Although she’s not technically a sleuth, Ariadne Oliver plays an important role in several of Agatha Christie’s mysteries. In today’s episode, Brook and Sarah discuss this fascinating character.
Discussed and mentioned
“The Case of the Discontented Soldier” (1932) Agatha Christie
Cards on the Table (1936) Agatha Christie
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead (1952) Agatha Christie
Dead Man’s Folly (1956) Agatha Christie
The Pale Horse (1961) Agatha Christie
Third Girl (1966) Agatha Christie
Halloween Party (1969) Agatha Christie
Elephants Can Remember (1972) Agatha Christie
Moving Finger (1943) Agatha Christie
A Haunting in Venice (2023 film)
Dead Man’s Folly (1986 film)
Agatha Christie’s Hjerson (2021 Swedish TV production)
Ariadne Oliver’s books mentioned:
The Clue of the Candle Wax (mentioned in Cards on the Table)
The Body In The Library (mentioned in Cards on the Table)
The Death in the Drain Pipe (mentioned in Cards on the Table)
The Affair of the Second Goldfish (mentioned in Cards on the Table and Mrs McGinty’s Dead)
The Cat It Was Who Died (mentioned in Mrs McGinty’s Dead)
For more information
Instagram: @cluedinmystery
Contact us: hello@cluedinmystery.com
Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers – www.silvermansound.com
Sign up for our newsletter: https://cluedinmystery.com/clued-in-chronicle/
Join the Clued in Cartel for as little as $12 USD/year: https://cluedinmystery.com/clued-in-cartel/
Transcript
This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.
| Sarah | Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah. |
| Brook | And I’m Brook, and we both love mystery. |
| Sarah | Hi, Brook. |
| Brook | Hi, Sarah. Before we get started with our episode today, I’d just like to remind everyone to take a look at the link in the show notes and consider joining our Clued in Chronicle newsletter. |
| Sarah | Yeah, we send it out every other week. We share a little bit of mystery news, share what episodes are scheduled to be released next and share what we’re reading. |
| Brook | Yeah, my favorite part, Sarah, is finding out what you’re reading because even though a lot of times we know because of the show we’re preparing for, there’s always something new on your list and I get some really great ideas when I when I check that out. |
| Sarah | Oh, I feel the same way about your list, Brook. |
| Brook | Yeah, so if you’re interested in all that good stuff, please follow that link and join the Clued in Chronicle. But for today, we have a very special topic. Sarah, have I ever told you before that I grew up on an apple farm? |
| Sarah | I don’t think I knew that about you, Brook. |
| Brook | It’s true. It’s true. For generations, my family have been fruit growers. And I think that the character we’re going to talk about today would really love being there right now because it’s harvest season. And there are lots and lots of delicious apples for the picking. |
| Sarah | Apples are definitely one of the things that I think about when I hear Ariadne Oliver’s name. |
| Brook | That’s right. Today we’re going to talk about Christie’s wonderful character, Ariadne Oliver. Now, previously in this long-running series that we’ve done, we’ve titled it, you know, Christie’s Sleuths. And technically Ariadne Oliver is not one of her sleuths. She’s a recurring character who first appeared in short stories and then six novels, mostly with Poirot. |
| Brook | Mrs. Oliver often appears as a stand-in for Hastings and serves similar purposes: to help Poirot in piecing together the mystery and also kind of leading the reader through each theory. Ariadne Oliver is a middle-aged, famous crime novelist and member of the Detection Club. Her series sleuth is named Sven Hjerson. He was a vegetarian Finnish detective. And if these details tend to remind you of someone, you’re right on track because we will find that Ariadne Oliver, in many ways, is a mirror or alter ego to Agatha Christie herself. |
| Brook | Mrs. Oliver first appears in the Parker Pine 1932 story, “The Case of the Discontented Soldier”. The first novel we see her in is Cards on the Table in 1936, where she’s described as a woman with substantial shoulders, rebellious gray hair that she enjoys experimenting with, and a feisty personality. She’s a character who tends to jump to conclusions and she’s also a feminist. We see her saying time and time again that the world would be a better place if women were in charge. |
| Brook | The other novels in which Ariadne Oliver appears are, in order, Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, Dead Man’s Folly, The Pale Horse, The Third Girl, Halloween Party, and Elephants Can Remember. So she really spanned all of Agatha Christie’s writing career. |
| Brook | So as we said, Oliver is very fond of apples. She’s described as eating them one after another when writing her stories. And let’s not forget the important part apples play in Halloween Party when Oliver is on the case with Poirot. |
| Brook | Her only appearance in a novel without him is The Pale Horse. And again, she’s not the sleuth, but someone who the investigator visits with, and she shares a bit of important information that helps him crack the case. But another thing that happens in this story that is just simply wonderful for any of us fans of Christie is that Mrs. Oliver interacts with Reverend and Mrs. Calthrop, who previously appeared in Moving Finger, which was published in 1942. Now, Oliver’s not in Moving Finger, but Miss Marple is. So, what this does is it gives us this connection in the Christiverse where if Reverend and Mrs. Calthrop are friends with Miss Marple and Poirot’s friend Ariadne Oliver is acquainted with Calthrops, this means that Poirot and Miss Marple do exist in the same universe and I just I just think that’s so great. |
| Brook | I wanted to mention some of Ariane Oliver’s fictional book titles because they’re just fantastic. They really bring out ah this satirical way that Christie uses Mrs. Oliver and the stories, and it gives us a glimpse into Christie’s views on writing and on characters and maybe even the genre as a whole. So here are a few of the titles that Mrs. Oliver is famous for. |
| Brook | The Clue in the Candle Wax, The Body In The Library, The Death in the Drain Pipe, The Affair of the Second Goldfish, The Cat It Was Who Died. |
| Brook | Aren’t those great? And Sarah, you probably heard that one of those was The Body In the Library. |
| Sarah | Yeah. Do you know when Christie’s book, The Body In The Library appeared and where, when Ariadne Oliver’s book, The Body In The Library was supposed to have been published? |
| Brook | Yeah, so The Body In The Library ah of Mrs. Oliver’s was mentioned in Cards on the Table, so back in 1936. And Christie then used that title six years later, in 1942. So, it was Oliver’s book first. |
| Sarah | Oh, I love that. |
| Brook | I know. Another really fun fact is that Sven Hjerson has lived on. The 2021 Swedish-German television series Agatha Christie’s Hjerson features the character in an eight-part series, which combines Christie’s stories and characters with Nordic Noir and it’s done in Swedish um and it’s set in contemporary time. |
| Brook | So, I just I need the little emoji of the guy’s head who’s like you know mind is being blown that a fictional fictional character has taken on a life of his own and um and lives on. I just I think it’s amazing. |
| Sarah | I came across that. I think we might’ve talked about it in another episode that there was this adaptation of a fictional character. Um, and as you say, like a fictional fictional character. Um, and I think that’s so cool. I did try to track down, uh, to see if there was versions available in English. I just wasn’t able to, which I’m really disappointed about because I would love to see that. |
| Brook | I agree. I watched the trailer and it is in Swedish, so I wasn’t able to fully understand, of course, what was going on. But I think that the style and the feel of the show looked great. And I’m with you. If we can ever get our hands on an English translation, I’ve got to see that. |
| Brook | Well, there’s so many things that we can talk about when it comes to to Mrs. Oliver, not just the character that she plays in the stories, because that’s important too, but also her connection with her creator um and kind of sister self, Agatha Christie. So so let’s get into it, Sarah. |
| Sarah | Well, thanks for that summary, Brook. I think of Christie’s characters Oliver is probably one of my favorites. |
| Brook | I agree. And I, you know, I’ve shared before that I tend to read more Miss Marple than Poirot. And so it was sort of later in my Christie experience that I started seeing her. But I agree, she’s fantastic. And there’s so much that she says about writing, right? |
| Sarah | Yeah, totally. And and you can’t help but draw parallels between her and Agatha Christie, right? Just in the way, as you say, she talks about writing. She does not like her sleuth, right? She talks about how like she’s so frustrated that she has to keep writing this guy. And we know that she did not particularly like Poirot, but she kept writing him because that was what sold books. |
| Sarah | And there was a line, I think it’s in Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, but it might be in Cards On The Table where she talks about, um, I don’t remember if it’s her or one of the other characters, but talks about killing her sleuth in a book to be published after she dies, which we know is what Agatha Christie did, right? |
| Brook | It was hinted at, clear back in the 1930s that this is what she was going to do, right? Yeah, I think that’s so fascinating. |
| Brook | Yes, she really, she being Mrs. Oliver, regrets making Sven Finnish because she admits, “I really don’t know that much about the Finns and I keep getting letters from people saying that I get it wrong.” |
| Brook | And so I have to imagine that, you know, Christy probably experienced this with Belgian people, right? Like they are like, you’re getting this wrong. And she’s like, why did I do this? I, you know, I made this so much more difficult for myself. |
| Sarah | But I think she also makes a comment again through Oliver that, you know, this is fiction and it doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong. Like if you’re enjoying the story, then, who cares if the um if I say that the the the walls were painted blue when in actual fact in this building the walls were painted white. |
| Brook | Yes, absolutely. So, Oliver is able to say all these things to readers that Christie probably would have liked to. And I think that that is such an interesting thing, this vehicle that she created for herself really early. |
| Brook | I wouldn’t have been so surprised if she had been you know writing for 20 or 30 years and she’s like, I’m going to create this character. So I can just really, you know, but it you you can tell that it was just natural and a spontaneous creation because it was so fresh and early in her career, you know, 1932, she’d only been writing for a handful of years at that point. |
| Sarah | Mm hmm. |
| Sarah | And I so I think it’s really interesting because you said it was Cards on the Table was the first book that she appeared in. And in that book, it’s not just her. This is the Christieverse, right? |
| Sarah | And so it’s her, it’s Poirot, it’s um I think ah Battle is in that as well as Race, I think. |
| Brook | Yes. |
| Sarah | So it’s, it’s interesting that Miss Marple was excluded from this card game, but maybe there wasn’t a great reason for her to be included because if I recall, they were all invited by the host because had they all been involved in a murder? Was that how he framed it? |
| Brook | The other four, so there were eight guests in total, and the other four guests had all been involved in a murder. |
| Brook | And then the four sleuths, quote unquote, sleuths were then brought in so that he could watch this unfold. um Yeah, but really interesting that Miss Marple’s not there. |
| Brook | It seems to me that she intentionally never put Poirot and Marple in the same space. Not that they obviously didn’t both exist in the same time period and the same you know fictional universe, but she she never did do that, and I think that’s an interesting choice. |
| Sarah | Well, as you said in your introduction, ah it was clear that but they did exist in the same world, right? Because they had mutual friends. |
| Brook | Mm-hmm and in that group that you mentioned in Cards On The Table it almost feels like ah because Ariadne Oliver isn’t technically one of her sleuths Miss Marple could have been that person instead so we’ll never know why she made that choice, but it’s fun to contemplate. And speaking of the ways that ah Ariadne Oliver becomes Christie’s voice in in terms of writing. Um I wanted to point people to a fantastic article by a previous guest of ours, Theresa Peschel. She and Bill, her husband, you’ll remember, have cataloged, watched and cataloged every Christie adaptation. And they also have a fantastic blog that does similar things. And Teresa has gone through and compiled all the different quotes from Ariadne Oliver in all of her um appearances on writing and you know she actually calls the article “Agatha Christie’s Writing Advice” ah because it’s through the lens of ah the character. So I would really encourage you to go out and read that if that interests you to see what we learn through the character about ah about Agatha and her writing. |
| Sarah | Oh, that’s great. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes. What about adaptations? So we talked about adaptations of Ariana Oliver’s sleuth. What about adaptations of Ariadne Oliver herself? How has she been portrayed? |
| Brook | Yeah, so um there have been actually quite a few screen and radio ah appearances of this character. The actresses who’ve portrayed her on radio productions are Julia McKenzie and Stephanie Cole. As far as television goes, Lally Bowers was the first to be Ariadne Oliver on screen in 1982. Probably the the most loved is Zoë Wanamaker, who has portrayed the character from 2005 to 2013 in an ongoing series. |
| Brook | But the one I found most interesting was that Jean Stapleton played Oliver in 1986 in a movie production of Dead Man’s Folly. And the reason this caught my attention was because you’ll remember recently when we did our Murder, She Wrote episode, Jean Stapleton was originally considered for the role of Jessica Fletcher. You and I both, like, grace our eyebrows at that. But she probably made a fantastic Ariadne Oliver. Like, that clicks in my brain. um But I wonder if that’s part of the reason why CBS, you know, kind of went out looking for her because she had played, in a in a mystery movie just recently. |
| Sarah | Yeah, that’s that’s probably it. Oh yeah, that would be interesting to to track down and watch. |
| Brook | Yeah, I think it would. |
| Sarah | Yes. What about Tina Fey in A Haunting in Venice? |
| Brook | Yes, we need to talk about the most recent portrayal of Ariadne Oliver. So, true fans of this character were not happy at all with with this portrayal. um I mean first of all if you just think visually, right? |
| Brook | Where is the unruly gray hair, where is the substantial shoulders, the kind of the messy, a little bit scatterbrained look? But It’s completely opposite when you see Tina Fey, not to mention the fact she’s American, like why did she have to be? |
| Sarah | Mm hmm. |
| Brook | So just visually there’s been a lot of dispute there um. There’s a great YouTube channel called Moxie Mcmurder and she says the only thing that they have in common is the apples, which I thought was really cute. In her breakdown, her biggest problem with this portrayal of Ariadne Oliver is that she betrays Poirot. And you know she explains how great of friends they were. And you know over 40 years of the Christie canon, they’ve worked together on different cases and were allies. And so she just felt like that was just not something she could get over because in Kenneth Branagh’s production, Ariadne Oliver is ah kind of malicious and evil. |
| Sarah | Yeah, yeah i wait it wasn’t it wasn’t true to character, I think. um And doesn’t she say in one of the books that like she she doesn’t have a shortage of ideas? |
| Brook | Yes, exactly. She says that’s her her biggest problem is narrowing them down. |
| Sarah | Yeah, whereas, um and I hope this isn’t you know too much of a spoiler, but that’s kind of what she blames her behavior on. |
| Brook | Mm-hmm. Exactly. She needs a new idea. Yeah, I think that… I could get over the physical differences and you know some of the the details of the character. But when it comes right down to you know who she really represented in the Christie universe, it’s it’s hard to get over that. And you and I said it when we discussed this with Bill and Teresa Peschel actually, that there’s no way to have her in any of the subsequent movies, if in fact Kenneth Branagh cared. But he really kind of ruined that character and and his opportunity to include her in future movies. |
| Sarah | Yeah, i I mean, I think maybe the only way that he could do it is if it was set before A Haunting in Venice was set, right? |
| Brook | Oh, that’s a great point. |
| Sarah | But it would be very difficult as an audience to set aside what we know about the version of her in that film. |
| Brook | Yeah and that would be a clever a clever way to do it Sarah is to do you know ah before leading up to but again that’s kind of hard to to forget. |
| Brook | You I always think with Agatha Christie nothing is done by accident and so I was I’ve always been intrigued with the name Ariadne because really aside from this character I don’t think I’ve heard it much. |
| Brook | And that’s my fault, apparently, because she is a character in mythology, so it just goes to show something that I’m not very knowledgeable about. Ariadne is a Cretan princess, and she’s associated with mazes and labyrinths due to some of the stories that she’s in in mythology. And I was just, you know, ok once again, the Queen of Crime does it, right? Of course, it not only does this name start with the same letter as her name, kind of, you know, bringing up that connection, but then this character is known for mazes and labyrinths, puzzles and mysteries. i just It’s genius. |
| Sarah | Yeah, it sounds like it was very deliberate on her part. |
| Sarah | Well, Brook, this has been so fun to talk about Ariadne Oliver and dig a little bit more into this wonderful character created by Agatha Christie. |
| Brook | It has been great, and we hope you enjoyed it too, listeners. Thanks for being here today on Clued in Mystery. I’m Brook. |
| Sarah | And I’m Sarah and we both love mystery. |
