I’ve been reading Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot books of recent, in no particular order, and earlier today I finished “Death on the Nile”.
It’s a really good book, and showcases many of the things which I like so much about Poirot, and many of the reasons why I prefer him to other fictional detectives. There are a whole bunch of reasons for this, things in his characterisation, methods, and demeanour; but the one which really stuck out to me at the end of it, and which I’m going to talk a bit about now, is his kindness.
Poirot is a kind character. He’s firm when he needs to be, and even harsh when circumstances call for it, but at his core he’s always kind. He tries to have empathy with the criminals he defeats, and to really understand why they did what they did. He’ll turn a blind eye to certain things if he believes it’s the right thing to do, and will often give criminals he sympathises with an easier way out (suicide is relatively common in this sense) or do everything he can to protect those who may be hurt by the fallout of the crime coming to light. He sometimes describes his role as being to protect human happiness, and I really think that the character lives up to that ideal.
This kindness comes through a lot more in Poirot than it does in any other fictional detectives I’ve read of, and personally I believe it stems from the kindness of the author.
I don’t actually know much about Christie the person, so most of my opinions come from reading her works. But I’ve noticed that she’s never (from what I’ve read so far) cruel towards a group of people, which cannot be said for many other Authors from previous periods.
She definitely used terminology which wouldn’t be acceptable now (just look at the original title of “And Then There Were None”), but that’s not really something she can be criticised for. I’m also not going to say that she doesn’t invoke stereotypes, because she does that too; what I’m saying is that the stereotypes she invokes are never (to my experience) cruel. She’d say that a group is passionate, or talkative, or gestures a lot, but she wouldn’t say that they’re lesser in any way.
One consequence of this is that her books feel a lot less dated than many similar authors. When I read a Poirot book, the setting may be old, but the content doesn’t feel so. It’s set in a world before the internet, mobiles, or particularly high speeds, but I never found myself taken out of the book by that (after all, I read a lot of Fantasy, and that’s far more different to the modern day). But when I read the first of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe books I was taken right out of it by his claim that “Pansies ain’t got no iron in their bones”, which was they reason he gave for why gay men would be ineffective in a fight.
This kindness displayed by Christie and her characters gives them something of a timeless quality, without making them any less a product of their era. It endears me to them, and is one of the many reasons why I really love her books.
