The Culinary Space: Food as a Narrative Tool in Agatha Christie’s Detective Novels

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Prerana Chakravarty

Abstract

Kevin Burton Smith in his article ‘Murder on the Menu’ (2010), comments, “right from the start there’s been a curious link between food (and drink) and crime fiction.” Despite the fact that culinary mystery novels arose as a subgenre of crime fiction in the late twentieth century, food has always been a part of crime fiction, and has played an important role in the early stories of Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe. Food is frequently depicted as a source of stability and order in crime novels, establishing verisimilitude, creating a genuine world, a world as we know it. Agatha Christie, too, has included significant reference to food, eating habits and food rituals throughout her detective stories, using it as a tool to create a feminine and domestic space. This paper will analyse how Christie has used the depiction of food as a tool to further the narrative, portraying it in her novels as a calming ritual and a clue to the murder. However, food in Christie’s stories can also gain a more sinister undertone, and this paper will also analyse this, focusing on how Christie transforms food into a murder weapon itself, as a bad omen indicating events, thereby, blending reality with the storyline and lending vivacity to her characters and her plots.


 


 

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References

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Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.

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Christie, Agatha. The Mysterious Affair At Styles. Harper Collins, 1920.

---.Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Harper Collins, 1936.

---.Murder on the Orient Express. Harper Collins, 1934.

---. At Bertram’s Hotel. Harper Collins, 2011.

---.A Pocketful of Rye. Harper Collins, 2011.

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---.Sparkling Cyanide. Harper Collins, 2002

---.4.50 From Paddington. Harper Collins, 2011

---.Three Act Tragedy. Berkeley, 1934.

---.A Christmas Adventure. Harper Collins, 2011.

---.A Murder is Announced. Harper Collins, 2011.

---.A Caribbean Mystery. Harper Collins, 2011.

Knight, Stephen. Form and Ideology in Detective Fiction. Macmillan Press, 1980.

---. Crime Fiction 1800-2000: Death, Detection and Diversity. Palgrave

Macmillan, 2004.

Priestman, Martin, editor. Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction. Cambridge UP, 2003.