Movie Reviews for Writers: Agatha and the Truth of Murder

If you haven't watched any of the Agatha and... movies, you're missing out. They tell the fictionalized stories of what might have happened during the 11 days in which she was missing that began on Friday, December 3, 1926. If you haven't looked at this historically true "tabloid" time, it's well worth a little private study and started a large manhunt to find the missing author.

That said, this series of movies is just a movie maker's dreams of what could have happened during these 11 days. 

And that said, that doesn't diminish what these fun adventure romps have to say about the author and her writing. 

As one of the pre-eminent mystery writers of not just her lifetime but in the history of English-language writers, anything Dame Agatha had to learn is also of great importance to us lesser writers, particularly those who create mysteries. 

As the movie begins with a distraught Christie stymied with writer's block. She has learned that her readers have outsmarted her. They have figured out her pattern for her mysteries stories and have discovered a sort of "cheat" to predict the killer, although unearned. In other words, they learn to automatically pick out the least likely suspect... period. 

Along with her arguments with her (barely still) husband about their pending divorce, this realization hits her hard. How can she relearn how to write her stock and trade genre and outsmart her readers? How can she put the mystery back into her mysteries? If not, what's the point of telling mysteries, she wonders. 

Know this -- if you fall into repetitious patterns in your works, your readers will always, always, always find you out and discover the cheats you might not even realize yourself about your work, at least not consciously anyway. They will often figure out your cheats before you do. And they will keep you on your toes. It's not just a small press or indie publisher issue. It happens to the best-sellers and big 5 publishers too. How many times have I heard at conventions about a certain famous horror writer rushing his endings or a certain sci-fi writer telegraphing his endings from chapter 1 or a certain mystery writer who gives their most likely suspect the most character development. 

So, be careful and look for your own cheats and patterns before your readers learn them at your expense. 

So she turns to Arthur Conan Doyle for advice. He tells her his failsafe method for defeated writer's block -- "design a golf course." Taking at his word, rather than his metaphor, Christie arranges an appointment with Sir Hugh Persimmion, which doesn't go as she hoped:

Agatha Christie: I want to design a golf course.

Sir Hugh Persimmion: I see. Really?

Agatha Christie: Yes.

Sir Hugh Persimmion: Well, in that case, I'm afraid my answer's quite short. You can't.

Agatha Christie: Excuse me?

Sir Hugh Persimmion: [patronisingly] There isn't a golf club I know that would commission a design from a woman. I understand there has been a trend of late for ladies to golf. But really, the sheer complexity of a designer's task is beyond the capabilities of a woman. No matter how capable that woman is.

Agatha Christie: [smiling ingratiatingly] I see. I hadn't realised. But thinking about it, how could I have been so stupid? Imagine a woman being able to design the preamble to putting something small in a hole. A woman might just present the hole and have done. And where would be the fun in that? There'd be nothing to groom, for a start.

[she stands up]

Agatha Christie: [still smiling sweetly] Thank you for your time. It's been pointless.

Thus, when she is approached by Mabel Rogers, who seeks help in solving the cold case murder of her lover, Florence Nightingale Shore (based on a real-life murder), Agatha is able to find her own version of "design a golf course." So she goes undercover and sets up a sting to gather all the suspects together. Of course, nothing goes as planned (or else the movie wouldn't last ten minutes). 

I won't spoil any of the twists and turns, but suffice it to say that in treating the true murder like one of her literary murders, she makes quite a few false starts and wrong turns, eventually leading to a conversation between Christie and the actual detective investigating the case, where he tells her:

Detective Inspector Dicks: It's a shame the truth of murder doesn't lend itself to detective stories. I mean, it wouldn't be much good if the person most likely to have done it actually did it.

Agatha Christie: No. That would never work.

[stands up]

Agatha Christie: Time to go.

Detective Inspector Dicks: I just got comfy. Was it something I said?

Agatha Christie: No, Inspector. it's something I thought.

This exchange, of course, leads her to her final clue regarding the identity of the killer, and also to the key to figure out where to go with her new work in progress that had been stalling her and stifling her imagination. 

The lesson here is that as fiction writers we don't tell the actual truth -- we tell the illusion of truth. Yes, often fiction can tell more important, real truth than a mere history book, but it's always handled and taught and demonstrated through sleight of hand, not factual accuracy. Much like dialog skips the umms and uhs and pauses to collect our thoughts, fiction skips the unimportant to present the illusion of truth so that it can present real truth. (Oooh, sounds artsy and pretentious, right? Well, tough. It's still true. Every word.)

As writers, we take what we need from history, from reality, from fact, but we are never bound by it or locked into its every lockstep -- which, ironically isn't just a lesson the detective inadvertently teaches Christie, it's also a plot mechanism modeled by this film in imagining the events of the author's missing days.