Bramblethorn
Sleep-deprived
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2012
- Posts
- 17,533
I'm not even going to try and claim to have a real insight into Agatha Christie, since the woman wrote A LOT while I have only four of those books standing on my bookshelves. But, as far as I know, the woman hasn't "spent a career writing about murders", but rather writing about solving murders. I never heard about her books being particularly graphic. She focused on the mystery instead of the violence.
Missed this disclaimer before writing my reply above - in that light it's understandable that you hadn't seen the side of her work that I mentioned.
I think it's generally fair to summarise Christie's mysteries as being primarily technical (murder as a logic puzzle to be solved), but often with a secondary psychological angle to them. Sometimes the motivation for the murder is obvious, often money to be inherited, but sometimes it's part of the mystery. I think the psychological side is explored a bit more in the Miss Marple books than in the Poirots, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of Christie's reason for creating a second sleuth when she was already doing well with Poirot.