A Talent to Deceive

A Talent to Deceive: An Appreciation of Agatha Christie by Robert Barnard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Robert Barnard is one of my favorite creators of detective fiction (if you haven't read Fete Fatale, do so immediately.) A graduate of Balliol, he is not your run-of-the-mill mystery writer. He has clearly thought about the genre and the best practitioners of the art.

In A Talent to Deceive he turns his attention to Agatha Christie, telling a bit about her life, analyzing her style, looking at the sorts of characters she creates, and describing her two most famous detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. He tries to get to the nugget of gold that makes her books better than most of the others of the classic period and the best of her books the very best of all detective stories.

This is not heavy literary criticism. It is lightly written for a book with so much information and insight. It will make you want to go back and re-read some of your favorite Christie mysteries so you can watch for the techniques she uses to bamboozle her reader.

2011 No 164