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The Spirits of Detection

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From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell

Part of the book series: Crime Files Series ((CF))

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Abstract

The sense of the crime and detection genres as inherently metaphysical is important to the novels of all six writers. A religious dimension is a persistent expression of the form, from Agatha Christie’s invocation to the ‘Immortals’ in The Mysterious Mr Quin,2 to Lord Peter Wimsey suddenly acquiring a god-like perspective, and to Adam Dalgliesh’s intimations that professional routines aim to substitute for sacred rituals. As argued elsewhere in this volume, the native self-referentiality of the golden age genre enables a fantasy of overcoming death to be included in the rhetorical ‘play’ or, as W.H. Auden put it: ‘The fantasy … is the fantasy of being restored to the Garden of Eden, to a state of innocence, where he may know love as love and not as the law.’3

Are the crimes to be real sins, or are they to be the mere gestures of animated puppets? Are we to shed blood or only sawdust …? If we wipe out God from the problem we are in very real danger of wiping out man as well.1

(Dorothy L. Sayers (1935))

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Notes

  1. Dorothy L. Sayers, ‘Salute to Mr Chesterton: More Father Brown Stories’ (review), Sunday Times, 7 April 1935, 9.

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  2. Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Mr Quin (1930; London: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 24.

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  3. W.H. Auden, ‘The Guilty Vicarage’, in Robin W. Winks, ed., Detective Fiction: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980), p. 24.

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  4. For P.D. James, see Appendix C. For Margery Allingham, see Richard Martin, Ink in Her Blood: The Life and Crime Fiction of Margery Allingham (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1988), p. 14.

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  5. For a study of Spiritualism in relation to literature and the feminine, see Diana Basham, The Trial of Woman: Feminism and the Occult Sciences in Victorian Society (London: Macmillan, 1992).

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  6. Agatha Christie, The Sittaford Mystery (1931; London: Fontana, 1961).

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  7. Agatha Christie, The Hound of Death (1933; London: HarperCollins, 1993).

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  8. Margery Allingham, Blackerchief Dick: A Tale of Mersea Island (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1923).

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  9. For details of its uncanny composition, see Julia Thorogood, Margery Allingham: A Biography (London: Heinemann, 1991), pp. 75–8.

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  10. Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison (1930).

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  11. Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (1935).

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  12. Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison (1930; London: New English Library, 1977), pp. 158–92.

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  13. Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (1935; London: New English Library, 1978), p. 250.

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  14. Marion Shaw and Sabine Vanacker, Reflecting on Miss Marple (London: Routledge, 1991).

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  15. Agatha Christie, Hallowe’en Party (1969).

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  16. P.D. James, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972; London: Sphere, 1974), p. 191.

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  17. Ruth Rendell, Wolf to the Slaughter (1967; London: Arrow, 1982), p. 21.

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  18. Ruth Rendell, Murder Being Once Done (1972; London: Arrow, 1973), p. 84.

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  19. Ruth Rendell, A New Lease of Death (1969; London: Mysterious Press, 1988), p. 160.

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  20. Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Mr Quin (London: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 24.

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  21. Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express (1934; London: Fontana, 1955), p. 22. Poirot muses upon the future victim: ‘[tihe body — the cage … through the bars, the wild animal looks out.’

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  22. Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body? (1923; London: New English Library, 1968), p. 129.

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  23. Dorothy L. Sayers, Unnatural Death (1927).

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  24. Margery Allingham, Traitor’s Purse (1941).

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  25. Ngaio Marsh, Death in Ecstasy (1936; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1940). All later page references will be incorporated into the chapter.

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  26. Ngaio Marsh, Singing in the Shrouds (1958; London: Fontana, 1962), p. 105.

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  27. Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (London: New English Library, 1978), p. 64;

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  28. P.D. James, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (London: Sphere, 1974), p. 66.

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  29. Ruth Rendell, A New Lease of Death (London: Mysterious Press, 1988), p. 28.

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  30. Ruth Rendell, No More Dying Then (London: Arrow, 1973), pp. 102, 143.

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  31. Ruth Rendell, Simisola (1994; London: Arrow, 1995), p. 5.

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  32. Margery Allingham, Look to the Lady (1931).

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  33. Margery Allingham, Sweet Danger (1933; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1952). All later page references will be incorporated into the chapter.

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  34. Margery Allingham, The Tiger in the Smoke (1952; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957).

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  35. Margery Allingham, Hide My Eyes (1958).

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  36. Margery Allingham, The Tiger in the Smoke (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957), p. 197.

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  37. Ngaio Marsh, Spinsters in Jeopardy (1953).

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  38. Ruth Rendell, The Veiled One (1988).

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  39. Barbara Vine, A Dark-Adapted Eye (1986; Harmondsworth: Penguin, ‘Three Novels’ edn, 1990).

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  40. Agatha Christie, Appointment with Death (1938; London: HarperCollins, 1993). All later page references will be incorporated into the chapter.

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  41. See John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).

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  42. Dorothy L. Sayers, Unnatural Death (1927). The novel condemns a lesbian killer but presents a wholly admirable portrait of two elderly ladies as mutually devoted. See further Chapter 8.

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  43. Ngaio Marsh, Artists in Crime (1938).

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  44. P.D. James, A Taste for Death (London: Faber & Faber, 1986). All later page references will be incorporated into the chapter.

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  45. Ruth Rendell, A Judgement in Stone (1977; London: Arrow, 1978). All later page references will be incorporated into the chapter.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Greenwich, UK

    Susan Rowland (Senior Lecturer in English)

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  1. Susan Rowland
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© 2001 Susan Rowland

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Rowland, S. (2001). The Spirits of Detection. In: From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell. Crime Files Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230598782_7

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