The maroon complete Man

the maroon complete Man ( The Man in the Brown Follows in the anglophone original editions) is the fourth novel written by Agatha Christie, published in 1924. Its set of themes attaches it at the same time to the Detective novel, the spy novel and the novel of adventures.

The intrigue of the novel

A desilvered young girl, Anne Beddingfeld, arrival to try her chance in London after the death of her father, eminent Pasteur set on paleontology but detached of “terrestrial” realities, are the witness of the suspect fall of a man on the railway, in the subway of London, the victim, according to her observations, summer having frightened by the presence of a mysterious man. By a succession of chances and small investigations, it ends up finding the trace of the mysterious unknown seen on the scene of the accident of the subway, buys on a sudden impulse, with the remainder of its economies, a ticket on a ship for South Africa and is made engage, in the tread, as secretary to sir Eustace Pedler, owner of a mill in which in parallel the body of an unknown woman was discovered, after the London police force was attracted there by the discovery, in the pocket of the man died in the subway, of a chart of estate agency in charge of the sale of the mill. Various bounces and adventures follow…

Comment

This novel, cut out in a prolog and 36 chapters, uses a process of narration to the first nobody, deteriorating two different points of view. After a narrative prolog with the troisème nobody, intended to introduce a mysterious character and not named, one enters the continuation of the account told by Anne Beddingfeld (chapters 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9,10,11,14,15,16,18,19,20,21,23,24,25,26,27,30,32,33,34,35 and 36) intersected with “extracts of the Diary to sir Eustace Pedler, member of the Parliament” (chapters 8,12,13,17,22,28,29 and 31).

It is also the first novel in which one crosses the character of the Colonel Race, discrete agent of the British special services, which will reappear twice in the investigations of Hercule Poirot, in particular in Cartes on table (1936) and Mort on the Nile (1937), but also in Meurtre with the champagne (1944), where he will be the principal investigator.

To note that this novel was the last which it published at John Lane, not renewing its contract because it estimated to be handicapped. It then placed its interests between the hands of a Literary agent which found to him a more advantageous contract with the Collins editor.

With the difference of John Lane, who had been reticent to publish this novel, a London daily newspaper, the Evening News , was sufficiently enthusiastic, after the publication in libriairie, to buy the rights of publication in the form of daily serial in its columns, under a title which, if it displeased with novelist (title that one could translate by “Anna the adventurous one” into French), enabled him however to acquire, in 1926, of the car of Morris mark, models Cowley, which was to play a part in the episode of the disappearance up to now unexplained of the novelist in the English countryside, between the 3 and on December 14th, 1926.

Editions

The Man in the Brown Follows , John Lane, London, 1924
The Man in the Brown Suit , Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1924
the maroon complete Man , Librairie of the Fields-Élysées, coll “the Mask”, n° 69, Paris, 1930
the maroon complete Man , in the Integrals: Agatha Christie: Volume 1: Years 1920-1925 , Bookstore of the Fields-Élysées, Paris, 1990. ISBN 2-7024-2086-9

Televised adaptation

the maroon complete Man was the object, in 1989, of a televised adaptation, in the shape of a telefilm titrated The Man in the Brown Suit , carried out by Alan Grint and adapted by Carla Jean Wagner, with in particular Stephanie Zimbalist (Anne Beddingf' i' eld), Edward Woodward (to sir Eustace Pedler), Rue McClanahan ( Suzie Blair), Ken Howard (colonel Race), Simon Dutton (Harry Lucas) and Tony Randall (the reverend Chichester). With the difference of the novel, including one most of the action proceeds in South Africa and Rhodesia, the adventurous part of the telefilm proceeds with the the Middle East, always on bottom of traffic of Diamant S. This telefilm, produced by the company Warner Bros., was diffused for the first time on January 4th, 1989 on an American television channel.

External bond

Card devoted to the telefilm on IMDb

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