Cosmic Horror and Classic Crime

Though both the majority of her output and the bulk of her commercial and critical success came in the realm of crime fiction, Agatha Christie didn’t solely work in that field. In 1933 she published a collection of stories hovering in the borderland between crime fiction, outright horror, and the hazy borderland of supernatural mysteries that neighbours those two.

With stories representing at both extremes of this genre spectrum and most conceivable positions between, The Hound of Death represents work from her first highly productive decade of writing (the earliest publication of any story from it in the magazines has been traced to 1924, other stories may well be original to the set), and reveals her to be adept at a far wider range of writing styles than anyone who’s only read a few Poirot or Miss Marple novels may have realised.

In fact, neither Poirot nor Miss Marple show up in any of these stories – even the one story we can confidently say is a pure crime yarn with no supernatural aspects even hinted at sits somewhat outside the accustomed atmosphere of their stamping grounds. Here are found enigmas which often stay a little mysterious – not the sort of thing which will succumb suddenly to the attention of Poirot’s little grey cells or any of Miss Marple’s flashes of inspiration whilst gardening.