Queen of crime

Serial killers

In Christie's novels Jean Marple solves cases in the British Victorian countryside and Hercule Poirot brings his classic reasoning to bear as he does his investigative spade work, but in the Japanese detective stories that are now in vogue the overwhelming mood is one of darkness. Authors create thrills to appeal to the imaginations of readers who have become accustomed to psychopathic serial killers created and developed over the past 40 years.

Guo Yi, 34, a diehard fan of Christie, says she read all her works within about three months when she was at university.

"In general, classic detective fiction fails because the narrative is extremely slow. Agatha Christie is a combination of Conan Doyle and Jane Austen, so many male readers don't like it. But she has created almost all the murder models of detective fiction. It's very difficult to create new ones."

Guo says that what attracts her to Christie's novels is their gentleness and kindness. Christie explains in a very classic way why people murder, and, drawing on her insights of human nature and social relationships, she can cast suspicion on every character in a novel, Guo says.

Shen says: "She is full of sympathy for human nature."

Christie's intriguing stories with their cool logic take many readers on a nostalgia ride to a time when everyone in a community knew everyone, when life was slower, when everything seemed to be in perfect order and indeed when everyone seemed to have the time and the patience to spend hours solving a mystery in a book.

Shen says she started reading Christie when she was in middle school, her father being a detective fiction aficionado. Agatha Christie then led Shen into an interesting world full of puzzles and mysteries. For her, crime stories are an intelligence test in which all you need do is sit in a chair, read the stories and enter a fictional world to solve the riddles, she says.

She has read all Christie's works, she says - 68 novels, 21 short story collections and novellas, 18 plays, one autobiography, two poetry collections and six romance novels.

She has read many other detective novels, too, but always returns to Christie because of her insights into human nature, which is more appealing than other novelists, she says. She writes articles about Agatha Christie for magazines and is now translating Parker Pyne Investigates and Christie's autobiography, which New Star Press will publish.

Shen registered on the Chinese online forum of Agatha Christie in 2006, and became its leader six years later. The forum says it has more than 30,000 registered members.

"We want fans to feel comfortable on the forum, and feel free to speak," Shen says. "At the same time we hope to become a chronicle relating to anything to do with Agatha Christie in China."

The website includes copious detail, in words and pictures, about the publication of Christie's works in China since the 1940s. Between 2003 and 2005 forum members were particularly active, doing their own broadcast plays and writing their own detective fiction.

Plans are now afoot to overhaul the forum so it is more attuned to mobile internet.

Shen says that while fewer people read Agatha Christie these days, her works will endure. That certainly applies to her plays, which are very popular in China.

And There Were None, generally considered Christie's scariest, has been adapted into a Chinese play that has been performed more than 300 times over the past decade.

Wang Lin says plays based on Agatha Christie works will continue to be staged in China.

"And There Were None is staged in Shanghai every year and all the tickets are sold out. Next year there will be a special version marking its 10th anniversary."

Contact the writer at yangyangs@chinadaily.com.cn