Ep. 2 | Duglas T. Stewart & Agatha Christie Duglas T. Stewart - primary songwriter and vocalist of Glasgow based indie-pop band, BMX Bandits - regails to John his obsession with Agatha Christie books and how the mystery genre has influenced his work.

 

‘There’s a lot of things in these mysteries of love and longing, and Agatha Christie would bring real life things into her mysteries … all of these real life things would come into the work and I think, when I’m making music myself, it might not actually refer directly to something that has happened in the world but it definitely has an effect. The work is a consequence of the good and the bad that is happening out there’ - Duglas T. Stewart. 

 

Duglas’ Top 7 Agatha Christie mysteries

1. Endless Night (1967) 

I fell in love with this story via the 1972 fim adaptation starring Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett. I would very much recommend the film. I must have seen it between 50 and a 100 times, including a good number of times with my friend Norman Blake. Norman and I bonded over music but also over our mutual love of some movies and this is one of them. Bernard Herrmann's orchestral and moogy score is so great and underpinning the tragedy and eeriness of the tale. I first read the book when I was in my early 20s. Agatha thought it was one of her very best and she was right.

 

1. Death on the Nile (1937)

I think my top two earned their top places not just because of the brilliantly woven mysteries but also because of the love stories at the heart of them. I think the 1978 movie is very good as is the 2004 TV adaptation.

 

1. And Then There Were None (1939) 

One of the top ten highest selling books of all time. Ten strangers visit an island and what happens next. The recent TV version was very good (2015) as is the Russian TV adaptation from 1987. There's a fun 1945 version but the other versions are best avoided and don't have the impact of the original story.

 

1. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)

Many would consider this to be Christie's great masterpiece. It's like a wonderful conjuring trick of a book. For this one stick to the book. No adaptation I'm aware of services this story well. There is a fun Orson Welles radio drama that's a lot of fun if you've read the book. There is also a terrible TV version of the story starring David Suchet and a totally miscast Oliver Ford Davies. Suchet is as good as always but the real problem is the screenplay which misses the whole point and impact of one of the greatest mysteries ever constructed by a writer. It made me cross for a week.

 

1. The ABC Murders (1936)

One of the best Poirot mysteries. The 1992 TV version starring David Suchet is one of the best TV versions of a Christie story. Sadly the more recent version starring John Malcovich as Poirot was poor with the writer for television putting their own inventions before the brilliance of Christie's original mystery.

 

1. Ordeal By Innocence (1958)

A crucial witness whose testimony would have saved a man hanged for murder doesn't come forward until two years after the crime. A family is torn apart by the stranger's revelations. 

The 2018 BBC adaptation of the story had a pretty good cast (mostly) but is one of the great crimes against Christie's work ever. Avoid it. The writer decided to change the mystery in the story and solution to her own and scrap Christie's. That takes a strange arrogance. That's like me doing a song with a melody by Bacharach or George Gershwin and deciding to write my own melody for it. However there is a not bad film of the story from 1985 starring Donald Sutherland and a superior 2007 TV adaptation with Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple. Miss Marple wasn't in the original book but still the story works very well and it adds an extra poignancy to the story without destroying Christie's excellent mystery.

 

1. Sleeping Murder (1976)

This is a Miss Marple mystery set in the 1930s. It was the last Christie novel published, after her death earlier that year. It's a mystery about deja vu and jealousy. Sometimes it's best to leave old wounds alone instead of opening them up again. It's another one that really touches my heart.

Check out the full, un-cut video interviews on John Robb’s YouTube channel.