A brilliant Greek sun beats down on Daniel Craig and his co-stars Kate Hudson, Edward Norton and Janelle Monáe in the follow-up to Knives Out, the surprise whodunnit hit of 2019. When Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery arrived in UK cinemas in November 2022, audiences were introduced in the time-honoured manner to a handful of prime suspects, with Daniel Craig's gentlemanly detective, Benoit Blanc, setting out to solve the crime.
But those glossy Knives Out films are not the only recent releases to stretch the framework of the traditional whodunnit into blockbuster territory. Film producers are now prepared to risk huge sums on the sort of classic crime that used only to be found on Sunday afternoon television.
"This kind of drama is a global phenomenon now," says James Prichard, Agatha Christie's great-grandson, who's chairman and chief executive of Agatha Christie Ltd. "It all changed with Kenneth Branagh and his Murder on the Orient Express. Fox did something amazing when it put in all that money. It showed that people still want murder mysteries."
Glass Onion (the title is taken from a Beatles song and from the transparent dome structure that dominates the film's island location) came out just months after Kenneth Branagh's stellar line-up of actors had sailed downriver together in his remake of Christie's Death on the Nile.
The US director and writer of the Knives Out films, Rian Johnson, described Glass Onion as "an equal, not a sequel" at its London premiere. But although Johnson claims that both screenplays were inspired by Christie's work, the second film is clearly the direct result of the commercial success of the first. The budget is spent on spectacle; the high-tech world it creates brings Daniel Craig closer to the clever gadgetry he played with as James Bond than to the deductive skills of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
A booming genre
James Prichard is right about the new global reach of the whodunnit template. The summer of 2022 saw the release of a Chinese series called Checkmate, based on Agatha Christie's Poirot stories, and in September 2022, British cinema audiences turned out in large numbers for the feature film See How They Run. A playful twist on the classic format, this mystery revolved around Christie's West End play The Mousetrap, which has been running for 70 years. November 2022 saw the airing of They Were Ten, a stylish French take on one of Christie's most famous books, now known as And Then There Were None.
"If murder mystery is booming, then we inevitably play an important part in that," says Prichard. "But I hate the phrase ‘cosy crime'. Looking at the books with the writer Sarah Phelps for her recent BBC adaptations taught me a lot. They are not just crossword puzzles. The murders matter and are rarely excused. There are some very nasty people killed in her books, but it is not condoned."
Indeed, after the pandemic and with economic troubles looming, it seems that viewers like the certainties of a neat, conventional mystery. The violence in these films tends to happen off-screen, and there are none of the grim tropes of "Scandi noir" features.
At this "comfier" end of the murder market, Hugh Laurie successfully brought a fresh version of the Christie mystery Why Didn't They Ask Evans? to BritBox (an online video subscription service), also in 2022. It proved that, a century on, the question in Christie's title was still worth asking. Film stars Emma Thompson and Jim Broadbent were happy to join Laurie's fun because whodunnits now attract so many viewers: their often rather stylized form of suspense can more than hold its own against gritty police documentaries and the gore of true crime.
In times of trouble
So, if we gather around the fireplace, with the evidence laid out before us, what do we see? A sudden glut of screen reworkings of whodunnit formulas and new interpretations of Christie classics.
The verdict is clear for first-time crime writer Charlotte Vassell: the reason why murder mysteries are so popular at the moment is because they're an unbeatable way to look at society. "A murder is an aberration of the social contract. So as a crime writer, you set up the part of society you want to study and then pull it all apart. We are all just nosy, really," she says.
Vassell's debut novel, The Other Half, published in January 2023, tells the contemporary story of the hidden wall of wealth behind a London murder. "As a reader, you look at all the characters' motivations and are often confounded by your own prejudices. It allows you to look at class and at race," she says, adding that Christie was always "meticulous" about setting up the social worlds she was about to destroy.
Vassell, aged 32, wrote her new mystery "as an escape" during lockdown. "It was a way to get me up in the mornings," she says. And while we may not all have written our own whodunnits, James Prichard suspects it's the challenges of the last three years that have led readers and viewers back to the genre.
"One of the bizarre things is how the book sales absolutely took off in lockdown," he says. "My father said at the beginning of it all that in times of trouble, people turn to Agatha Christie, and he was right. There really is something cathartic there, considering she herself wrote them after the horrors of war."
Christie's incredible legacy
The recipe for a convincing mystery is harder to concoct than perhaps most fans think. But for young people who might like to try, there's an opportunity coming up. To celebrate the anniversary of The Mousetrap's world-beating run, the production has set up a Young Mystery Writers programme, designed to inspire the next generation of budding crime writers.
Working with the National Literacy Trust and more than 30 secondary schools across Britain, the scheme focuses and supports young students from disadvantaged backgrounds as they attempt to write their own short whodunnit. It also offers them the chance to experience a West End show. Those who take part will see their work published in a celebratory anthology.
"This partnership will use Agatha Christie's incredible legacy to encourage a love of writing - a key literacy skill - in 600 students from disadvantaged backgrounds," says Tim Judge, head of schools programmes at the National Literacy Trust. "Christie is the bestselling novelist of all time and Young Mystery Writers will continue to serve as an inspiration."
© Guardian News & Media 2022