Harman Patil (Editor)

Superintendent Battle

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Created by
  
Nationality
  
British

Creator
  
Last appearance
  
Play
  
Spouse(s)
  
Mary Battle

Played by
  
First appearance
  
The Secret of Chimneys

Movie
  
Seven Dials Mystery

Occupation
  
superintendent of the police

Children
  
Sylvia BattleFour others

Relatives
  
James Leach (nephew), a Scotland Yard Inspector

Similar
  
Recurring characters in the Her, Parker Pyne, Ariadne Oliver, Mr Harley Quin, Inspector Japp

Superintendent Battle is a fictional character created by Agatha Christie who appeared in five of her novels.

Contents

Novels featuring Superintendent Battle

He appears as a detective in the following novels:

  • The Secret of Chimneys (1925)
  • The Seven Dials Mystery (1929 - including some of the same characters, notably Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent)
  • Cards on the Table (1936, with Hercule Poirot, Ariadne Oliver and Colonel Race)
  • Murder is Easy (1939)
  • Towards Zero (1944)
  • Police detective

    Battle is notable for his stolid good sense and careful management of information as a case proceeds. He relies in part on the public notion that police detectives are stupid or unimaginative, when he has a good idea of just what is happening. His moustache is impressive, even to Hercule Poirot. Until Towards Zero the reader knows nothing of his domestic arrangements (with exception to a comment in Chimneys, when he mentions that he is "very attached of Mrs Battle"), but in this novel we learn that he has a wife and five children, the youngest of whom (Sylvia) unwittingly provides a key clue to the mystery. In the Hercule Poirot novel The Clocks, the pseudonymous secret agent Colin Lamb is heavily implied to be the son of the now-retired Battle.

    Battle also has a secret professional life that is revealed in the denouement to The Seven Dials Mystery, but this is never referred to again. In this novel he states, that "half the people who spent their lives avoiding being run over buses had much better be run over and put safely out of the way.They're no good."

    Similar statements are given by Major Despard in Cards on the table and Michael Rodgers in Endless Night and might be approved by Mrs Christie as well.

    Battle is in many respects typical of Christie's police officers, being (like Inspector Japp), more careful and intelligent than the police officers of early detective fiction, who had served only as foils for the brilliance of the amateur sleuth.

    References

    Superintendent Battle Wikipedia


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