Landscapes of Murder: Exploring Geographies of Crime in the Novels of Agatha Christie

Abstract

Mystery novels and literary geography have not often intersected. Crime fiction, for instance, has frequently been examined in terms of temporality, rather than in terms of spatiality. Todorov, in this respect, argues that crime narratives, in particular the clue-puzzle forms, are constructed on a temporal duality: the story of the crime – tells what really happened, and the story of the detective’s investigation – the way the detective/narrator presents it to the reader. The two stories eventually converge when the sleuth unmasks the murderer (Todorov 1977). The aim of the research is to read Agatha Christie’s whodunit mysteries as centrally concerned with space, considering that, to quote Geoffrey Hartman, “to solve a crime in detective stories means to give it an exact location” (Hartman 2004). The study focuses on the spatial dimension of Agatha Christie’s detective fiction, shedding a light on her domesticated milieus, both real and fictive. The first to be analysed is rural England, presenting both the narrations where the English country house – a Victorian or a Georgian mansion – functions as the only setting prevailing over the local geography, and her fictional villages, apparent idyllic paradises which offer no refuge from the cruelties of the world. Similarly, the study takes into consideration the urban settings with a special attention devoted to the city of London which becomes the epitome of a privileged lifestyle. The city space appears as dangerous as the country side village. Subsequently the research moves outside the British borders, but within the confines of the enormous British Empire, with narratives set in foreign and exotic geographies. The study analyses Christie’s “colonial” novels, where the Middle East is portrayed as a space of otherness. In conclusion, the research investigates the train as a non-place, working on those narratives set in transit. All of these settings present a precise point in common, what has come to be called the closed circle of suspects. Whether in England or in the Middle East, the accent is laid on the domestic sphere of the setting, which conveys the uncanny feeling that the murderer is “one of us”. [edited by author]