Agatha Christie in publication order #6: The Secret of Chimneys

First published: 1925.

Good title? Meh.

Another “standalone” book lacking any of the usual sleuths. It does introduce the recurring character of Superintendent Battle. (Agatha seems to like dynamic-sounding nouns for the names of these characters - Race, Battle) but he’s hardly inspiring:

"a squarely built middle aged man with a face so singularly devoid of expression as to be quite remarkable."

Anyway, the story opens with a massive information dump about the history of “Herzoslovakia”, a fictional Balkan country, courtesy of two repulsive young men. (I wasn’t sure at the time if we were meant to find Jimmy and Anthony repulsive or not, but repulsive - and smug, and annoying - they most definitely were.) 

The racism in these first few pages was hard to get past, with derogatory references to “dagos” and “Hebraic financiers”.  There’s definitely a sense that only the Brits - the English, actually - are worth bothering about. Everyone else deserves contempt to a greater or lesser degree, indeed are rather less than human. It’s hard to know what to say about all this - it leaves a really nasty taste in the mouth. 

We then meet Virginia Revel, an alluring young widow who everyone’s in love with. Virginia has a nice name and I think she’s meant to be an appealing character, clever and witty and brave. She’s kind to a servant, offering to pay for a holiday for his wife to recover from an illness, but then “[cuts] short the man’s thanks with an impatient nod of the head”.  Servants in general, rather like foreigners, are patronised and disregarded. ("Hurry up Elise, there's a good girl" - Virginia to her maid.)

The plot is really a lot of nonsense about missing papers, a murder at the Chimneys country house  (nobody’s too upset, as the victim is a foreigner), the restoration of the monarchy in Herzoslovakia (democracy? who needs it?) and so on.

The tone is light hearted - it’s clearly in the genre of comedy thriller - and there are a few good lines, but I can’t honestly say I enjoyed it. I just couldn’t interest myself in the story or the characters. I can't even remember what the story was about. (It does improve a bit at the end, with - in the current parlance - a “jaw dropping twist I didn’t see coming”.) Some reviewers have referred to a comparison with P G Wodehouse, who I love, but I didn't get that at all - yes, there are a couple of funny lines and a lot of toffs, but the Wodehouse wit and charm is lacking.

While Christie was always on the conservative side (and would probably have been a Leave voter had she been alive today), we know from later work that she was capable of much greater complexity of thought than is shown here, where prejudices and assumptions go unchallenged.

I don’t think I’ve read this before (if I have, I’ve sensibly wiped it from my memory) and to be honest I kind of wish I hadn’t read it now. There’s a level of racism and snobbery on show here that far exceeds her previous books or any others I remember. Also, it's too long. Had it not been for the challenge I’ve set myself, I’m not sure I’d have finished it. I slogged through it in the interests of the challenge, and in faith of better books to come

Acceptable in the 20s?  See above.

Americans With Silly Names Watch: Hiram P. Fish, a collector of first editions.

Next up: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Now we're cooking with gas!