Once or twice, I have compared Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn in some, not all, respects to Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. Van Rijn makes this comparison almost explicit:
"'We ought to put on a scene like from a roman policier, where I dump a kilo of clues on the rug and we fit them together in the shape of the villain, us having a guilting bee...'" (p. 256)
I am all too familiar with such scenes because while I read or blog and Sheila knits, at the far end of the room she usually has the TV on with a Drama Channel that endlessly reshows detective series, including Poirot. In fact, a prolonged scene of this sort was showing while I was typing this post. So is Poirot among the romans policiers seen by van Rijn?
2 comments:
I think so. When Poul started writing, Poirot and Maigret were the only -roman policier- commonly known in the English-speaking world.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!a
As we know, Poul Anderson was something of a mystery fan, trying his hand at writing mysteries himself. So I'm sure he was familiar with some of the works of such mystery writers as A. Conan Doyle (of course!), GK Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, John Dickson Carr, Rex Stout, Agatha Christie, etc. And maybe Robert van Gulik.
Happy New Year! Sean
Post a Comment