Grandson reveals Agatha Christie's anti-Poirot trait.

The Booktaste blog by Cathy Macleod, weekending 29 Oct, 2010.
AGATHA CHRISTIE detested Hercule Poirot, her bestselling detective with the curly moustache and the little grey brain cells that turn clues into doom for the crims. Her attitude was no mystery when you consider her situation, as revealed by her grandson.

She would complain about having to churn out yet another Poirot, said Matthew Pritchard who received rights to his grandmother’s stories before her death in 1976. The best-selling crime author, 85 when she died, influenced the development of the mystery genre and her name today still attracts massive  readership and telly viewing. Poirot and Christie’s other bestknown detective, Miss Marple, consolidated the traditional English cosy, as opposed to the hardboiled stuff written in the United States.
Her murder mysteries always set a baffling puzzle and, more often than not, take place among an isolated circle of people, of whom one is the killer. Clues for the reader to spot and to ponder are scattered throughout, and all becomes clear in a final scene dominated by the detective.

Poirot’s haunting sway over his creator, according to Mr Pritchard in an interview with Britain’s Radio Times, made Agatha Christie want to “exorcise herself” away from this particular character. She came to think of the Belgian detective as her bread and butter, a necessary writing chore but not one to her liking.
She was never short of  ideas for books but some were inappropriate for Poirot, so she was ever keen to get away from him by writing different stories with new characters. But her agents and publishers, who were in charge of the pounds and pence, were keen on Poirot – he was her most popular character.

Of course, readers rather than publishers are an author’s main accomplices in creating the immortality of fictional characters. It is individual spending by the readers that add up to mass popularity. Happy reading! Posted by Cathy Macleod, weekending 29 Oct, 2010. www.booktaste.com