Crime Writers' Association poll votes Poirot creator best writer, and her Murder of Roger Ackroyd the best ever crime novel – but Sherlock Holmes is best serial sleuth
She is the doyenne of crime writing, who invented the much-loved Belgian sleuth Poirot and amateur English detective Miss Marple, as well as writing England's longest-running play, The Mousetrap. Now Agatha Christie has been officially garlanded as the best ever crime writer, in a poll conducted by the Crime Writers' Association.
Christie's 1926 novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, whose innovative twist-in-the-tale helped to shape the crime genre, also won the accolade of best ever crime novel.
Lucy Santos, CWA chair, said: "We thought it might be different this time, but Christie just is the best. Her writing has such a strong sense of place, she really knows her characters, and they're such beautifully-structured stories. When you're reading a crime story you want at the end to close the book and walk away with a sense of completion."
She added: "She was a real writer, she was taking risks and thinking about form, as all writers do."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's collection of Sherlock Holmes novels was voted best ever crime series in the poll, which was held to mark 60 years of the CWA. The last time such a vote was taken by crime writers was in 1998, when Raymond Chandler was crowned as the best writer, The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers was chosen as best novel, and Chandler's Philip Marlowe books scooped best series.
Santos said the "Holmes and Watson double act" won the series vote this time. "Watson is bumbling about, being you, the reader, astonished at Holmes. [There's] the rational, Scottish enlightenment figure of Holmes, and Watson's everyman. Watson is the one who takes out a hankie when the lady is crying, while Holmes doesn't even notice, he's looking at which boots she's wearing."
Not everyone was satisfied at the outcome of the poll. Maxim Jakubowski, a CWA member who set up Murder One, the specialist crime bookshop which he ran for 20 years until its closure in 2009, said: "I'm slightly surprised and disappointed. It seems to be a retreat to a safe form. Of course we crime writers all worship at the shrine of Christie, but with all due respect, crime fiction has moved on: there are the inheritors of Thomas Harris's Silence of the Lambs serial-killer crime, some of whom are unfortunately formulaic, and there is crime fiction with a strong social conscience – that didn't exist in Christie's day. I'm thinking of writers like Dennis Lehane, John Harvey, Walter Mosley, George Pelecanos …"
However, Santos defended Christie's social sensibility. "She is actually very compassionate about why a person would commit murder, and at the point when we find out what happens there is the feeling that under these circumstances, it might be any of us."
Christie, who died in 1976, wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short-story collections. The Christie estate this year commissioned the first new Poirot novel, to be written by Sophie Hannah for publication in September 2014.
The shortlists
CWA best ever crime novel
WINNER: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
CWA best ever author
WINNER: Agatha Christie
Raymond Chandler
Arthur Conan Doyle
Reginald Hill
Dashiell Hammett
Dorothy L Sayers
Elmore Leonard
Georges Simenon
PD James
Ruth Rendell
CWA best ever series
WINNER Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle
Adam Dalgleish by PD James
Dalziel & Pascoe by Reginald Hill
Hercule Poirot by Agatha Christie
Morse by Colin Dexter
Philip Marlowe by Raymond Chandler
Rebus by Ian Rankin
Peter Wimsey by Dorothy L Sayers
Campion by Margery Allingham
0 comments:
Post a Comment