Rerouting Wartime Paranoia in Agatha Christie's N or M?

Abstract

Abstract: As alarms about "internal treachery" and a possible Fifth Column were raised in Britain near the beginning of World War II, fear of refugees and migrants became nearly ubiquitous. N or M? (1940), Agatha Christie's most accomplished spy novel, reroutes the rising paranoia and fear of foreign spies to channel it against the xenophobic and misogynist tendencies of wartime. In so doing, Christie turns derisive paranoid attention away from some of those groups who were most vulnerable to it in the nerve-wracking spring of 1940: refugees, Irish migrants, and women.