What if Agatha Christie continued writing mysteries today?

ChristieFanForLife

If Agatha Christie was still alive how do you think she would write mysteries today? I know that as times changed and when the 60's and 70's rolled in, Christie set her stories within that time period. She incorporated into her books the changes that took place in England and often times included her observations to the changes such as youth, a change in class structure, and even down to the development of supermarkets (The Mirror Crack'd From Side To Side). And as you read the later books you can sense in them and even through Miss Marple a feel of nostalgia, a sense of awe in the changes that were taking place. If she wrote books set in in the millennium, in 2016, do you think her books would still contain the class, excellence and and quality that she wrote in the past? Would they have a sense of nostalgia, yearning to go back to the past? Do you think she would explore certain themes that are often talked about in society today? How do you think she would handle issues like homosexuality, youth, today's technology, advances in the realm of crime such as DNA and forensic science, and even issues in the political world?    

Griselda

I think that she would get her mind around technology, in the same clever and scientific way that she taught herself about the effects of various poisons. I think she would create plots around emails looking like they'd been sent, but not having been at that time. Not sure about some of the other modern themes. Celebrities would replace the aristocracy as the set ordinary mortals wanted, schemed and even murdered in order to get in with.

Tommy_A_Jones

I don't think her writing would be that different to how her books are, I read a lot of books which are quite similar to her writing and they are modern day, Sure there would be some differences, Her Female Sleuth would Master Mobile Phones and email, and be on Facebook if she were another Miss Marple type person and her relatives from lower Generations would be on the 'perhaps' more sophisticated Twitter, she might Skype her Great Nieces and Nephews, Advances in DNA and Technology would help her sleuths and Agatha Christie might have sleuths with alsorts of Occupations, I think her books would be as brilliant as they are and we would enjoy them just as much and probably more. 

ChristieFanForLife

I think regardless of whatever time period Agatha Christie wrote her books, whether it be the 1960's or even 2016 and beyond if she was still alive today, her books wouldn't change because she would write the same way as she had in the past. Human nature is still the same, it doesn't change and that's what her books explored. A quote from The Mirror Crack'd From Side To Side would share my sentiments on this: 

"The new world was the same as the old. The houses were different, the streets were called Closes, the clothes were different, the voices were different, but the human beings were the same as they always had been." 

So sure we may have newer technological advances but beneath that A.C. would still explore the depths and crevices of the human heart, mining out the depravity that lies deep in our hearts and that will never change. 

GKCfan

A big part of the Miss Marple books was seeing how St. Mary Mead changed over the course of the twentieth century.  I think contemporary St. Mary Mead would be radically different, but inside Miss Marple's cottage things would be the same as ever, and you're so right, ChristieFanForLife, human nature would remain the same.

Agathasmykid

Griselda said:

I think that she would get her mind around technology, in the same clever and scientific way that she taught herself about the effects of various poisons. I think she would create plots around emails looking like they'd been sent, but not having been at that time. Not sure about some of the other modern themes. Celebrities would replace the aristocracy as the set ordinary mortals wanted, schemed and even murdered in order to get in with.

If she was still writing today, I would love a novel where the police and detectives have embraced technology like forensic science, internet searches etc, and yet Poirot and/or Marple remain their same selves.  Poirot dressed in dapper outfit, telling everyone around him that he doesn't need computers or forensic science, and instead encourages them to use their little grey cells. Would lead to some funny moments, and of course Poirot triumphing over modern technology in the end.

ChristieFanForLife

Agathasmykid said:

If she was still writing today, I would love a novel where the police and detectives have embraced technology like forensic science, internet searches etc, and yet Poirot and/or Marple remain their same selves.  Poirot dressed in dapper outfit, telling everyone around him that he doesn't need computers or forensic science, and instead encourages them to use their little grey cells. Would lead to some funny moments, and of course Poirot triumphing over modern technology in the end.

I like that! And that is EXACTLY how Poirot would react! Just like he said in one particular book, "It is the brain, the little grey cells on which one must rely. One must seek the truth within--not without." Or in The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd: "Method, order and the little grey cells ... Then there is the psychology of the crime. One must study that." It's all about the brain, all about the mind. Forensic science kinds of takes the brain process out of the equation 

Griselda

I didn't watch them, except for one repeat, but I think something similar was done with Benedict Cummerband (?)and an updated Sherlock Holmes solving modern mysteries. I think quite a few aspects of crime might stay the same, because crimes in novels are often so different to real life crimes. The idea of a criminal going undetected as a respectable member of society, and plotting in schematic ways to do away with someone to get their money very rarely comes up in real life, nor is reported in the press, but that sort of plot-crime appearns in novels. I have read about a few real dastardly deadly scheme murders by a cunning villain, over the years, but can't immediately think of them, as they are pretty rare. I suppose you could still have crimes in which forensics didn't play a huge part of the solution because the real interest was about a complex plot by the murderer. I suppose AC would have to have forensics being misled by the use of chemicals by the murderer, and CCTVs turned off, disarmed, or maybe decoys in disguise getting filmed on them. Maybe with today's identity fraud, criminals don't have to murder somebody to take their money or inherit from them, criminals just steal identities!