“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.” —Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
Theodore Dalrymple (AKA Anthony Danies), prison psychiatrist and astute social observer, has seen enough of real life crime and criminals to agree completely with Weil:
Most murder is merely sordid, unmysterious, stupid, and not infrequently drunken, or alternatively engendered by passions of a crude culture.
In light of this, it is interesting that his latest book is devoted to fictional murder of the most contrived sort:
Agatha Christie and the Metaphysics of Murder
A deep dive into Christie's They Do It With Mirrors serves as a launch pad for a discursive meditation on crime, criminals, and modern society.
Christie's novel is perfectly suited to Dalrymple's purposes because this country house mystery is not populated by aristocrats, vicars, or village gentry. This time Miss Marple finds herself surrounded by juvenile delinquents, left-wing do-gooders, and the women who enable them.
The denizens of this novel are different from the criminals Dalrymple dealt with in prisons and inner-city hospitals. His real life patients are a product of “a culture that was debased, crude, and shallow, though profound in its effects. It was thin in its content but deep in the hold that it exerted.” Christie's characters are high-minded, educated, and devoted to the fine arts.
Dalrymple does not scoff at this nor does he deride the writer for her inventions. As a shrewd observer of of the world and a student of history, he understands that “a man in the grip of an obsession to do good can be very ruthless and not see that his end does not justify his means – even if his end is genuinely good rather than an impossible pipedream. In fact, the less tangible the good a man is trying to do, the greater the lengths he is prepared to go to secure it. The worst crimes are committed by those of the largest visions.”
Not for the first time, Christie has buried a profound truth in one of her cozy entertainments.
