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Evil Under the Sun
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition |
|
| Author | Agatha Christie |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Rose |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
| Publication date | June 1941 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 256 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | One, Two, Buckle My Shoe |
| Followed by | N or M? |
Evil Under the Sun is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in June 1941 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6).
Contents |
A quiet holiday at a secluded hotel in Cornwall is all that Hercule Poirot wants, but amongst his fellow guests is a beautiful and vain woman who, seemingly oblivious to her own husband’s feelings, revels in the attention of another woman’s husband. The scene is set for murder, but can the field of suspects really be as narrow as it first appears?
(Although this novel is not counted amongst the novels featuring him, Hastings makes a cameo appearance in about ten lines of chapter 2, discussing the case with Poirot at a later date.)
The beautiful Arlena Marshall is magnetically attractive to men, and her husband Kenneth reacts with apparent stoicism to the presence at the hotel of Patrick Redfern, her new beau. His wife, Christine, seems less acquiescent, and Arlena is also detested by Rosamund Darnley, an old friend of Kenneth’s who seems to want him for herself.
On the morning of the murder, Arlena goes off on her own for what appears to be a tryst on the side of the island that is comparatively unvisited. Poirot assumes that her assignation is with Patrick, but this seems not to be the case when Patrick arrives shortly afterwards and seems to be looking for her.
Patrick starts to push out a boat to go meet Arlena when another guest, Emily Brewster, asks if she may join him. When they reach the secluded beach, they see Arlena on the sand. Patrick clambers ashore, revealing that Arlena is dead. Emily goes to fetch help while he waits with the dead Arlena.
Found at the crime scene are a pair of scissors and a bottle.
Much attention is paid to the alibi of Kenneth Marshall, who claims to have been typing letters at the time of the murder. He has been heard, but the main corroboration comes from Rosamund Darnley, who claims to have entered the hotel and seen him, although not interrupted his work. When Kenneth confirms that he did see Rosamund enter the room, there is a suspicion that the two may have contrived the alibi. Perhaps the two were working together.
The discovery of a jewel in a cave adjoining the beach draws into the list of suspects a keen yachtsman, Horace Blatt. Meanwhile, Christine Redfern admits to overhearing Arlena talking to a man who was blackmailing her. When it is discovered that much Arlena's enormous fortune has been eaten up in untraceable payments, another potential motive becomes clear. Moreover, Poirot starts to inquire regarding recent cases of strangulation, throwing up suspicions of a serial killer. Is the religiously zealous Reverend Lane secretly a homicidal maniac?
Kenneth’s daughter, Linda, has behaved oddly on the morning of the murder, returning early with a package of candles. Poirot finds remains of wax, hair, and coloured paper in her fireplace. When she attempts to commit suicide, leaving a note that claims responsibility for the murder, it seems that the case is solved.
Linda’s guilt is attached, however, to a little experiment with sympathetic magic and a wax doll. The real nature of the murder is far more complex. For Arlena was not the seductress that she first appeared: she was just a woman of strong superficial attractiveness of whom men quickly tired. She was an obvious victim for a manipulative swindler such as Patrick Redfern.
Christine's body was found, not Arlena's.
Arlena, scared by the approach of Patrick’s wife down the ladder and, following her previous instructions from Patrick, hid in the cave. Christine took her place lying on the beach, wearing the hat, and was “discovered” by Patrick.
Now, Patrick could kill Arlena at his leisure. It was at least the second such murder that he had committed; the pair had been responsible for an earlier murder using a similar trick to establish his alibi. His motive was to kill Arlena before it could be revealed that he had swindled her out of much of her fortune.
The only happy ending is for Kenneth and Rosamund, who plan their eventual wedding while reflecting on the fact that each had provided a fake alibi for the other, believing the other to be the actual murderer.
- Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective
- Colonel Weston, the Chief Constable
- Inspector Colgate, the investigating officer
- Sergeant Phillips, a policeman in the case
- Dr. Neasden, the police surgeon
- Arlena Marshall, a former actress
- Captain Kenneth Marshall, Arlena’s husband
- Linda Marshall, Kenneth’s daughter, and Arlena’s daughter by marriage
- Patrick Redfern, Arlena’s lover
- Christine Redfern, Patrick’s wife
- Rosamund Darnley, a clothes designer
- Reverend Stephen Lane, a guest who quite openly declares Arlena Marshall the evilest in the land.
- Emily Brewster, a guest who discovers the body of Arlena Marshall.
- Sir Horace Blatt, a yachtsman
- Mrs. Castle, the owner of the Jolly Roger Hotel.
- Major Barry, A retired officer who fought in India
- Mrs. Gardener- An garrulous American tourist
- Mr. Odell Gardener, The husband of Mrs. Gardener who quite obligingly does whatever she says.
The verdict in The Times Literary Supplement was positive: "To maintain a place at the head of detective-writers would be difficult enough without the ever increasing rivalry. Even Miss Christie cannot stay there unchallenged though she has a following which will swear her books are best without reading the others. Unbiased opinion may have given the verdict against her last season when new arrivals set a very hot pace; but Evil Under the Sun will take a lot of beating now". After summarising the plot, the unnamed reviewer concluded: "Miss Christie casts the shadow of guilt upon first one and then another with such casual ease that it is difficult for the reader not to be led by the nose. Everybody is well aware that any character most strongly indicated is not a likely criminal; yet this guiding principle is forgotten when Miss Christie persuades you that you are more discerning than you really are. Then she springs her secret like a land-mine."
Robert Barnard: "The classic Christie marital triangle plot set in West Country seaside resort, with particular play on the alikeness of sunbathing bodies, and dead ones. Possibly overingenious and slightly uncharacterised."[1]
The plot has some similarities to the Christie short story Triangle at Rhodes, which was first published in the US in This Week magazine in February 1936 and in the UK in issue 545 of the Strand Magazine in May 1936 and included in the collection Murder in the Mews (US title: Dead Man's Mirror) one year later.
In Triangle at Rhodes, Poirot again witnesses an apparent liaison between two married people. Again everyone believes that the responsible party is a beautiful and magnetic woman, Valentine Chantry, who is murdered. In Triangle at Rhodes the murder is by poison and it is thought that she and her lover have attempted to murder her husband and that the plot has gone wrong, but Poirot reveals that the murder was committed by her husband in cahoots with her apparent lover’s wife, Mrs. Gold.
In both stories, the key twist is that the appearance of the seductress’s power deflects attention from the reality of the situation. In Triangle at Rhodes, Mrs. Gold says of Valentine Chantry “in spite of her money and her good looks and all […] she’s not the sort of woman men really stick to. She’s the sort of woman, I think, that men would get tired of very easily.” In Evil under the Sun, Poirot says of Arlena Marshall “She was the type of woman whom men care for easily and of whom they easily tire.”
The character of Colonel Weston had originally appeared in Peril at End House and makes reference to that case upon his first appearance, in Chapter 5.
Minor character Mrs. Gardener is herself an admirer of Poirot's exploits and refers to the case of Death on the Nile in Chapter 1 of this novel.
The book is read by the character Sawyer on the ABC TV Series Lost in the episode titled Exposé.
- Evil Under the Sun (1982), starring Peter Ustinov as Poirot
- Evil Under the Sun (2001), starring David Suchet as Poirot, from the series Agatha Christie's Poirot.
In the 1982 film, the setting is moved to a secluded resort frequented by the rich and famous in the Adriatic Sea (the action was in fact filmed in Majorca, Spain).
- 1939, Collins Crime Club (London), June 1941, Hardback, 256 pp
- 1941, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), 1941, Hardback, 260 pp
On October 16 2007, Evil Under the Sun will debut as The Adventure Company's third Agatha Christie PC game.
- http://www.all-about-agatha-christie.com/Evil-Under-The-Sun.html
- [1] Web page for Burgh Island, the setting of which is used in Evil Under The Sun and And Then There Were None.
- ^ Barnard, Robert. A Talent to Deceive – an appreciation of Agatha Christie - Revised edition (Page 204). Fontana Books, 1990. ISBN 0006374743