‘Tale Engineering’:  1   Agatha Christie and the Aftermath of the Second World War | Zendy

Plain Gill | Zendy

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‘Tale Engineering’: 1 Agatha Christie and the Aftermath of the Second World War

Author(s) -

Plain Gill

Publication year - 2020

Publication title -

literature & history

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 0.104

H-Index - 8

eISSN - 2050-4594

pISSN - 0306-1973

DOI - 10.1177/0306197320945945

Subject(s) - agatha , modernity , world war ii , art , negotiation , literature , gender studies , history , art history , sociology , political science , law , social science , archaeology

The ‘golden age’ of clue-puzzle detective fiction is usually considered to end in 1939 with the outbreak of the Second World War. Yet Agatha Christie, the most high-profile and successful exponent of the form, continued to produce bestselling novels until her death in 1976. This essay examines three novels from the immediate postwar period to consider how she adapted her writing to negotiate a changing world and evolving fashions in genre fiction. Engaging with grief, demobilisation, gender, citizenship and the new fears of the atomic age, Christie proves unexpectedly attentive to the anxieties of a new modernity.

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