Other Types of Detective Fiction Adapted for the Stage

Abstract

Due to the sheer number of her detective stories deemed suitable for stage adaptation, Agatha Christie presents a particularly interesting test case. However, since most of her novels conform to the same type of detective fiction — the whodunit or, as it is called in the present study, the “detective puzzle” — it is appropriate to consider at least a selection of novels and short stories by other writers that belong to other subgenres, most frequently varieties of the thriller. While Christie herself decided to eliminate her Great Detective from her stage adaptations, earlier writers like Arthur Conan Doyle and A. E. W. Mason experimented with the possibility of transferring their fictional detective heroes onto the stage.