People are often surprised to hear that I like Agatha Christie. I don’t know whether it’s because they themselves don’t like her writing or whether they think that I, language aficionada that I am, ought to have more cultivated reading tastes. But judging from their reactions, I guess her writing must be an acquired taste.
Admittedly, her language is typically utilitarian. She didn’t spend a lot of time on descriptions, attempting to paint beautiful backgrounds. Her concern appears to have been first and foremost with the construction of the mystery—creating an interesting set-up and then giving the reader enough information that they don’t feel cheated at the end but without giving the solution to the mystery away too early. Her secondary priorities seem to have been dialogue (which she used liberally) and keeping up her detective’s trademarks (Poirot’s mannerisms and his frequent comments about “little grey cells,” etc.).
Still, every once in a while Christie wrote something noticeably interesting, or funny, or pretty. Here is one of my favorite lines from Death in the Air. It describes what one of the characters thought of Poirot and his technique.
What an odd little man he was, hopping from subject to subject like a bird from one branch to another.
That’s one of the ways I imagine Poirot now: like a single-minded little bird, hopping around, pecking for information.