The Pale Horse

Shedunnit

Caroline Crampton

Arts, Books

4.9 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2020

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How Agatha Christie’s spooky story inspired real life murderers and detectives. A friendly warning: there are major spoilers for The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie in this episode. Find links to all the books and sources mentioned at shedunnitshow.com/thepalehorse. Special thanks today to my guests Kathryn Harkup and Sarah Phelps. Kathryn’s book is A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie and she’s on Twitter @RotwangsRobot. Sarah’s adaptation of The Pale Horse is available in the UK on BBC iPlayer and in the US on Amazon Prime from 13 March. She’s on Twitter @PhelpsieSarah. Also, I’m indebted to Nick Hilton of Podot Pods for his recording assistance. Become a member of the Shedunnit book club and get bonus audio, listen to ad free episodes and join a book-loving community at shedunnitshow.com/bookclub. Books and sources: —The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie —Final Curtain by Ngaio Marsh —"How Agatha Christie mystery The Pale Horse may have inspired a murderer" by Kathryn Harkup for the Guardian —A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie by Kathryn Harkup To be the first to know about future developments with the podcast, sign up for the newsletter at shedunnitshow.com/newsletter. The podcast is on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram as @ShedunnitShow, and you can find it in all major podcast apps. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss the next episode. Click here to do that now in your app of choice. Find a full transcript of this episode at shedunnitshow.com/thepalehorsetranscript. Music by Audioblocks and Blue Dot Sessions. See shedunnitshow.com/musiccredits for more details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	A friendly warning. There are major spoilers for the pale horse by Agatha Christie in this episode.
0:06.0	I think we're all quite comfortable with the idea of real life events inspiring fiction.
0:17.0	It's not for nothing that some of the most critically acclaimed films that come out every year
0:21.5	are the ones that have based on a true story at the beginning.
0:25.0	Crime fiction is no exception to this.
0:30.0	I've talked about this a fair bit on this podcast discussing the ways in which some of the most famous murder cases in history
0:36.6	from Crippin to the Brides in the Bath and more
0:39.8	inspired authors working in the golden age of detective fiction in the 1920s and 30s.
0:47.0	That's the expected order of events, isn't it?
0:53.0	A crime is committed, it becomes a public sensation with huge amounts of media coverage,
0:59.0	and then shifts popular narratives around innocence and guilt.
1:04.5	Writers respond to that, importing new tropes and ideas into their work, and readers
1:09.2	recognize it.
1:11.0	But what have it happened the other way around? What if life imitated art?
1:15.0	One particular book seems to have had a strong pull on people in this regard,
1:20.0	not only as an inspiration for murder, but also equipping would-be sloths with the knowledge to save victims before it was too late.
1:28.0	This is the story of the pale horse. Welcome to She Dun it.
1:37.0	I'm Caroline Crampton. Agathristy's The Pale Horse was published in 1961.
1:47.0	Agath Christie's The Pale Horse was published in 1961, a long time after the so-called
1:56.1	Golden Age of Detective Fiction was over. Although she herself started her career at the beginning
2:01.8	of the 1920s.
2:03.0	Forty years later, many of her fellow detective authors from that prolific period of
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