Christie scholar John Curran describes Endless Night (1967) as Agatha Christie’s ‘final triumph, her last great novel and the greatest achievement of her last quarter century’ (p. 628). Published when the Queen of Crime was almost 80 years old, classic narrative devices and tropes are revisited and refreshed to create a startlingly unexpected and convincingly contemporary crime story that takes place in a mysterious and apparently cursed setting, Gipsy’s Acre, which virtually becomes a character within the text in itself.
The DNA of Endless Night is to be found in the 1942 short story ‘The Case of the Caretaker’s Wife’. In order to help Miss Marple recover from a bout of illness, Dr Haydock prescribes a psychological pick-me-up for his patient in the shape of a juicy village murder mystery to solve. In a metafictional and intertextual twist, the narrative frame presents the story as having been authored by Haydock himself, who admits to Miss Marple that he rather fancied having a go at writing his own puzzle story.
Your organisation does not have access to this article.
Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise
Subscribe
