Charlie Higson brings James Bond to Agatha Christie

James Bond and Miss Marple don’t seem like natural bedfellows until you meet Charlie Higson. The Fast Show comedian, children’s author and actor was intent, he says, in “bringing together two great literary families”, which is exactly what he has done in adapting Agatha’s Christie’s Caribbean Mystery - reports the Daily Express.

He says: “One of the first things the production wanted when they approached me was to put historical figures into Marple, to root them in time."

“Because it was set in the Caribbean they thought it would be interesting to have our two great literary estates come together in the form of Ian Fleming, who had his house Golden Eye out there, where he wrote all the James Bond books, and Christie.”

Higson, the author of the Young Bond books wasn’t daunted: “No, not in that way. I think people go to Christie for the plots, those very intricately worked out mysteries, for the sleight of hand of hiding things from you and how she pulls off those tricks.

“The simple characterisation in that respect supplies a need, which is why she remains so popular today. It is a closed world with very rigid structures and her vocabulary is fairly simple. It’s all there to function the plot. Agatha Christie was always one of those books that children started reading when they gave up on children’s books.”

“As we know Fleming got the name of Bond from the American ornithologist of the same name. It was on Fleming’s bookshelf at the time. He simply looked up. So I came up with the idea of putting Ian Fleming there and him meeting James Bond doing a talk on birds to people at the resort and that’s where we see him. So we made it that everyone who was at the ornithology lecture had a cast-iron alibi.”''

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