Queering agatha christie revisiting the golden age of detective fiction

Queering Agatha Christie J.C Bernthal Revisiting the Golden Age of Detective Fiction Gene ral E di tor: C live B loom Crime Files Series Editor Clive Bloom Professor Emeritus Middlesex University London United Kingdom Since its invention in the nineteenth century, detective fiction has never been more popular In novels, short stories, films, radio, television and now in computer games, private detectives and psychopaths, poisoners and overworked cops, tommy gun gangsters and cocaine criminals are the very stuff of modern imagination, and their creators one mainstay of popular consciousness Crime Files is a ground-breaking series offering scholars, students and discerning readers a comprehensive set of guides to the world of crime and detective fiction Every aspect of crime writing, detective fiction, gangster movie, true-crime exposé, police procedural and post-colonial investigation is explored through clear and informative texts offering comprehensive coverage and theoretical sophistication More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14927 J.C. Bernthal Queering Agatha Christie Revisiting the Golden Age of Detective Fiction J.C. Bernthal Independent Scholar, Norwich, United Kingdom Crime Files ISBN 978-3-319-33532-2 ISBN 978-3-319-33533-9 DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33533-9 (eBook) Library of Congress Control Number: 2016951265 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made Cover illustration: © Francois Roux / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Elements of Chap were originally published under the title “‘Every Healthy Englishman Longed to Kick Him’: Masculinity and Nationalism in Agatha Christie’s Cards on the Table” in Clues: A Journal of Detection, Vol 32, No 2, 2014 by McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers This project would not have been possible without funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to whom many thanks I would like to thank Vike Martina Plock, Jana Funke, Lisa Downing, Nicola Humble and Sian Harris for their priceless insights and guidance at various stages Christine Faunch and Hannah Lowry were wonderfully helpful with archive preparation Thanks to Brittain Bright, Sarah Burton and Chia-Ying Wu, who generously allowed access to their unpublished research This project has benefited from the expertise of great figures in the Agatha Christie community: thanks to Tom Adams, Jared Cade, John Curran, Sophie Hannah, P.D. James, and Mathew and Lucy Prichard The frustrations of writing have been greatly tempered by the love and support of family: thank you to Gerald Pinner, Jenny, Carl, Deanna, Sam and Viola Bernthal I am deeply grateful to the editors at Palgrave Macmillan who have worked on or supported this monograph: Clive Bloom, Benjamin Doyle and April James Final thanks to Alan Hooker, who has been the greatest support of all v CONTENTS 1 Introduction Constructing Agatha Christie 25 English Masculinity and Its Others 75 Femininity and Masquerade 121 Queer Children, Crooked Houses 161 Queering Christie on Television 213 Conclusion 263 Bibliography 271 Index 299 vii CHAPTER Introduction When Agatha Christie died in 1976, she was the best-selling novelist in history Her appeal was widely discussed at the time, and has been subsequently Early commentators were apt to agree with the crime fiction historian Julian Symons, who put Christie’s “permanence” down to “the comfort of the familiar”.1 According to Symons, the formulaic nature of Christie’s puzzle-based detective fiction, combined with her stereotyped characters and picturesque middle-class settings, created a literary landscape that was unlikely to shock or surprise—a reassuringly conservative world view By the same token, Symons acknowledged a limited audience: “Few feminists or radicals are likely to read her.”2 Nonetheless, familiarity does not breed certainty, and “feminists and radicals” have long noted something playful or even subversive in Christie’s conservatism.3 For one thing, any “fictional world—however [familiar]— where almost all the players are [murder] suspects”, and most characters are hiding something, “hardly suggests a society at peace with itself”.4 Christie, touted by her publishers as “the Queen of Crime”, has become synonymous with her branch of crime fiction, to the extent that her name appears in the Oxford English Dictionary definition of “whodunit” In that genre, it is a truism that few characters present themselves as they “really” are By the end of the narrative, the detective will have assigned identity labels—guilty/innocent and so on—to a motley collection of individuals Although these characters and their surroundings are recognizable to even casual readers, as are the plots they inhabit, when such limited “types” © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 J.C Bernthal, Queering Agatha Christie, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33533-9_1 J.C BERNTHAL are repeated in different arrangements over sixty-six novels and hundreds of other texts, the effect can be disorienting The murderer might be an elderly colonel “type” in one book, but that “type” may describe the victim in the next; the combination of identities varies Far from being safe in its familiarity, an Agatha Christie novel notions towards fear of disorder and uncertainty in recognition Here, the detective resembles the figure of the doctor as described by the historian and philosopher Michel Foucault: an authority figure who reads the human body, identifies and categorizes “diseases” (or, in the detective’s case, clues) and finally declares what will become accepted as “natural truth” about the individual.5 Several theorists have built on Foucault’s insights and set to “queering” modern culture, pointing out that without the authority of official identity categories, human behaviour would be defined very differently Figures such as Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick have critiqued apparently “natural” ways of categorizing human beings For example, Butler has revealed gender and biological sex to be “performative”, part of a social script that owes more to people enacting it than to any natural authenticity, and Sedgwick has explored ways of registering human sexuality beyond, or more appropriately than, the gay/straight binary.6 This project starts with a rarely acknowledged similarity between puzzle-based detective fiction and the writings of queer theorists: both present human identities as constructed within their given contexts Queer theorists’ insights can afford new readings of Christie’s novels and short stories as texts with queer potential That is, the texts can be read as spaces in which presumptions about human identity are exposed, undermined and renegotiated Drawing parallels between queer theory and questions of identity in Christie’s detective fiction means rethinking the relevance of a body of work, once dismissed as escapist and “ephemeral”.7 This study has a twofold relevance On the one hand, it provides a new reading of Christie, acknowledging an historically unique context of change, development and adaption Social customs, codes and orders came under unprecedented scrutiny in the context of two world wars and advances in technology and communication, while the necessity of change was underscored by an increasing awareness that nothing was stable; that little if anything about individuals and their worlds could be “known” On the other hand, as the first full queer reading of a “Golden Age” detective novelist, this book expands queer notions of archive and canonicity Despite the diversification of queer theory in the twenty-first century, 290 BIBLIOGRAPHY Prichard, Mathew “Introduction”, in Agatha Christie: The Grand 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BIBLIOGRAPHY ——— “The Unexpected Guest” (London: Samuel French, 1958) Crofts, Freeman Wills The Cask (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1952) Devendish, Ross (dir.) “The Mysterious Affair at Styles”, Agatha Christie’s Poirot, 3.1 (LWT, 1990) Broadcast on ITV on 16 Sep 1990 Doctor Who BBC television series (2005-present) Durrell, Lawrence The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea (London: Faber and Faber, 2012) Elyot, Kevin “The Day I Stood Still” in Elyot: Four Plays (London: Nick Hern, 2004), 159-248 ——— “Forty Winks” (London: Nick Hern, 2004) ——— “My Night With Reg” in Elyot: Four Plays (London: Nick Hern, 2004), 73-158 Ertz, Susan Julian Probert (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1931) Family Allowances Act, 1945 Ferguson, Rachel The Brontes Went to Woolworths (London: Bloomsbury, 2009) Gasnier, Louis J and Donald MacKenzie (dir.s) The Perils of Pauline (General Film Company, 1924) Haggard, H. Rider King Solomon’s Mines (London: Cassell and Company, 1907) Heyer, Georgette A 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Legally Blonde (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 2001) MacDonald, Hettie (dir.) “Curtain”, Agatha Christie’s Poirot, 13.5 (ITV Studios, 2013) Broadcast on ITV1 on 13 Nov 2013 Marsh, Ngaio Opening Night (London: Collins, 1951) McCloy, Helen The One That Got Away (New York: William Morrow, 1945) Moore, David (dir.) “Sad Cypress”, Agatha Christie’s Poirot, 9.2 (Granada, 2003) Broadcast on ITV1 on 26 Dec 2006 Mosse, George Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York: Fertig, 1985) Niblo, Fred (dir.) The Mysterious Lady (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1928) Orczy, Emmuska Lady Molly of Scotland Yard (London: Cassell and Company, 1912) Partners in Crime, BBC television series (Endor Productions, 2015) Patrick, Q “Portrait of a Murderer.” In Rogue’s Gallery: The Great Criminals of Modern Fiction, ed.by Ellery Queen (London: Faber, [n.d., probably 1944/1945]), 47-67 Poe, Edgar Allan “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Project Gutenberg, 2010 Accessed online (12 Nov 2012): http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/932 ——— “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, ed Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America, 1984), 397-431 BIBLIOGRAPHY 297 Pirkis, Catherine Louisa The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detectivem (London: Hutchinson, 1894) Saussure, Ferdinand de Course in General Linguistics Eds Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye Trans Roy Harris (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court 1983) Sayers, Dorothy L Busman’s Honeymoon (London: Gollancz, 1937) ——— Gaudy Night (London: Gollancz, 1935) ——— Unnatural Death (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2003) ——— The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2003) Seastrom, Victor (dir.) The Divine Woman (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1928) Shankland, Tom (dir.) “The Mirror Crack”d From Side to Side”, Agatha Christie’s Marple, 5.4 (ITV Studios, 2010) Broadcast on ITV1 on Jan 2011 Shaw, Lulie A “Following Up Adoptions.” British Journal of Psychiatric Adoption 2.8 (1953) Shelley, Mary Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus Ed Maurice Hindle Revised edn (London, New York, Camberwell: Penguin, 2003) Sherlock BBC television series (2009-present) Smith, Dodie I Capture the Castle (London: Vintage, 2012) Stevenson, Robert Louis The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror (London: Longman, Green, and Company, 1886) Strickland, John (dir.) “A Murder is Announced”, Agatha Christie’s Marple, 1.4 (Granada, 2004) Broadcast on ITV1 on Jan 2005) Taylor, Elizabeth Palladian (London: Virago, 2011) ——— The Sleeping Beauty (London: Virago, 2012) ——— A Wreath of Roses (London: Virago, 2011) Tutton, Diana Guard Your Daughters (New York, Chicago, Dallas: Macmillan, 1953) Unwin, Paul (dir.), “The Sittaford Mystery”, Agatha Christie’s Marple, 2.4 (Granada, 2006) Broadcast on ITV1 on 30 Apr 2006 Viveiros, Craig (dir.), And Then There Were None, BBC miniseries (2015) Broadcast on BBC1 on 27 Dec 2015, Jan 2016, and 10 Jan 2016 Walliams, David Camp David (London: Michael Joseph, 2012) Walpole, Horace The Castle of Otranto (London, Paris, New  York: Cassell and Company, 1901) Wentworth, Patricia Grey Mask (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1928) ARCHIVES CITED Agatha Christie Business Correspondence Archive (Special Collections, University of Exeter) Files EUL MS 99/1/1940, EUL MS 99/1/1948, EUL MS 99/1/1949, and EUL MS 99/1/1951 Mass Observation Online: British Social History, 1837-1972 (University of Sussex, accessed online: www.massobservation.amdigital.com) Box 3, 3-3H. Files 2018 and 3107 298 BIBLIOGRAPHY Penguin Archive (Special Collections, University of Bristol) File DM1819/10/3 Records of the Central Criminal Court (National Archives, Kew) Files CRIM 1/638 and CRIM 1/639 Records of the Ministry of Munitions (National Archives, Kew) File MUN 5/70/324/22 INDEX A Absent in the Spring, 58, 59, 74n168 adaptation of AC for television (see under individual titles) theory of, 217 adoption, 17, 84, 162, 164, 165, 190, 191, 195–7, 199 Agatha Christie Limited, 213, 214, 216, 224, 266 Agatha Christie’s Marple, 17, 213, 215, 220, 237, 238 Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, 20n27, 117n102, 207n94 Agatha Christie’s Poirot, 17, 213, 215, 220 Ahmed, Sara, 12, 96, 201 alibi, 16, 60, 61, 135, 138, 150, 153 Allingham, Margery, 29, 39, 55, 78, 169, 208n100 Altman, Dennis, 7, 22n40, 88, 245 A Murder is Announced, 158n97, 236, 239, 264 an autobiography, 19n9, 67n49 And Then There Were None (1939 novel), 126, 187, 251n3, 266 And Then There Were None (2015 television film), 214 antisocial thesis See Edelman, Lee B Bargainnier, Earl F., 61, 129, 242, 245, 250 Barnard, Robert, 26, 30, 52 Bayard, Pierre, 5, 6, 50, 135 Beresford, Tommy and Tuppence (fictional characters), 236 bisexuality, 258n119 Bodley Head, 34, 35, 37, 51 Booth, Wayne C., 26, 55 Bowers, Dorothy, 104 British Empire See imperialism Butler, Judith, 2, 10, 19n6, 28, 76, 79–81, 101, 107, 123, 128, 129, 140, 151, 165, 201, 260, 268 Note: Page numbers with “n” denote notes © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 J.C Bernthal, Queering Agatha Christie, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33533-9 299 300 INDEX C Cards on the Table, 15, 17, 27, 56, 64n14, 76, 91, 93, 229 Chandler, Raymond, 52, 66n28, 84 childhood, 17, 83, 96, 102, 110, 162, 163, 165–7, 170–2, 174, 179–83, 187, 196, 201 Christie, Agatha characters (see under individual names) early life, 5, 30, 34, 41, 153, 200 marriage to Archibald Christie, 163, 171, 195 marriage to Max Mallowan, 62 professional life, 27 publications (see under individual titles) writing as Mary Westmacott, 53, 54, 59 Cixous, Hélène, 147, 149, 159n109 clues, 2, 4, 6, 13, 31, 38, 50, 88, 122, 126, 130, 131, 136, 142, 158n89, 169, 186, 222, 223, 236 Collins, Wilkie, 33, 36, 37 conservatism, 1, 7, 8, 18, 26, 30, 48, 163, 188, 200, 215, 220, 224, 234, 244, 249–51, 263 Crooked House, 16, 161–211 Curran, John, 3, 38, 54, 101, 182, 199 D Dead Man’s Folly, 61, 64n14 Dear, Nick, 229 Death in the Clouds, 61, 118n122, 206n83 Death on the Nile, 17, 91, 221, 224, 227, 228, 256n87 de Beauvoir, Simone, 12, 122, 153n1 detective fiction critical reception of, 267 ‘Golden Age’ of, 2–4, 12, 13, 228, 267 queer theory and, Dickens, Charles, 33, 167, 177, 218 Doan, Laura, 11, 18, 81, 114n57, 214, 240 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 27, 32, 33, 37, 39, 48, 67n49, 76, 85, 130 See also Holmes, Sherlock; Watson, John drag, 10, 16, 97, 103, 123, 128, 129, 132, 152, 153 Draper, Ruth, 135 Dumb Witness, 29 Dyer, John, 237, 238, 249 E Edelman, Lee, 162, 165–7, 180 Edwardian period, 33, 82, 85 Elephants Can Remember, 60 Eliot, George, 55 Eliot, T. S., 39 Ellis, Havelock See sexology Elyot, Kevin, 224–7, 235, 247, 249, 256n83 Englishness, 78, 79, 82, 83, 90, 98, 112n4 See also nationalism eugenics, 82, 182, 267 Evans, Mary Ann See Eliot, George Evil Under the Sun, 16, 24n92, 123, 129 F feminism, 10, 56, 123, 124, 208n104 First World War, 15, 35, 82, 87, 88, 108, 267 Foucault, Michel, 2, 9, 12, 83, 143, 189, 219, 233 Freud, Sigmund, 127, 137, 145, 166, 170, 180, 181, 187, 188, 218 Fu-Manchu (fictional character), 95 INDEX G Garber, Marjorie, 126 Garbo, Greta, 132, 137 gay rights activism, and the closet, 234, 247, 248, 250 and same sex marriage, 165 Gill, Gillian, 8, 30 Girard, René, 80 Green, Julius, 114n47, 172 Gregg, Hubert, 263 H Halberstam, J. Jack, 12, 86, 87 Harlow, Jean, 137, 140, 157n83 Hastings, Arthur (fictional character), 15, 36, 47–9, 61, 76, 78, 80, 86, 87, 90, 91, 93, 97, 124, 130, 131, 135, 136, 139, 141, 143, 145, 152, 221, 242, 264 heredity, 17, 163, 164, 167, 178, 179, 181, 182, 185, 186, 190, 191, 195, 196, 198, 200, 211n145 heterosexuality, 9, 11, 12, 79, 80, 87, 95, 132, 165, 174, 199, 213, 220, 221, 225, 227, 230, 233, 234, 238, 240, 246 Holmes, Sherlock (fictional character), 15, 32, 33, 36, 37, 39, 40, 47, 48, 50, 65, 76, 80, 82, 85, 86, 111, 115, 130–2, 186, 255n67 See also Doyle, Arthur Conan homosexuality and camp, 106, 249 coding of, 235 Houlbrook, Matt, 103 Humble, Nicola, 5, 14, 32, 35, 54, 81, 89, 103, 139, 164, 168, 169, 184, 185 Hutcheon, Linda, 44, 46, 70n107, 217 301 I imperialism, 92, 94, 100 incest, 13, 17, 162, 170, 172, 173, 175, 176, 178, 179, 192, 199, 205n74, 226 Irigaray, Luce, 127, 155n36 J Jagose, Annamarie, 9, 22n44 Jameson, Fredric, 92, 117n101 James, P. D., 6, 28, 124 K Katz, Jonathan Ned, 12 Kipling, Rudyard, 95 Knepper, Marty S., 5, 123, 154n9, 179 Knight, Stephen, 88, 213 Knox, Ronald, 4, 19n16 L Lane, Allen, 24n88, 29, 34 Lane, John, 38 See Bodley Head Leach, Edmund, 168 Leavis, Q. D., 40, 56 Lehmann, Rosamond, 97, 103 Light, Alison, 5, 78, 86, 89, 124, 215, 217 literary marketplace, 32, 54 Lord Edgware Dies, 16, 78, 101, 123, 125, 129, 134, 141, 153, 221, 255n63 M Makinen, Merja, 5, 20n29, 33, 47, 56, 60, 86, 124, 125, 133, 144, 267 Marple, Jane (fictional character), 3, 51, 52, 154n9, 172–4, 176–9, 181, 192–8 302 INDEX Marsh, Ngaio, 29, 39, 141, 188, 209n122 masquerade, 5, 16, 121–59, 161, 165, 265 Massad, Joseph, 95 Mass Observation Archive, 168, 204n47 McEwan, Gerladine, 239 medicalization of, 91, 267 See also gay rights; queer theory; sexology middlebrow studies, Mitchell, Gladys, 12 modernism, 66n43 modernity, 5, 16, 52, 124, 163, 169, 229, 245 Mrs McGinty’s Dead, 27, 59, 64n14, 208n106 Murder in Mesopotamia, 41, 70n102, 142 Murder is Easy, 16, 76, 101, 102 Murder on the Orient Express, 21n32, 216, 221, 255n65 N nationalism, 107, 215 See also Englishness nostalgia, 17, 168, 213, 215, 220, 228, 236, 237, 241, 250, 251, 266 O Oliver, Ariadne (fictional character), 15, 28, 52–63, 73n155, 92, 99, 117n103, 229, 230, 257n108, 265 One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, 78, 208n106 Orczy, Baroness Emmuska, 33 Ordeal by Innocence, 191, 192, 210n133 orientalism, 15, 76, 92–100, 104, 230 othering, 78, 91, 105, 131 P Partners in Crime (television series), 238, 266 Peril at End House, 65n20, 90 Plain, Gill, 22n48, 126, 146, 151, 267 Poe, Edgar Allan, 50, 67n48, 199 Poirot, Hercule (fictional character), 3, 15–17, 36–40, 47–9, 51, 55, 57–61, 75–80, 85–91, 93–5, 97–101, 110, 111, 120n120, 124, 129–33, 135, 137–9, 141, 142, 146–50, 152, 172, 213–15, 217, 218, 220–36, 238, 239, 242, 250, 252, 264, 266 postmodernism, 126, 217 Prichard, Mathew, 53, 216, 238–40 psychoanalysis, 139, 179, 265 Punch Magazine, Q queer activism, See also gay rights; queer theory queer theory, 2, 8–12, 18, 19n8, 26, 28, 165 See also antisocial thesis; feminism; queer activism R rhetoric, 16, 82, 165, 190, 265 Rich, Adrienne, 55, 218 Riviere, Joan, 123, 127, 132, 139 Rowland, Susan, 3, 30, 39, 78, 124, 125, 163, 164, 179 Rutherford, Margaret, 216 INDEX S Sayers, Dorothy L., 4, 7, 28, 29, 39, 48, 49, 51, 54, 58, 86, 88, 209n122 See also Wimsey, Lord Peter scapegoating, 76, 77, 92, 93, 110, 131 Second World War, 4, 12, 16, 76, 81, 95, 101, 105, 108, 146, 147, 161, 168, 169, 171, 181, 188, 190, 191, 199, 227, 242, 265, 267 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 2, 10, 11, 15, 31, 76, 80, 81, 84, 86, 91, 94, 161, 164, 165, 167, 186, 209n114, 233, 239, 240 sexology, 15, 76, 83, 84, 91 Sleeping Murder, 16, 162, 167, 171, 173, 177–9, 181, 183, 202n5 Smith, Sydney, 6, 7, 21n38 Snediker, Michael, 165 socialism, 7, 8, 226 Sontag, Susan, 131, 237, 238 Stein, Gertrude, 145, 159n102 stereotypes, 3, 5–8, 15, 17, 26, 28, 30, 31, 35, 37, 46, 47, 57, 60, 61, 76, 79–81, 84, 87–90, 93, 95, 100, 101, 111, 112, 127, 131, 134, 142, 149, 150, 201, 214, 215, 219, 222, 224, 227, 228, 230, 234, 235, 237–42, 244–51, 258m115, 263–6 Stockton, Kathryn Bond, 166, 167, 179, 181, 186–8, 190 Stonewall See gay rights Suchet, David, 120n137, 217, 220–4, 235 Symons, Julian, 1, 5, 18n1, 122, 268 T Taylor, Elizabeth (author), 171, 203n16 303 Tey, Josephine, 29 “The Affair at the Victory Ball”, 124 The Agatha Christie Hour, 25 theatricality, 122, 129, 148, 162, 192, 193, 195, 210n134, 237 The Big Four, 48, 87, 88, 91 The Body in the Library, 51, 57, 58, 72n148, 209n122, 235, 236 The Duchess of Malfi, 173, 202n5 the Garden of Eden, 228, 244 the Internet Movie Database, 234 “The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan”, 87 The Man in the Brown Suit, 15, 27, 39–47, 69n101, 121, 153 The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side, 239 The Mousetrap, 110, 179, 208n106, 215 The Moving Finger, 101, 104, 239, 241–9, 260n162 The Murder at the Vicarage, 3, 19n12, 142, 236 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 6, 15, 20n19, 27, 47–52, 67n52, 206n83 The Murder on the Links, 48 The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 27, 68n74 The Scarlet Pansy, 103, 118n122 The Sittaford Mystery, 239 They Do it with Mirrors, 16, 162, 210n134 Thompson, Laura, 21n38, 31, 48, 53, 59, 124 Three Act Tragedy, 22n46, 101 “Three Blind Mice”, 16, 24n91, 76, 101, 105, 109, 110, 179, 208n106 304 INDEX U Unfinished Portrait, 53, 54, 59, 72n144, 75 V victim, 2, 13, 16, 22n44, 48, 58, 76, 77, 82, 92, 98, 100, 101, 109–11, 122, 123, 126, 135, 140, 146–52, 178–80, 184, 192, 195, 215, 218, 225, 226, 229, 231, 232, 234, 248, 265 Victorian period, 168 von Krafft-Ebing, Rupert See homosexuality; sexology W Walliams, David, 237, 238 Walton, Samantha, 267, 269n13 Watson, John (fictional character), 49 See also Doyle, Arthur Conan Westmacott, Mary See under Christie, Agatha Wilde, Oscar, 80, 84, 115n61, 246 Wimsey, Lord Peter (fictional character), 73n155, 86, 88–90 See also Sayers, Dorothy L Woolf, Virginia, 25, 27, 32, 40, 47, 48, 56, 64n13, 66n46, 134, 156n67, 157n70 Y York, R. A., 21n29, 126 Z Žižek, Slavoj, 77, 112n6 ... attention towards the artificial nature of taxonomized identity itself TREATMENTS OF CHRISTIE TO DATE Before going further, we must define the Golden Age of British detective fiction Christie is... considering Christie titles published during and immediately after the Golden Age While detective fiction fashions evolved, Christie remained the market leader for decades.20 With the cutoff date of 1952,... extend queer theories’ range and relevance Christie is not the only, nor the most obvious, detective novelist of the Golden Age to draw attention towards the staginess and unreality of daily life