Compromising Genre in Agatha Christie’s South African Detective Novel, The Man in the Brown Suit

Agatha Christie is so closely associated with the genre of the “whodunit” detective novel that her work is often invoked when the genre is defined. According to Tzvetan Todorov’s influential essay, “The Typology of Fiction” (1966), the generic innovation which often characterises great literature is not appropriate in detective fiction where rigidity of form is intrinsic to the satisfaction the work provides. This is related to the moral function of detective fiction; the identification of the villain and the execution of justice are crucial. It amounts to the expression of an ideology, which according to Michael Green celebrates the individualism of the middle classes and their ability to maintain an ordered society in which they can be psychologically and culturally at home. Christie’s only novel set in South Africa, The Man in the Brown Suit (1924) uncharacteristically transgresses these hallowed conventions of the genre. It is my contention that this is the result of autobiographical and personal elements in the work as well as the intrusion of other genres provoked by the novel’s (South) African setting. While these elements jeopardise the success of the work as a whodunit, they have also prompted a narrative innovation which has largely been ignored by critics. When successfully subjected to the jealous demands of the genre in a later work by the same author, this innovation produced what has been acclaimed by some as the greatest detective novel of all, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)

Aesthetics · Agatha · Art · Detective fiction · Ideology · Individualism · Intrusion · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Typology · Anthropology · Crime and Detective Fiction Studies · Law

• New History of South Africa

  Open Access•Cornelius Thomas•New Contree•2008

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