A cross-disciplinary essay that, by offering an ultra-modern reading of Agatha Christie’s work, sheds light on the taboo of family malice and the family’s relationship to silence and truth.
Of the 66 mystery novels written by Agatha Christie, more than 50 are domestic crimes. Murder is a smokescreen; the real subject of the work is the banality of evil at the heart of the family.
Malice, jealousy, humiliation, incest… the uniqueness of family evil lies, even today, in its invisibility: those who do it hide, those around them see nothing, the victim remains silent.
The truth is kept quiet for fear that it might kill. But the discovery of the body, in Christie’s novels, forces the relatives to admit that there is indeed a problem. The truth can no longer be kept quiet.