently a friend lent me a pile of novels by Agatha Christie and I've been dipping in and out.

I've watched, with half an eye, several episodes of Poirot (David Suchet) and Miss Marple (Joan Hickson) and debated with Mr Norfolkbookworm as to who really is Miss Marple - he says Margaret Rutherford. However despite being a voracious reader all my life I didn't 'do' Christie at any point in my teens or twenties. This surprises me on reflection as I loved playing Cluedo...

I've started to rectify this now and have read And Then There Were None, The Body in the Library, Murder on the Orient Express and the Mystery of the Blue Train recently.

Now I wonder am I missing something? They are an enjoyable way to pass my lunch breaks - they don't take a lot of concentration so I can read them in the noisy staffroom - but that is about it. I am finding them, well, a bit daft really. The denouements are often so convoluted that I am more confused after them than I was before, I've usually worked out 'who dunnit' but not the reason why and often that is no clearer after it has been explained to me!

There must be some reason why they are so popular, and I am finding them quite addictive (I hope to swap the pile I have for another stack at the weekend) but I have to confess to being more interested in Christie's life than her fiction...