The ABC Murders

The ABC Murders is a classic mystery novel from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction—the umbrella term for many British detective novels written from the 1920s to World War II. Christie achieved much of her fame in this period, and her novels reflect much of the key aspects of the genre: a central mystery that can be solved by the reader with careful attention to the text, containing a limited set of suspects. Pauline Dewan notes that Golden Age novels are often considered “clue puzzles” (Dewan, “Golden Age,” see “Further Reading and Resources” section for context). In the case of the ABC Murders, the introduction of Cust and the third person chapters that largely involve him provide more trails for the reader to follow. The detective is often not a member of law enforcement, though there are exceptions, as in Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn series.

Golden Age novels depend far more on formula—the initial suspect who is ultimately exonerated, a series of crimes that offer increasing data for the sleuth—than depth of feeling or character development. Poirot and Hastings are not substantively altered by the work they do, nor is the focus on their inner lives or those around them. The occasional references to The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the first Poirot novel, telegraph to the reader that Christie will be offering the usual structural elements of the genre, while also indicating that romance will be a theme of the work, as it was in that novel.

As Christie herself indicates, Poirot appears to defy time—a permanent fixture of her fictional England. Dewan points out that interwar detective fiction is often “conservative” as regards its class and social politics: murder is only briefly disruptive, not a harbinger of social transformation (Dewan, “Golden Age”). This, too, is a key aspect of the ABC Murders. The socially ambitious Thora Grey exits without fulfilling her social ambitions, and Megan Barnard and Donald Fraser are social equals. Their marriage restores social equilibrium and rewards Megan for her more serious attitude toward men, in contrast to the frivolity of the murdered Betty.