It is well-known that Agatha Christie was not so much a novelist as the inventor of a novelty, a peculiarly intricate and entertaining type of puzzle. All the complexity and originality she could muster went into the construction of the story; her characters, apart from a handful of principals, are rarely more than cyphers.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "It is well-known that Agatha Christie was not so much a novelist as the inventor of a novelty, a peculiarly intricate and entertaining type of puzzle. All the complexity and originality she could muster went into the construction of the story; her characters, apart from a handful of principals, are rarely more than cyphers." in the context of "Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan, The Lady Investigates: Women Detectives and Spies in Fiction (1986), p. 166" to mean that wisdom is timeless.