I came across a new podcast today – Garlic & Pearls – via a really good episode on Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap.
It's thoroughly researched and emphasises how far from cosy Christie's works can be. The Mousetrap is set in a dislocated postwar world in which the class structure has been shaken and there is an air of paranoid watchfulness.
The BBC's adaptations of the Miss Marple books, which starred the incomparable Joan Hickson, were set firmly in this world. And it's noticeable that when Bertram's Hotel appears to have survived the changes unscathed, it turns out to be too good to be true.
Meanwhile, after the Colonel died, Dolly Bantry sold the big house and moved very happily into a modernised lodge house with all the latest conveniences. The future need not always be resisted, as the worldly Marple grasps.
I recently wrote an article for Central Bylines about the 12-year-old foster child called Dennis O'Neill whose death on a farm in Shropshire Christie to write the play.
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