Acting in the spirit of Roland Barthes' famous Structuralist work c, in which he finds the "universal Racine play" that lurks inside all of the dramatic works of that famous French playwright, I shall, at least for the moment, and based upon only two early works featuring the character Hercule Poirot, attempt to begin to describe the "universal Agatha Christie story."
Side note: On Racine is a fantastic read, as suggested by Professor Paul Fry of Yale, whose literary theory course I went through on Youtube three years ago. He had highly suggested it, and to fulfill my ambition to understand Structuralism, I read every single one of Racine's plays in translation (and one also in the original) over the next year before reading Barthes' work and, yes, having my mind blown.
Anyway, back to Agatha Christie. Just now, in the fading light of day in our cabin outside Estes Park, I finished the second Hercule Poirot story, The Murder on the Links, which is Christie's third overall novel. The setting in this one is villa on the English Channel coast of France. The title refers to a golf course next to the villa, where the corpse of the victim is found.
I read this book on Kindle, in this case springing ninety-nine cents for a version that seemed to have good reviews as a digital experience. I had no beefs with the edition, outside of a few harmless typos. I enjoyed it even more than The Mysterious Affair at Styles. One sees Christie advancing in her storytelling very quickly.
My contribution to the Structuralist analysis of Christie so far is to notice that family relationships involving minor characters who are not considered suspects initially play in important part in the story in an interesting way. In the first story, a cousin relationship turns out to be more important than one realizes. In the second story, we have a pair of twin sisters. Both of these relationships are mentioned early in the story and then not at all until the climax. This is something to watch for going forward.
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