Murder May Be Easy But Working Out "Whodunnit" Isn't! (Murder Is Easy - Agatha Christie)

Member Name: keeperofthematri

Product:	Murder Is Easy - Agatha Christie
Date:	14/08/09 (336 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Main idea is interesting, although this is let down in execution.

Disadvantages: Poorly plotted & developed. Contrived motive & ending.

When I was about 15 I got into Agatha Christie in a big way & started to collect all of her books in the same way that I'd previously collected the Hardy Boys series &, before that, Enid Blyton. I haven't read the majority of them since I was a teenager, or perhaps in my early twenties but then, why I saw that "Murder Is Easy" was available to review on here & that nobody have reviewed it I decided to re-read it.


The author:

Agatha Christie was born in Torquay in 1890. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair At Styles, which introduced the now famous Hercule Poirot was published in 1920. Her other well known creation, Miss Marple, first appeared in a short story in 1927 but she also created a number of other detectives who appeared in her novels.

During her lifetime Christie wrote a number of novels, short stories, poetry & plays. Her play "The Mousetrap" holds the world record for the longest run in history as it has been performed since 1952.

Christie is estimated to have sold around 4 billion copies of her collected works, putting her second only to The Bible. She was married twice and was a Dame of the British Empire. She died on January 12th 1976.

Background to the novel:

Murder Is Easy was first published in the UK in 1939. The previous Agatha Christie book was Hercule Poirot's Christmas which featured her famous Belgian detective. Her next novel following Murder Is Easy was "Ten Little Niggers" which has since been published under the titles "Ten Little Indians" and "And Then There Were None". None of the characters in "Murder Is Easy" have appeared in any of Christie's other works with the exception of Superintendant Battle. He had appeared in three previous Christie novels:

+ The Secret of Chimneys (1925)
+ The Seven Dials Mystery (1929)
+ Cards on the Table (1936)

and would appear for the final time in the 1944 novel Towards Zero.

In "Murder Is Easy" however, Battle make his first appearance in the penultimate chapter so he's hardly what you could call a main character.

Plot:

Before being pensioned off Luke Fitzwilliam worked as a policeman in the Mayang Straits. Back in England & travelling by train he finds himself sharing a compartment with Lavinia Pinkerton. She's from the small village of Wychwood-Under-Ashe & tells him that there having been several deaths in the village & that she's convinced that the people concerned were all murdered, even though, officially, they were all "accidents". She's on the way to Scotland Yard to discuss the matter with them. She's also convinced that the nice Doctor Humbleby will be next & that, if one can appear innocent, Murder Is Easy.

Luke, of course, humours her & tells her that Scotland Yard is the right place to go. Putting her comments about her village down to a vivid imagination the two part company & Luke thinks no more about it until he reads a report of her death in the paper the following day. She's been run over. Then, just over a week later an obituary for Doctor Humbleby appears.

As luck would have it, Luke is staying with his friend Jimmy Lorrimer who has a cousin, Bridget Conway, who lives in Wychwood-Under-Ashe. They decide that Luke's cover story will be that he's researching fokelore & superstition & that Bridget can pass him off as her cousin to encourage the local yokels to talk to him as they don't like strangers.

Will there be another murder before the murderer is unmasked? Read it, to find out.......


Opinion:

To be honest, I couldn't really remember very much about the actual structure of this book before I read it for this review. I knew who the murderer was & the motive behind the murders but I couldn't remember much about the actual narrative or how the characters are described etc.

The idea behind the storyline & indeed the title of the book is quite an interesting one. I suppose that Murder Is Easy if you're able to appear innocent otherwise people like Harold Shipman wouldn't have been able to remain undetected for so long. Having said that, members of the medical or scientific professions are perhaps in a better position to commit murder & remain undetected than members of the general public are. Way back in 1939, when police practices & scientific knowledge weren't up to current standards it must have been much easier for murder to have been committed & chalked up to accident or natural causes.

Wychwood-Under-Ashe is no different from other villages in other Christie novels. We have the local big-wig, Lord Whitfield who also owns a chain of publications & who is quite well drawn if not particularly that likeable. Jimmy Lorrimer's cousin, Bridget Conway, has been his secretary for two years & is engaged to him. Despite the fact that she's one of the main characters I didn't feel as if I'd gotten to know Bridget or that I'd been able to form any concrete impression of her, other than what her physical appearance is.

Luke's obviously formed some impression of her because he soon tells her his real reason for visiting Wychwood: to unmask a murderer. Part of the reasoning for this is that she's Jimmy's relative which is a bit stupid when you consider that all murderers are relatives & friends of somebody. He also falls in love with her which is a plot thread I found rather unsatisfactory. There was no real development to it & nothing between the two characters really aside from a few looks on Luke's part. That part of the storyline really didn't work for me.

There are a string of supporting characters / suspects that we never really got to know that well either. Their jobs and relationships to each other are briefly given but, on the whole it appears that characters like Dr. Thomas, Mr. Abbot, Major Horton, Mr. Wake & Mr. Jones are there to make up the numbers & provide potential suspects for Luke to consider. They tend to appear for the whole, or part of a chapter, to allow Luke to "question" them & then, once that's over they don't really feature again, aside perhaps from the odd mention of brief appearance further on in the book. That's not to say that you can rule any of the aforementioned characters out of being the murderer though!

Miss Waynflete is slightly better developed but then Luke goes & tells her why he's in Wychwood as well. Maybe he was pensioned off from the police because he was unable to keep his mouth shut.....

The character that is described in the most detail is Mr. Ellsworthy who some commentators have identified as gay. He's described:- "He had a long pale face with a womanish mouth, long black artistic hair & a mincing walk". We get a few blatantly camp speeches from him before the character is perhaps treated in the worst possible terms that I've seen in any Christie novel. He gets slagged off by somebody every time his name is mentioned and, initally, Luke has nothing against him other than his impression of Ellsworthy's character.

Christie herself appears to have been unable to make up her mind about his sexuality. Alongside her descriptions of his character & some dialogue in which Ellsworthy claims that you can't enjoy life unless you're perverse & have "put Nature in her place" we get a subplot in which Luke & one of the victim's aunts discuss the possibility that there may have been more than just an artist / model relationship between Ellsworthy & her. Then, to really damn his character, we find out he's involved in satanic rituals & that he had pornographic material in his cottage. That's enough to make him the murderer in Luke's eyes. Some ex-policeman judging people without sufficient evidence!

At one point in the book Luke lists the potential suspects & attempts to identify possible motives for each of them murdering the various people that Lavinia Pinkerton claimed had been killed. The information can, of course, be gleaned from the book itself if the reader has been paying attention but what it also allows Christie to do is to focus the readers attention on particular snippets of information. Whether any of those snippets are useful or not in determining who the murderer is I couldn't possibly comment.

Overall, the novel has a number of weaknesses. The majority of the characters appear only when being questioned by Luke rather than being brought together in any sort of groups. The murders all took place before Luke arrived at Wychwood so, on the whole, there's no opportunity to rule out suspects on the grounds of whether they had the opportunity to commit a murder or not. The means that any deductions the reader makes have to rely totally on motive. Having said that, there appear to be various suspects with various motives for murdering some or all of the victims. The reader has no way of knowing whether any of these motives have been acted upon or whether they're just red herrings.

The climax of the novel, in which the murderer is revealed & the motive for the murderers is discovered is weak & not particularly convincing. It's a chance remark by another character rather than any detective work on Luke's part which makes the pieces of the jigsaw fall into place for him which again, is rather disappointing.

All in all then, this is one of Christie's weaker novels, peopled with, on the whole, rather unmemorable characters. As such it's one that strictly for the fans. Casual readers of detective fiction are unlikely to be impressed by it.



Media:
The novel was filmed in 1982 with a starry cast. There were a number of changes from the novel with some characters names being changed & some characters not making it to the screen at all. The film used a contemporary setting rather than being set in the 1930s & Luke's character was changed from being an ex-policeman to an author.

Bill Bixby as Luke Williams
Lesley-Anne Down as Bridget Conway
Olivia de Havilland as Honoria Waynflete
Helen Hayes as Lavinia Fullerton
Patrick Allen as Major Horton
Shane Briant as Dr. Thomas
Freddie Jones as Constable Reed
Leigh Lawson as Jimmy Lorrimer
Jonathan Pryce as Mr. Ellsworthy
Ivor Roberts as Vicar
Trevor T. Smith as Rivers
Timothy West as Lord Easterfield
Anthony Valentine as Abbot
Carol MacReady as Mrs. Pierce
Diana Goodman as Rose Humbleby
Gordon Lord as King Edward
Frederick Wolfe as Avery
Patrick M. Wright as Attendant


The novel has also been filmed for ITV's "Marple" series although it has not yet been tranmsitted. As Miss Marple does not feature in the original novel there will have been a number of changes. The most noticeable of these, looking at the cast appears to be with Miss Waynflete age. In the novel her & Lavinia Pinkerton are of a similar age but there's a big age gap between Shirley Henderson & Sylvia Syms.


Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple
Steve Pemberton as Henry Wake
Shirley Henderson as Honoria Waynflete
Sylvia Syms as Lavinia Pinkerton
Benedict Cumberbatch as Luke Fitzwilliam
Lyndsey Marshal as Amy Gibbs
James Lance as Dr. Geoffrey Thomas
Tim Brooke-Taylor as Dr. Edward Humbleby
Camilla Arfwedson as Rose Humbleby
Hugo Speer as James Abbot
Anna Chancellor as Lydia Horton
David Haig as Major Hugh Horton
Margo Stilley as Bridget Conway
Jemma Redgrave as Jessie Humbleby
Russell Tovey as PC Terence Reed



* Paperback: 400 pages
* Publisher: Harper; Masterpiece Ed edition (7 May 2002)
* Language English
* ISBN-10: 000713682X
* ISBN-13: 978-0007136827

Official Website: www.agathachristie.com

Summary: Another Agatha Christie Murder Mystery