Agatha Christie, though Rowling doesn’t like to talk about her as an influence, is perhaps the author with whom she has the most in common. Certainly Christie’s signature ‘big twists’ at the finale are much more akin to Rowling’s Harry Potter and Cormoran Strike novels’ endings than the conclusion of Austen’s Emma which The Presence claims is the target at which she aims in her writing.
Christie famously described herself and her writing as “lowbrow” and Rowling, sadly, would find that label an insult, I think, as she would association with the most popular novelist and writer who ever lived (only Shakespeare’s plays have outsold her detective novels and short stories, and, forgive me, except for the Bard’s plays being required reading in schools — in which Christie’s novels are almost never read — this would not be the case). Take the time to read the posts below, however, and I think it fairly obvious that Rowling has read Christie, studied her even, and kept her names notebook open as she did so.
This post will be filed (and updated as new entries appear) under the ‘Authors Not J. K. Rowling’ Pillar Post.
Agatha Christie: Ginny-Ginevra Source?
Agatha Christie’s Eleven Missing Days
Christie’s ‘Murder at the Vicarage’ Bellatrix Lestrange’s Debut in Fiction?
Agatha Christie’s ‘Dead Man’s Folly:’ Moaning Myrtle and The Silkworm
Rowling, Inc., to Follow Christie Estate Lead and Commission Harry Potter Fan Fiction Under Its Own Trademark Brand?
I’m not sure where to ask this, but this seemed a not-unlikely place: do ‘we’ know if JKR is a fan of Edith Pargeter – even better known under her pseudonym of Ellis Peters (though she apparently used three other ones early on, too!)? What sparked my curiosity is the name used by some characters who don’t want to reveal their real surnames in her thoroughly enjoyable early-13th-c. historical novel, The Heaven Tree (1960) – ‘Lestrange’! (I’ve just been reading it and do not know if that name reappears in the next two installments of ‘The Heaven Tree trilogy’…)