'Whodunit?'

Antisemitism as a literary device in the detective works of Agatha Christie

Authors

• Sofie Lene Bak Copenhagen University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5676-1744

Keywords:

Antisemitism, Crime fiction, Agatha Christie

Abstract

Jewish characters were a recurring feature in Agatha Christie’s crime novels up until the Second World War. Historiography has generally sought to contextualize and downplay her antisemitism, arguing that such tropes receded as she became aware of the consequences of National Socialism. Drawing on research into stereotypes and systemic racism, this article demonstrates that Christie employed antisemitic stereotypes as a deliberate literary device and made conscious decisions to retain anti-Jewish characters in her novels. After the war, antisemitism became uncomfortable, but the response was far from immediate, and systemic antisemitism instead became coded and subtle, as evidenced in the author’s postwar novels. At the same time, Christie’s oeuvre can help address the question of where antisemitic prejudices survived after being expelled from public discourse: they endured in reprints and translations up to the present day.