I am a voracious reader of the most convoluted and lexiphanic texts – yet, there is one author I prefer to most. She gives me the greatest pleasure and leaves me tranquil and craving for more when I am through devouring one of her countless tomes. A philosopher of the mundane, a scholar of death, an exquisite chronicler of decay and decadence – she is Dame Agatha Christie. I spend as much time wondering what so mesmerizes me in her pulp fiction as I do trying to decipher her deliciously contorted stratagems.
First, there is the claustrophobia. Modernity revolves around the rapid depletion of our personal spaces – from pastures and manors to cubicles and studio apartments. Christie – like Edgar Ellen Poe before her – imbues even the most confined rooms with endless opportunities for vice and malice, where countless potential scenarios can and do unfold kaleidoscopically. A Universe of plots and countervailing subplots which permeate even the most cramped of her locations. It is nothing short of consummate magic.
Then there is the realization of the ubiquity of our pathologies. In Christie’s masterpieces, even the champions of...