My Favorite Classic Mystery Writers (Classic Remarks)

WHAT IS CLASSIC REMARKS?

Classic Remarks is a meme hosted here at Pages Unbound that poses questions each Friday about classic literature and asks participants to engage in ongoing discussions surrounding not only themes in the novels but also questions about canon formation, the “timelessness” of literature, and modes of interpretation.

HOW CAN I PARTICIPATE?

Leave your link to your post on your own blog in the comments below. And feel free to comment with your thoughts even if you are not officially participating with a full post!

You can find more information and the list of weekly prompts here.

(Readers who like past prompts but missed them have also answered them on their blog later and linked back to us at Pages Unbound, so feel free to do that, too!)

THIS WEEK’S PROMPT:

Who are are some of your favorite classic mystery authors?

I admit, I don’t read nearly as many mysteries as I’d like to, and when I try modern mysteries, they’re a bit hit-or-miss, so the two main classic mysteries writers I’m familiar with are the obvious: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. (Ok, I’ve also read The Maltese Falcon, which was quite good.)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Who doesn’t love Sherlock Holmes? Countless adaptations and retellings have been created, from films to graphic novels to YA series, yet the original books still charm. I do find Doyle’s work somewhat frustrating in that some of the mysteries are solvable by the read, while others are not; Holmes swoops in at the last minute with an explanation of how he did a bunch of detective work and made a number of calls off-page. Yet the stories are still interesting, and I’m certainly looking forward to reading more of them in the future.

Agatha Christie

It’s obvious why she’s been called “The Queen of Mystery.” She was extremely prolific, and all of her works that I’ve read so far have delivered excellent, twisty mysteries that I couldn’t guess the endings of. (I’d say I’m just really awful at solving mysteries, which is possible, but I seem to be able to predict the endings of a lot of modern mysteries, so Christie definitely has a stronger talent for surprise culprits than many other authors I’ve encountered).

So far I’ve enjoyed: Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, Death Comes As the End, Midwinter Murders, At Bertram’s Hotel, and The Secret Adversary.

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