Agatha Christie Pillar Post

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?

Christie’s ‘Appointment With Death:’ Reading Beyond the Ginny-Ginevra Find

Name that Not Quite Legible Book Title! The Mysteries on Rowling’s Book Shelf

Agatha Christie’s Eleven Missing Days

Lethal White: The Moving Finger

Agatha Christie and ‘The Pale Horse:’ Rowling Borrowings from the Master

Christie’s ‘Murder at the Vicarage’ Bellatrix Lestrange’s Debut in Fiction?

Agatha Christie: Murder at the Manor

Agatha Christie’s Last Marple Mystery: ‘Sleeping Murder’ and ‘Duchess of Malfi’

The Duchess of Malfi (1972)

Agatha Christie’s ‘Dead Man’s Folly:’ Moaning Myrtle and The Silkworm

Agatha Christie’s ‘The Clocks’ or ‘Arabella Figg Meets Hercule Poirot’

Christie’s Miss Marple Short Stories: Another Treasury of Rowling Sources?

Rowling, Inc., to Follow Christie Estate Lead and Commission Harry Potter Fan Fiction Under Its Own Trademark Brand?

BBC1 ‘Strike’ News Releases, Reviews Rowling Talks about Mystery Genre

Whodunit? Harry Potter — In the Great Hall — With a Wand!

No Romance in Mystery? What Sayers Wrote

Comments

  1. David Llewellyn Dodds says

    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’…)

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