Oh, Mary! Ranking the Westmacotts with Guest Co-Hosts Mark Aldridge & Gray Robert Brown of Westmapod

All About Agatha Christie

Kemper Donovan hosts Mark Aldridge and Gray Robert Brown of Westmapod to rank Agatha Christie's six novels written under her pseudonym Mary Westmacott. The

Key takeaways

• Kemper Donovan ranks Absent in the Spring as his number one Westmacott novel, praising its devastating ending and comparing it to Five Little Pigs.
• Mark Aldridge and Gray Robert Brown initially read the six novels quickly for their podcast but found that sequential rereading significantly altered their rankings.

Main topics

• Ranking Mary Westmacott novels
• Sequential rereading vs. first impressions

Notable quotes

"Christy has high highs and low lows when it comes to the mysteries... But the Westmacott's are all, I think, fully competent, functional and dare I say, quite, quite good."

Conclusion

The episode offers fans a nuanced look at Christie's lesser-known litera

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) For many of us, going further isn't a choice. It's a feeling we can't ignore because ambition has a way of outgrowing where it began. Speaker 1 (0:11) Turning dreams into direction. Speaker 1 (0:17) Every journey brings us closer to the life we imagine. Speaker 1 (0:23) So, where will your journey take you? Etihad. Beyond Borders. Speaker 5 (0:30) This is Believe. One network. Every topic. Everywhere. Speaker 4 (0:41) Have you ever tried cutting it in half and just literally just calling it part one and part two and dropping them? Well, funnily enough, we did that for styles because I. Yes, of course you did. I Speaker 5 (0:51) was adamant that podcasts cannot, a podcast episode cannot be more than an hour, that it has to have four digits. We Speaker 4 (0:59) all used to think that. Yeah. Speaker 5 (1:01) And Catherine, to her credit from the beginning, was like, no, it doesn't matter. No one cares. But I insisted, which is why a lot of those novel episodes you can hear. the cuts and they're like 58 minutes and you know 42 seconds um and i should have just listened to her um and then i that's i've like and now i've just gone completely in the opposite direction screw it and i feel like it once the podcast has become known for for just like the ridiculously long episodes Speaker 1 (1:27) Thank you. Speaker 5 (1:29) Welcome to All About Agatha, the podcast dedicated to reading and ranking every single mystery novel written by the queen of crime, Dame Agatha Christie. I am Kemper Donovan. I'm Gray Robert Brown. Speaker 6 (1:42) And I'm Mark Oldridge. Speaker 5 (1:44) Oh my gosh, it's a British invasion. Speaker 6 (1:47) Once Speaker 5 (1:48) again, here on All About Agatha, we are all sitting down here in England, but of course, to discuss Mary Westmacott. The ranking of Mary Westmacott's six novels. And just Speaker 6 (2:02) future Kemper stepping in here to state the obvious, Speaker 5 (2:05) which is that Mark Gray and I do spoil major aspects of all six Mary Westmacott novels in the course of this conversation. We do not spoil any Agatha Christie novels or short stories, however. Just wanted you all to be aware of that. And I should also mention that we do touch very lightly. on the topic of suicide in Speaker 6 (2:27) the course of this conversation. All right, back to the episode. Speaker 5 (2:30) Gray and Mark have just done such a fantastic job on their podcast, Westmopod, which they have now, I won't say completed, but you've finished discussing each of the six books. And we figured, well, you got to rank them. Speaker 6 (2:46) Well, which we've avoided doing. Grey was one who was like, you know, we don't want to be about, oh, we like this one more than that one. And yet we always had the back of our minds at some point at the end, once we've done the discuss them on their own merits, we can go, yeah, but I like this one best. Speaker 4 (3:02) You know, Kemper, you're the... king of ranking so gray was desperate to get back on this podcast basically so i will be honest my uh mark's been on it a bunch he is yeah he's old news my my um the the little 25 year old that first started listening to all about agatha in in my office job in uh in london is is inwardly squeeing Speaker 5 (3:25) did you see the way he reminded us all of how young he is Speaker 4 (3:27) oh well i'm not 25 anymore well the Speaker 5 (3:30) podcast is 10 years old so you do the math Speaker 4 (3:35) Yeah, Speaker 5 (3:35) happy 10 years, by the way. Oh, thank you. Thank you, I know. Speaker 4 (3:39) But Speaker 5 (3:39) yeah. Speaker 6 (3:40) Did you launch on her birthday? Speaker 5 (3:41) We did, technically. Catherine and I did a little teaser, which is really hysterical to listen back to now because it's so awkward. It's about three minutes long, and you can tell we're reading from a page with really long pauses between each of us, and we just sort of teased that we were doing a podcast. We don't even really say much about it. I think we piped in. some of the Agatha Christie's Poirot, the David Suchet series theme music and the Joan Hickson, Miss Marple theme music. And then the week after we started with Styles. See, I Speaker 4 (4:15) don't think I ever listened to that teaser. I wasn't around when it first started, actually. I got into it later. But I wouldn't have listened to that teaser. And hilariously now, we, it's a, it's a... bane of our lives that people don't really listen to our intro episodes because you just dive into the first proper episode right but i knew people would do that because i always do that i sort of skip the preamble i'm like no give me the content this proper Speaker 6 (4:38) episode yeah um that explains why i must have started listening at the beginning of 2017 because that's when i just pitched my poro book Oh, Speaker 5 (4:50) okay. Yeah. I always think of you as Speaker 6 (4:52) really Speaker 5 (4:52) being there from the very beginning because we used Agatha Christie on screen from the very beginning. Right, okay. And then you were on the murder on the Orient Express episode. Yes, on the telephone. On the telephone. It Speaker 6 (5:05) was like, that's how much things have changed. I'm picturing one Speaker 4 (5:07) like on the cover of Murder of Roger. Speaker 6 (5:09) No, Speaker 4 (5:09) it Speaker 6 (5:09) was in my office at work because I was like, I don't have a landline. So I had to use the one at work. And I remember having to get them to allow, me to dial an international number or something. I had to get Speaker 4 (5:22) clearance from the dean or something. Well, yes, because famously you always say you thought that Catherine was dialing in from somewhere in Asia. I always thought so. Because you Speaker 6 (5:32) can hear Speaker 4 (5:32) crickets. Yeah, right at the beginning you could hear. Speaker 6 (5:35) And because you could tell... In those early episodes, the quality's not what it becomes. Speaker 5 (5:42) Absolute garbage, I think, might be the Speaker 4 (5:44) phrase you're looking for. You don't need good sound quality when you've got the quality. When the content is as superlative. But you could Speaker 6 (5:52) really hear the difference in your microphone as well. So it gave the impression that you were like... you know, 5,000 miles away from each other and you're actually just in different parts of LA. Right, Speaker 5 (6:01) yeah. And yet for people in LA, you know, we're on sort of the west side and, you know, near the Grove, which is pretty far actually. But yeah, it was... But to Speaker 4 (6:09) us, it's one traffic jammed road. Right, yeah. And we're just like, go on, go around our house. Come on, Kemper. For God's sakes, go have Speaker 5 (6:17) a Speaker 4 (6:17) cup of tea. Speaker 5 (6:17) Yeah, I've actually re-engineered a lot of those early episodes to make the audio quality better. Oh, have you? Yeah, yeah. Because Speaker 4 (6:25) it's just... shocking how bad that quality is I look forward to that on my seventh listen through or something I've just at the end of a Speaker 6 (6:32) re-listen actually I've just got to by the pricking of my thumbs very Speaker 4 (6:36) good yeah Speaker 6 (6:37) so love that that's a 60s one though I'm not so keen Speaker 4 (6:39) on them Speaker 5 (6:40) no she wasn't so good in the 60s right I know that's an opinion no oh Speaker 4 (6:44) I'm right I'm the women of the world right yawn yeah we're joking we're Speaker 6 (6:49) joking please pre-order The Swinging Christie's book Speaker 5 (6:54) All right. Well, we have some ranking to do. Yeah. And I have to say a little bit of a less daunting project to rank six novels as opposed to 66, which is nice because I think we can have sort of an organic conversation about where we are falling with all these novels. But I know that you had wanted to discuss a little bit. how you thought of the novels before embarking on Westmopod and then how that might have changed after you did all of these episodes, that might be a good place to start. I, and also just to, I haven't really ever talked about my stance on Mary Westmacott really on, on the regular podcast, but I have covered all of the Mary Westmacott's on Patreon, which I will plug as well. Go to our Patreon page link in the show notes. If you would like to check out those episodes and haven't really discussed. Mary much on this podcast. So I had only read the novels for the first time when I covered them for Patreon in the last couple of years. I didn't really have very many preconceptions about them, especially because, and this is something we were talking about. a little off mic before the episode started, but I think that they, up until recently, have been much less available in the United States and in the UK. When I got my copies, I definitely got the sense that I had to go far and wide and go to, you know, little independent bookstores and get some odd copies, some compendiums and things like Speaker 6 (8:22) that. So I think it's Speaker 5 (8:24) a Speaker 6 (8:24) little easier. I remember when I was like a teenager, knowing that that was a gap in her. you know, Agatha Christie collection and finding them in a proper bookshop. Yeah. I was like, oh, I know she hasn't got these. I don't know if she ever read them, actually. But nevertheless, they sit on the shelf in part of the collection. And that's the important thing. Speaker 5 (8:43) So it's really interesting that I think you two will be able to do and have done what Catherine and I did on the podcast, which was really a reread. project, right? Where you're revisiting these books and then reading them systematically in publication order more quickly than you probably read them the first time. And then your opinions really will change. So maybe we should start there and just talk about that a little bit. Speaker 4 (9:08) Yeah. Speaker 5 (9:09) Mine Speaker 4 (9:09) have Speaker 5 (9:09) changed a lot. Have Speaker 4 (9:10) yours changed a lot? More so than I thought they Speaker 6 (9:13) would. Speaker 4 (9:13) Yeah. Yeah. No, it is interesting because I think you were saying before that you would have read them for the first time. in preparation for doing your episodes. Yes. Do you remember the order you, it's been so long since I listened to those patrons. It was lightly in publication order. I definitely, that may not be true. You Speaker 5 (9:32) saved Absinthe Speaker 4 (9:33) in the spring to Speaker 5 (9:33) the last. I saved Absinthe in the spring to the last because so many people have told me that it's the best one, you know, of the Westmacots and one of the best of Christie's. I think I might've actually started with, and Catherine and I covered. either three or four of them together. But, and then I finished up on my own, but I think we might've started with Unfinished Portrait because it was the, the, you know, very autobiographical one. And we had been talking a lot about Christie's life. And then I believe, I know that we also did The Rose and the Yew Tree because we actually did that episode with Sophie Hanna. Of Speaker 4 (10:05) course. Which was fantastic. The world's number Speaker 5 (10:07) one fan of The Rose and the Yew Tree. Oh, she loves The Rose and the Yew Tree. So we did that with Sophie on Patreon. We did. You know, I think Giant Spread we must have left for later because I believe that I did that one on my own. And then I did A Daughter's Daughter. I think I did The Burden and then A Daughter's Daughter and then Absinthe Springs. So yeah, not in publication order at all. No, not at all. See, isn't that Speaker 4 (10:31) interesting? Because I've never read all of the Agatha, all of the proper Agatha Christie's in order, which obviously that was your whole endeavor. The whole project of All About Agatha was about doing that. Yeah. But the only time that, so I've done a full reread of the Westmacott's twice with bits of rereading, but mostly it was when I first got into sort of the Agatha world proper, maybe sort of five years ago, the Agatha kind of quote unquote scholarship world proper. And then once in readiness for the podcast. And both times I did one to six in sequence. So I've never read them. out of order and and you're right like it you were saying before it does um it does that does change your perspective on them because you see the times changing throughout um but yeah go on do you want to start with giant spread yeah well Speaker 6 (11:24) yeah so for me giant spread is the biggest change actually yeah it was always my least favorite westmacott um because I first read most of them. I think I'd read two before, but I read them properly when I was writing Agatha Christie on screen. So that would have been about 2013, I would have read them all. Just because I thought I should read everything, even though there's been no screen adaptations, I was like, I should have an idea of context. So I guess I definitely read them quickly. And Giant's Bread is not a book that lends itself to being read quickly. And funnily enough, yesterday, I was having lunch with... Matthew and Lucy Pritchard and I was chatting to Lucy about the Westmacottes and we were saying which ones were our favourite and least favourites and she said exactly the same she was like well I've and sorry Lucy if I'm misquoting you might listen to this but she basically said exactly the same oh well I think I read it a bit too quickly and I said oh isn't that funny that's exactly what happened with me that I think I don't know that savored is quite the right word, but you need to immerse yourself. Yes, you need to sink into it. Yes, sink into it. That's great. And let yourself be carried along by it rather than going, what's the plot? What are the characters? Where are they going? Which is sort of how I first read it. You know, what are the connections? What might be interesting about this? So for me, Giant's Bread has gone from my least favorite to it's now... number three of six. So my third favorite. It's number three of six for me too. Oh, how interesting. Oh, great. And no, I'm going to Speaker 4 (12:59) be different. I think it's going to be really Speaker 6 (13:02) interesting because you advocate, we both advocate for all of these, but I feel like almost every time I talk to you, whichever story we're discussing about the Westmacots, you're like, oh, well, I like it. I think I like it more than you. And it's like, everything seems to go up. Yeah, I would say, Speaker 4 (13:18) I would say, Almost all of them went up in my estimation from original reread, which isn't surprising really because most, I think that makes sense. You're looking at it on a much deeper level. Yes. And also you're no longer, I mean, this isn't just Christie or Westmacott, but you're no longer coming to it with a prescriptive expectation because you sort of vaguely remember the plot or whatever. And we'll come back to that when we talk about The Burden. But yeah, it was fourth for me on first read. But I think it's maybe first now. Wow. Oh, wow. I think it's, I think I love, I think, you know, we know how much she loves Dickens. And I think it is one of those sort of big Victorian novels in a way where, you know how you can go to Great Expectations for a love story, you can go to it for... missive on class. You can go to it for a beautiful depiction of London. You can go to it for the rural and the pastoral. You can go to it for anything, those big novels, because they are epics and they really contain multitudes. And I think Giant Spreads like that, I feel like it changes a little bit every time you read it. And it's expansive and epic in a way that Christy doesn't normally do, because she's normally writing to 200 pages in a tight plot. It is very Speaker 5 (14:45) literary in a way that the mysteries are plot-driven and giant spread. It's remarkable that that was the first one, not the gate two, because it feels so different from her other output. And she was immediately able to switch into this different mode. And it feels like she's drawing on all of that fandom and readership from the Victorian era, which you can get. pieces of i mean you get the little references to dickens and thackeray and the mysteries and whatnot but um you can really see her drawing on it more directly the other just thing i for which i honestly forgot to say but just kind of like my umbrella comment about this whole ranking thing with west mccott is that the reason katherine and i did the ranking project for the mysteries is that i think Christy and most people would agree with this. Christy has high highs and low lows when it comes to the mysteries. And it could be different titles, you know, for different people. For some, they might be Passenger to Frankfurt as a high high. For example, you know, Gray Robert Brown or Speaker 4 (15:43) gesturing to most of the rest of Speaker 5 (15:45) the world. It might be a little bit lower. But the Westmacott's are all, I think, fully competent, functional and dare I say, quite, quite. good like there are no when i was thinking about well how am i going to order these it was more a question of which are the best rather than which are the worst yeah if that makes sense right where i was like well this one has to be above that one but it's not like the lowest one there was no posture in Speaker 6 (16:10) a Speaker 5 (16:10) fate there was no posture in favor i said well clearly this has to be at the bottom it was just like They kept on getting knocked out and then it says which one is going to end up at the bottom. So I just wanted to throw that out there. Speaker 4 (16:21) That is a good distinction to make. I think, yeah, the gap between quality of whatever you put at one and six is much narrower than the 66. But then also maybe that makes sense because they're written over a shorter time period and also they are more sort of spiritually Speaker 6 (16:37) similar. They're more sort of, Speaker 4 (16:39) I don't know, they're sort of all exploring the same ideas. Yeah. roughly in the same kind of settings with roughly the same sort of characters yeah a bit more of a piece Speaker 5 (16:47) and all written when she wanted to write them yeah and there's no there's certainly no Speaker 6 (16:52) wanted it or not exactly Speaker 5 (16:53) there's no sausage factory happening here there's no one saying agatha where is the next you know mystery so um i think you could feel that in all these definitely Speaker 1 (17:04) For many of us, going further isn't a choice. It's a feeling we can't ignore because ambition has a way of outgrowing where it began. Speaker 1 (17:16) Turning dreams into direction. Speaker 1 (17:21) Every journey brings us closer to the life we imagine. Speaker 1 (17:27) So, where will your journey take you? Etihad. Beyond borders. Speaker 6 (17:34) so then it's worth saying by the way that for me the way i ranked these was like literally two nights ago so i did have them written in my phone and stuff from months ago when we were thinking about this and i just thought the other night i was like what are like do i even agree and so i got my notepad out and i literally just went i'm gonna give myself 15 seconds to write down instinctively what do i think from from best to worst so that means even as I go through them now I might well change my mind but I'm not going to but it's that things that loads of people say I know Sophie Hannah said it about what's your favourite Chris seat it's usually the one I've just read you know and that wants to go back and revisit them but I mean Unfinished Portrait which is the next one is one that certainly my feelings about changed I went from It was second for me. And I've moved it down to fourth now. Me too. Did you two copy? Yeah, I'm not going to be Speaker 4 (18:34) cheating so that we can be like, and Gray's got it wrong. Mine was, for me, it was first and now it's fourth. Oh, they all put it forward. Look at that. There we go. Speaker 6 (18:45) Well, because for me, there's something about like, as an Agatha Christie scholar, I love it. Speaker 4 (18:49) Yeah. Speaker 6 (18:50) But it's something that we said when we recorded it. I remember Speaker 4 (18:53) sitting in a hotel in Tenerife. A different hotel. Whilst a storm hits. So we Speaker 6 (19:00) couldn't go out. It was Speaker 4 (19:02) proper like Ireland on lockdown. Like, don't go out. It's dangerous. And we just sort of huddled and we're like, oh, we're in Tenerife and we're recording this about this sunny book. And obviously the rain's lashing at the window. But yes, I remember that. That whole episode, we just were a little bit down on it. Because it's fascinating Speaker 6 (19:23) as an insight into Speaker 4 (19:24) her. Speaker 6 (19:25) But there is this thing that I know I said in the episode of, as a reader, you go, why do I, should I care about her life story? Like, it's so autobiographical, as we know now, that you go, well, I don't know who this character is, so why do I care about her nursery and all of this? So I've ranked it low. you know, in the bottom half, because as a novel in its own right, it's a fairly, it's a very rare example of something Agatha Christie wrote that only really works when you know who the author