From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell: British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction

by Susan Rowland, Clive Bloom (Editor)

From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell is the first book to consider seriously the hugely popular and influential works of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L.Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, P.D. James and Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine. Providing studies of forty-two key novels, this volume introduces these authors for students and the general reader in the context of their lives, and of critical debates on gender, colonialism, psychoanalysis, the Gothic, and feminism. It includes interviews with P.D. James and Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine.

Genres: Nonfiction, Books About Books

232 pages, Hardcover

First published December 12, 2000

About the author

In middle age I ran away with an American poet to be happy. Now I live on the west coast usa writing cozy-ish murder mysteries with 21st century themes. I aim to explore heroes who are women from the margins.

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I also had a life teaching depth psychology, literature and publishing on Jung, the feminine, creativity and arts-based research.

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like that Rowland is prepared to take these female crime writers seriously rather than dismissing them as meaningless entertainment but, at the same time, this feels like a bit of a missed opportunity: it is repetitive; it uses a Jungian framework to make sense of the works read and the circulation of energies between reader, author and characters; it makes too many sweeping judgments about 'the genre' based on six women writers, however much they've been dubbed 'queens' of crime fiction. And even putting 'Christie' into a box when she had such a wide-ranging career across the changing history of the twentieth century feels rather disingenuous.

The chapters take up interesting topics (gender, class, race, capitalism) but the analysis just doesn't stretch itself deep enough and instead circles around the same few points that are drilled into us. There are easy distinctions made between the work of each of the women but that scooping up of a number - pretty large in some cases - of books to reach a single conclusion about them all doesn't stand up to much interrogation. It's always interesting to see someone thinking intelligently about a genre that hasn't had much scholarly attention but this ends up being a flawed attempt to say something genuinely meaningful.

[Eustacia Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the two books that I've managed to finish last week (at the rate I'm going, I'll have to take a hiatus from the blog/cut down on blogging dramatically because I will eventually run out of reviews :p)

Despite the unfortunate cover (sorry but I think it looks boring), I found this to be a fascinating read! It's an analysis of the works of 6 queens of crime:

Agatha Christie
Dorothy L. Sayers
Margery Allingham
Ngaio Marsh
P. D. James
Ruth Rendell (also writing as Barbara Vine)

The book opens with very short biographies of the six women and then it starts the analysis. Each chapter covers one topic and the topics are:

- Gender and the mystery genre
- Class issues
- England and its colonial legacy
- Psychoanalysis and the genre
- The influence of gothic literature
- "Spiritual detection" (actually I didn't really understand this chapter)
- Feminism and the genre (I really like the title of this chapter 'Feminism is Criminal')

I found the writing style to be a lot more accessible than the Christie book on her film adaptations (though still on the academic side) but you really should have read a majority of these women's works if you want to fully understand the book. I haven't read Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham so I couldn't appreciate a lot of the analysis of their works.

That said, this did renew my interest in reading their works because of how interesting the books sound! I feel like reading something from all of them, and the library has at least one of each lady's book in ebook format so I may go on a mystery binge after this!

I would recommend this book to fans of the mystery genre who are looking for a deeper appreciation of some of the mysteries they read! The chapters aren't connected so you can pick up the book and only read what interests you (plus the chapters are broken up into sections by authors + introduction so you don't even have to read the whole thing). If you're a fan of any one of these six authors, you should give the book a go!

This review was first posted at Inside the mind of a Bibliophile

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, slightly frustrating in that it was such a slim volume, and clearly so much more could be said on each topic (although my eyes did glaze over somewhere amongst all that Freudian theory). My own tastes are definitely more towards the Agatha Christie end of the timeline than Ruth Rendell, so while I'm not any more inclined to read any Rendell (or James) it may finally encourage me to pick up an Allingham - and to read a few of Christie and Marsh's books with new knowledge and theories of their works.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my full review click on the link below:
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...