How was the book then? A very dear friend who had read the book told me that I will not be able to put it down. This turned out to be true, of course not literally, but figuratively. The book, the paperback edition of which extends to some 270 pages but whose pages are smaller than the ideal size you would expect and the font size is at least two notches above the average, giving it almost a children book feel, is comparatively small. I was done with the reading within 5-6 hours but as is apparent, not with the book. That will take some time. I winded up the reading with some good ideas in my mind. Fascinated by a great climax and a not-so-bittersweet ending, I knew what to do next — to go and pick up Sherlock Holmes so that I could compare the two detective works.
Having seen the length of this article, if you still made up your mind to read it and reached down here, I take it that you must know who Sherlock Holmes is. You might have seen the BBC drama or at least read a story during your schooltime. I have in my bookshelf all the Sherlock Holmes works by Arthur Conan Doyle compiled into two very thick (700+ pages each) volumes. The entire series was published in the form of novels like A Study in Scarlet and The Case of the Four as well as anthologies like The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. All the stories are narrated by Sherlock's friend and sort-of coworker John Watson. Agatha's works are more diverse. Some like And Then There Were None are standalone mystery works. Others like A Murder on the Orient Express and Five Little Pigs are whodunnits resolved by Hercule Poirot, a detective just like, and also at variance with, Sherlock Holmes.
So, what is it exactly that makes this detective fiction particularly pleasing? Of course, the unputdownableness of the books is granted but if you are an avid reader like me, entertainment is definitely not the only thing that you are after. I try to answer this question here.
You become a part of the mystery. You can take a minute from the book, close your eyes, relax and think. You will very much end up as "Why didn't I think about that!?" when the mystery is unraveled!
Sherlock uses his "science of deduction" or his ability to deduce features like profession, dominant hand, economic condition, status, etc. from the appearance of a person, to solve his crimes. In The Yellow Face, Sherlock deduces that a person is "obviously" left-handed, from a well-to-do family and has healthy teeth by observing his smoking pipe. Here, you might definitely notice that Sherlock is a sort-of superhero. In The Yellow Face, it is mentioned that he didn't like the idea of exercising because it was a waste of energy, and yet had a great physique out of mechanical work. However, you won't really find him doing a lot of mechanical, repetitive work. He is socially more awkward than me and yet, knows the location of every shop and tree around London and more and less about the rest of the world which seems quite humanly impossible in an age when there was no Internet. What it definitely represents is the supreme intellect of Doyle, whatever his sources might have been.
Hercule Poirot focuses more on the jugglery of words, conversation and evidence to solve a crime. In Five Little Pigs, Hercule Poirot makes use of no physical evidence and solves a murder case just by relying on the statements of five witnesses. A Murder on the Orient Express is divided into three parts on the baiss of when the crime was committed, when Hercule Poirot gathers evidence and when he puts it all together. The last one is aptly called "Hercule Poirot Sits Back and Thinks".
And despite all that sounding so incredible, all these cases and stories are very much believable and may as well happen in real life. After reading Arthur Conan Doyle, you might as well observe the stuff around you and try deducing hidden but apparent information. I sat down and deciphered that I really was right-handed by observing the scratches and the dirt deposited on the rim of my coffee mug. After reading Hercule Poirot solve a case, you would chew on how he plays a character against the other and how well you could use these skills as a salesman.
You get to know about the cultural and historical milieu of the geography and times in which the story is set. Both authors are British and this is significant for an Indian reader.
The Sherlock Holmes stories are a product of the late-Victorian England and reflect the sordid realities of the same. These were the times when revolution had just begun in India. Many of the stories actually take place in India or their characters are related to India. For instance, the backstory of Sherlock Holmes #2, The Sign of the Four takes place in British India during the time of the Revolt of 1857. Consider how Doyle describes the outbreak of the rebellion.
"Suddenly, without a note of warning, the great mutiny broke upon us. One month India lay as still and peaceful, to all appearance, as Surrey or Kent; the next there were two hundred thousand black devils let loose and the country was a perfect hell."
I hadn't imagined the intensity of the revolt before this:
"The whole country was up like a swarm of bees. Wherever the English could collect in little bands, they held just the ground that their guns commanded. Everywhere else they were helpless fugitives. It was a fight of the millions against the hundreds…"
A little later, he describes the fort of Agra and the British used it for their protection during the Rebellion.
"First of all, it is enormous in size. I should think that the enclosure must be acres and acres. There is a modern part which took all our garrison, women, children and everything else, with plenty of room over. But the modern part is nothing like the size of the old quarter, where nobody lives and which is given over to the scorpions and the centipedes. It is all full of great deserted halls, and winding passages, and long holidays twisting in and out, so that it is easy enough for folk to get lost in it."
That India was considered a destination to reap as much benefit as possible from is plain from the reading of these books. That the Indian politics was also a topic often discussed among the British subjects is also visible.
There is much about the racism implicit in the European understanding of the time (and today!). You might already have noticed so in the lines above. Indians are referred to repeatedly as "black fiends" and "devil-worshippers" and the author seems to lament that those who were up against rebellion were uncivilized savages who the British were trying to civilize, the typical White Man's Murder scenario. Another Sherlock Holmes story, The Yellow Face, lays bare again the notoriety of racism in Britain where slavery had been abolished decades ago.
"I pushed my precautions so far as to order her to keep the child in the house during the daytime and to cover up her little face and hands so that even those who might see her in the window should not gossip about there being a black child in the neighborhood."
Agatha Christie's works were written from the 1920s onwards and hence, are a bit forward-looking and modern in the sense of technology. A different set of perceptions is visible in her works. Her A Murder on the Orient Express goes to the extent of suggesting that Italians stab and if there has been a murder by stabbing and there is an Italian around, you know who it was. Now, this might not be the writer expressing herself but definitely represents the popular opinion. In the same book, what is inescapable is the tension between the British and the Americans. While a section often sees the Americans as modern and an advanced society, a British Army officer doesn't really seem to subscribe to this view.
They pose critical questions of justice and fair play which are as relevant today.
When I used the expression "not-so-bittersweet" for the book, I meant it. To talk about the ending of the book here will be a betrayal to you, so there isn't much that I can explain regarding this point. But hints may be dropped. Look out for critical judicial paradigms, questions related to justice delivery that are as crucial contemporarily as they were then.
I have read only three Agatha Christie books (and there are many, many of them — and a few critics complain of them getting repetitive after some time) and two of them, A Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None carry judicial lessons. Both of them deal with murderers who are out to deliver justice outside the pale of law. To give you an example, a couple who has been engaged to take care of an elderly woman murder her by not providing her her medicine on time during a cardiac arrest. It becomes legally impossible to prove their crime and no one ever inquires into the death of the lady. A person then decides to avenge her and does so.
It is left to the reader to decide whether what was done was correct. A Murder on the Orient Express takes this to a totally different level but I keep myself from talking about it.
Your vocabulary will be thankful to Doyle and Christie, to me and of course to yourself that you picked up these books!
Agatha Christie's style is rich in idioms and phrases. This is something that I have always struggled to work with. For any Indian reader and writer, the most difficult part to learn is the sentence construction in English, and this is not something that one could easily learn from Indian writers, especially the popular ones.
Another weakness that I find in my English is, obviously, my vocabulary. When I sit down to write a story, I struggle to find what a particular object is called in English. This is something that you can absorb from the Sherlock Holmes books. The books are heavy with nouns you would never have heard, especially those that turn the stories into a medieval, Gothic experience.
As you read these books, you might discover new things yourself! I am still an amateur when it comes to these great works. Anyway, if you have anything in your mind, you can definitely comment below or send me a private email!
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