Mysteries and Oddities

I've been devouring Agatha Christie lately.

I picked up the Miss Marple Omnibus on my last trip to Powell's, but I only got around to starting it a couple of weeks ago. It has four novels (a rather sorry omnibus, really, if you ask me): A Caribbean Mystery, A Pocket Full of Rye, The Mirror Crack'd, and They Do it with Mirrors. I'm about halfway through the last one.

I feel like I did read a lot of her books back in high school, and I know I've watched several adaptations on Mystery, but the only one of these that I remembered was The Mirror Crack'd. It was still enjoyable to read, since I'd definitely only seen the television adaptation, and I'd forgotten most of the details anyway, but it's true that mysteries don't generally stand up to repeat readings; I wasn't nearly as anxious to see how it came out as I had been with the others (I'm currently tearing myself away from the book to post this).

Christie's novels are cozy mysteries, as opposed to hard-boiled detective stories: whodunits that feature an ameteur detective, and are generally quite civilized, and all the violence happens offstage. There are probably other traits that I'm forgetting. The problem is, though, that they're still mysteries. One gets the feeling that a cozy mystery ought to be read in an armchair with a cup of hot tea, and maybe a cat curled up nearby, but maintaining that feel is really impossible with a well-written mystery. Until you've reached the end, there's always a murderer on the loose, and you can't simply relax into an armchair, you have to do your part to find out who it is.

Or maybe that's just me.

It's possible, of course, that all the sturm und drang has more to do with me trying to be smarter than the author (or at least the detective) and figure things out before the big reveal. I'm ashamed to say I rarely manage it. I guess I'm not such a smart cookie after all.