There’s a theme to The Mystery of Mrs. Christie and it’s, “Maybe don’t fuck with your wife when she invents unsolveable ways to murder people for a living.” In a lot of ways this book is a historical Gone Girl, which normally would be my jam, but I found the suspense disrupted by the fact that this is based on a real event and I already knew what happened. Add to that, we spend a lot of time in her husband Archie Christie’s point of view, and frankly that’s a place no one would want to be.
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie is based on a real, widely publicized event. Agatha Christie disappeared for eleven days in 1926. She was planning on going to Yorkshire for the weekend, but never arrived at her destination. Her car was found abandoned on the side of the road, her luggage inside, as well as a winter coat it was assumed she would have been wearing due to the temperature outside.
Her disappearance was widely covered by the press, and
Agatha was eventually located at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel where she claimed to have suffered from amnesia. She had registered at the hotel under the surname of her husband’s mistress–the same mistress he was divorcing her to marry.
If you don’t know what happened to Agatha Christie, this book will work much, much better as a mystery. If, like me, you are familiar with the story then the suspense comes not from the “what happened” but rather the “why.” I wish I had entered into the book with no knowledge of the case because I think I would have enjoyed it so much more.
The novel is split between two parts, Agatha’s POV in the past and Archie’s POV during her disappearance.
Agatha Christie came from a poor, upper class family when she met Archibald Christie, a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps who fought in WWI. Archie was charming and dynamic and sparks flew, leading Agatha to leave another man to marry him. From there, things went downhill.
Agatha’s sections of the novel are largely about a marriage that is doomed from the start. Almost immediately Archie’s true personality emerges, one of a whiney, petulant, entitled man who feels he is constantly the victim. It doesn’t help that Agatha’s mother, whom she is extremely close to, gives her the shit advice that she should appease Archie rather than pushing him out a window like he deserves. For example, when Agatha becomes pregnant, Archie worries that the baby will take her attention away from him and she promises to put the child second to all his needs.
Like I said, right out a window.
Archie’s sections of the book take place during Agatha’s disappearance. We know from a letter she’s left him that She’s Had Enough. Beyond that Archie has no idea where she is or what happened to her. Working on the “husband usually did it” theory, the police look into Archie and he’s so incredibly bad and dumb at pretending to be The Real Victim Here that I cannot even. Here he’s talking to his mom after he did an interview with the press:
“Did you think that telling people that you and your wife routinely spend the weekend apart would paint a pretty picture of your marriage, Archie?” She doesn’t wait for him to answer before continuing. “And did you think that announcing you didn’t want to bother with the press and all the–I quote–’relentless’ phone calls you receive would endear you to readers?”
“Yes?” he answers quizzically. Hopefully.
“Can’t you see that makes you sound heartless and unfeeling? A man who cares about the whereabouts of his missing wife would take every phone call and every tip and be grateful for it. Don’t you understand?” He hears his mother inhale deeply, as if forestalling tears. “And to raise the newspaper gossip about possible arguments between you and Agatha is damnably foolish. It gives credence to the rumors about the state of your marriage where no credence should be due. If you weren’t worried about that gossip, you wouldn’t have mentioned it.”
Has he ever heard his mother swear before? He doesn’t know what to do–apologize, rationalize his behavior, yell–so he says, “That wasn’t what I intended.”
She is quiet, an unnatural state for a woman brimming with opinions. After a long, silent pause she says, “If anyone was considering whether or not you were guilty of your wife’s disappearance and unsure, Archie, you went and convinced them in the Daily Mail.”
So while Archie bumbles around drawing attention to himself because he’s so narcissistic he cannot possibly understand how other people would see him as anything other than a victim, we get Agatha’s chapters from the past detailing the death of her marriage.
It’s a death by a thousand cuts, a thousand criticisms from Archie–about her weight, her cooking, the fact that her successful mystery writing career overshadows his own. The only thing that saves these chapters from being unbearable is we also get insight into how her mind works as she is plotting her mysteries. We see how her work during WWI helps inform her early writing. She explains her first story to Archie:
“Yes, it’s a story about a rich, elderly woman who’s been poisoned at her home, a manor house, while several possible culprits are staying with her as guests. One of the houseguests, a soldier by the name of Arthur Hastings recovering from the war, enlists the help of his friend, a Belgian refugee by the name of Hercule Poirot.” I explained to him how the story and characters unfolded for me during the slow hours at the apothecary, in particular how my detective evolved from my experience helping the group of Belgian refugees who’d settled in the parish of Tor after a harrowing escape from the Germans. But, I explained, once I’d conceived of Hercule Poirot, he’d grown on the page of his own accord, as if he were a real person.
Part of the reason I had a lackluster response to this book is that those segments about Agatha becoming a writer were fewer than the ones about Archie being an ass and her bending over backwards to accommodate him. It’s unquestionable emotional abuse and it was painful to see her endure it as the price of her marriage.
Added to that, the chapters inside Archie’s head made me want to push him out the aforementioned window even more. As I stated before, he’s a narcissist. He whines. He has little tantrums. He’s entirely unsympathetic and I can’t say I enjoyed reading from his POV, with the exception of the moments when the police or his family are explaining to him how incredibly dumb he’s being.
I also knew what really happened to Agatha, so the suspense was narrowed down to the “why” she disappeared and
one scene in Archie’s head was enough reason to justify getting the fuck away from this asshole.
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie isn’t a bad book by any means. It just lacked an element of suspense for me because I was already familiar with the case and I wasn’t in the mood to read about Archie Christie being an awful, entitled dude. I will admit that the ending is entirely satisfying though, if you have the fortitude to endure the Archie sections. I think readers unfamiliar with the case will ultimately enjoy it more.
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Didn’t Doctor Who explain the absence of Agatha Christie? Something to do with Wasp aliens I think
Christie’s case reminded me of a somewhat similar story of a disappearance attributed to amnesia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Robins, though Robins’ case (I used to visit his former home in Florida) seems somewhat more genuine. I wonder whether amnesia was something of a shorthand for a mental breakdown in the early 20th Century.
Can you recommend a good biography of Christie? Since I’m interested more in her actual story though this does sound like a good read.
I loved Agatha Christie’s books when I was younger, and have recently been listening to some of the audiobooks. I love the irony that the real life mystery of what happened will probably never be known.
BTW, I saw the movie Agatha in the theater with my mother 40+ (!) years ago and really enjoyed it. It presents as good a guess as any and still holds up.
I’m imagining an editor’s comment in the margin. “Story needs more defenestration.”
It’s always a challenge when books have real people ad characters, and the more recent and better we know them, the harder it is. I sort of liked the Biden/Obama mystery action book, but it made me uncomfortable that the author used these real living people as fictional characters. It seems intrusive.
Thank you for the review Elyse! It’s been a while since I read Agatha Christie. Instead, I’ve been watching and enjoying some movies in the ongoing Quarantimes crocheting Session. Since I’m rather particular about whom I let into my head I will skip this one.
Kate KF, I’d suggest reading her autobiography. It’s fascinating, and I loved getting glimpses of some of the things and people that informed her books, told with her own voice.
The two Christie bios I’d recommend would be by Laura Thompson, she’s good on Christie’s Westmacott books, and Janet Morgan. Both excellent although the Morgan is a bit dry. John Curran’s Secret Notebooks are fascinating for seeing how Christie worked.
After shedding Archie (she dumped him, kept the name), she married an archaeologist. She said it was wonderful – the older she got the more interesting she was to him.
Not really a bio of Christie, but excellent, is “A is for Arsenic” by Katherine Harkup. Harkup knows both her poisons and her Agatha Christie novels. (Spoilers are warned well before-hand, btw. Mostly she avoids them in the first place.)
But presumably, since all the insights into both Agatha and Archie are imaginary, it doesn’t so much give a view of how she came up with plots so much as how the author of the book imagined she came up with plots? Is this part based on real biographical detail
Popping up unhelpfully to recommend a song about Agatha Christie’s vanishing, “A Mysterious Disappearance” by Grasscut (British electronica/ambient), if you…for some reason like a soundtrack to your books.