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Some of these items are mere personal prejudice; there is no good reason why cigarettes or twins, for instance, cannot be a clue, or even a main plot device, provided that the reader has been properly prepared for them. With all of these the important point is the originality of the approach in utilising them – and this Christie had in full measure and overflowing.

Van Dine 13. Secret societies have no place in a detective story.

Many readers, including probably the author herself, would wish that The Big Four had never found its way between hard covers. Cobbled together at the lowest point in her life (after the death of her mother, the request for a divorce from her husband and her subsequent disappearance) with the help of her brother-in-law, Campbell Christie, this collection of linked short stories was re-edited into a novel. The ‘secret society’ bent on world domination that it features was, mercifully, a one-off aberration on Christie’s part. The Seven Dials Mystery features an equally preposterous secret society, albeit one with a Christie twist. The Pale Horse, one of the best books of the 1960s, features a mysterious organisation, Murder Inc., that seems to specialise in remote killing, but a rational and horribly plausible scheme is revealed in the closing chapters.

Knox 5. No Chinamen must figure in the story.

This comment is not as racist as it may first appear. At the time of its writing Orientals in fiction were perceived, under the general heading of ‘The Yellow Peril’, as the personification of everything undesirable. A more detailed discussion of the subject can be found in Colin Watson’s Snobbery with Violence (1971), an investigation of the social attitudes reflected in British crime fiction of the twentieth century, but suffice it to say that the white-slave trade, torture and other ‘unspeakable acts’ were the accepted fictional norms at the time for any character of Oriental extraction. This Rule was included to raise the literary horizon above that of the average opium den. Unfortunately, Christie succumbs to stereotype in The Big Four where, amid cringe-inducing scenes with Oriental characters and ‘speech’, the chief villain, ‘the greatest criminal brain of all time’, is Chinese. But these stories pre-dated Knox. Apart from The Big Four, and the more politically correct Poirot case ‘The Lost Mine’, no ‘Chinamen’ play a part in any of Christie’s detective novels.

Knox 3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.

This Rule is taken to mean that no solution may turn on the existence of a secret passage. It was designed to eliminate the possibility of an exasperated reader hurling his detective novel across the room as the detective explains how the killer gained access to his closely guarded victim through such a passage, the existence of which was unknown up to that point. Christie is not above introducing the odd secret passage almost as a challenge to the cliché, but their very introduction long before the solution is in keeping with the tenet of this Rule. The Secret of Chimneys, Three Act Tragedy and ‘The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly’ all feature, but openly and not covertly, a secret room or passage. The play Spider’s Web features a sliding panel with a concealed cavity; and its use pokes gentle fun at this convention.

Knox 10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

This Rule was formalised in an effort to avoid the disclosure that Suspect A, who had a cast-iron alibi for the night of the crime, was the guilty party because said alibi was provided by a hitherto unheard-of twin brother. Tongue firmly planted in literary cheek, Christie cocks a snook at this convention in ‘The Unbreakable Alibi’ in Partners in Crime. This is her take on the alibi-breaking stories of her contemporary Freeman Wills Crofts. And look at the ingenious double-bluff of Lord Edgware Dies. The Big Four also has an episode featuring a twin – one Achille Poirot …

Van Dine 20. A list of devices, which no self-respecting detective story writer should avail himself of …