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Coming in February
Janua
What’s Next
Feb 23
Agatha Christie
First , coming in February is our reading assignment of books by Agatha Christie. I’m sure
you’ve all read at least one book by this iconic author, but it is time to either re-read one of
her books or try one you haven’t read before.
March 23
Entertainment Weekly had a three page article about Agatha in December 2014. I am inJoanne Fluke and
serting a copy of that article on the next few pages.
Phillip Margolin
The topic has been picked because the library is honoring Agatha Christie in February and
April 27
Texas settings by Jon March in their One City, One Book (author) event in 2015. The celebration will include an
Land, Terry Shames or English Tea, a craft night (knitting anyone) and a Mystery Dinner and maybe even more.
Kathryn Casey
Be ready to join the fun.
May 18 (a week early
due to holiday)
Mysteries set in Africa
June 22
Medical Mysteries
July 27
L.A. Authors
.
Speaking of fun, the library runs a special event in February…..called Blind Datte with a
Book. Go to the adult services desk and ask for a blind date. Wonder how many will be
Agatha Christie books this year?
This page is usually devoted to upcoming mysteries… so here are a few:
Can’t Find My Way Home [NS] by Carlene Thompson [1st US edition]
Phantom Angel (Benji Golden #2) by David Handler
Crash & Burn [NS] by Lisa Gardner
Satan’s Lullaby [Medieval #11] by Priscilla
Royal
Crazy Love You [NS] by Lisa Unger
Vital Details
Meeting Time
2 PM except for special events,
Death of a Liar [Hamish Macbeth #31] by M.C.
Beaton
Meeting Day
4th Mon. except on
holidays
Dreaming Spies [Mary Russell #14] by Laurie R.
King
Doctor Death [Madeleine Karno #1] by Lene
Kaaberbøl
Hush, Hush [Monaghan #12] by Laura Lippman
Lamentation [Shardlake #6] by C.J. Sansom
Meeting Place Community Room of
Public Library
Location 18181 Imperial
Highway
Yorba Linda, CA
News Editor
Long Way Down [Jason Stafford #3] by Michael
Sears
Monday’s Lie [NS] by Jamie Mason
Motive [Delaware #30] by Jonathan Kellerman
Obsession in Death [Eve Dallas #40] by J.D. Robb
Someone To Watch Over Me [Thóra Gudmundsdottir #5] by Yrsa Sigurdardottir [1st US
edition]
The Alphabet House [NS] by Jussi Adler-Olsen
[1st US edition]
The Beige Man [Irene Huss #7] by Helene
Tursten
The Cat, the Devil, and the Last Escape [Cat &
Devil #2] by Shirley Rousseau Murphy
The Chessmen [Lewis Trilogy #3] by Peter May
[1st US edition]
The First Wife [NS] by Erica Spindler
NS = non series
Inside you will find...
Readers Reviews
Page 2 + 5
Agatha Christie article (Entertainment Weekly)
Page 3-6
KTLBevers@roadrunner.
This and That
com
Agatha Christie favorite home
Page 8
Page 9 –12
Member Reviews
Yvonne
Stevens, Taylor – THE DOLL – 3.0
The underground world of women and girls as merchandise with a
shadowy figure known as “The Doll Maker.” The heroine Vanessa
Michael Monroe uses her unique set of skills to overcome her nemesis and deliver her band of justice. The heoine as a bit too unreal.
Creepy thriller.
Cash, Wiley – THEDARK ROAD TO MERCY - 4.0
Easter and Ruby, endangered little sisters in foster care, are stolen
by a wayward father, Wade, an ex-minor league baseball player, who
is being chased by an enemy determined to see him pay for his sins.
Soulful story, captivating and heartbreaking with a testament of unbreakable bonds of family.
Laura
Marwood, Alex - THE WICKED GIRLS -3.0 : Reviewed 5/14
Krueger, William Kent - ORDINARY GRACE - 5,0 : Reviewed
11/14.
Penny, Louise HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN (Inspector Gamache #9)
- 4.5
As I was reading the first chapter I knew this was going to be an
awesome book! It is so well written. It is a complex story going back
and forth between two mysteries which the author does well making
them both suspenseful. There is a psychological intensity throughout
the book. The characters are very well drawn. Inspector Gamache
is extremely likeable. He is reasonable, courteous and kind. I absolutely loved the ending. The two of the themes running through the
story are bitterness and hope.
“Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
Morrell, David - MURDER AS A FINE ART - 4.5
This is a really intriguing and engrossing historical mystery taking
place in 1854 London. It is very atmospheric of the time giving one a
look into how it was like to live back then in England. The historical
facts don’t take away from the mystery or suspense but rather add to
it. I loved the independence of the main female character and how it
added to the description of the times back then. There is a bit of
humor throughout. It kept me turning the pages!
In the book they define “passing on” as “joined the majority”.
Parrish, P.J. - HEART OF ICE (Louis Kincaid #11 or 12) - 3,75
I really enjoyed this book. Taking place on Mackinac Island in Michigan, this is about a cold case murder and you really do wonder how
on earth the mystery is going to be solved. It has many twists and
turns as it proceeds towards the end. You learn about all the characters involved and come to understand and like Chief of Police Kincaid
and the State Detective Norm Rafsky as you watch their friendship
heal.
Stevens, Taylor - THE DOLL (Vanessa Michael Munroe #3) - 3.0
Started out boring and I thought maybe I’d quit reading it but then
about 1/3rd the way through it picked up speed making it an okay
read though the plot line was weak and not compelling and the ending wasn’t satisfying. Not sure why it got such great reviews or why it
won an award.
McMahon, Jennifer - THE ONE I LEFT BEHIND - 2.75
It wasn’t much of a thriller and wasn’t suspenseful even though I think
it was meant to be. The writing was simplistic. The pace was slow
and half way through it got boring. There wasn’t much character
development and their secrets weren’t too exciting. It didn’t have
much of a surprise ending.
Zouroudi, Anner - THE TAINT OF MIDAS (#3) - 3.75
This well written book weaves the Greek myths into the mystery as it
points out how present times have changed both in the landscape
and how life is lived on the Greek Islands over the years. It is very
atmospheric with descriptions of the roads, houses and landscape. It
is atmospheric also in how different senses, such as smell, recall
memories. The detective, “The Fat Man”, is very kind, philosophical,
gentle, thoughtful and fair with his own unorthodox method of fairness. Zouroudi’s books always have very different and interesting
ways of dealing out justice. This book focuses on the deadly sin of
greed.
Nancy
Krueger, William Kent - ORDINARY GRACE
I loved this book and went on to read several books in his series.
Penny, Louise - THE LONG WAY HOME:
This was definitely more of a character study of Peter Morrow, a
missing friend. I felt it dragged at times. Not my favorite in the series.
Tart, Donna - THE GOLDFINCH (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for
Literature)
Not a mystery, but a very good read. It was referred to as a modern
version of Oliver Twist. Glad I ordered it for my Kindle. I kept reading to learn the ending not realizing that the book is 755 pages long!
Cash, Wiley - THIS DARK ROAD TO MERCY - 3.75
12 year old Easter and her younger sister are put in a foster home
when their mother dies of an overdose. Their father, who had given
up his legal rights to the girls, finds them and kidnaps them. There is
a pursuit by the girls’ social worker who wants to find the girls and a
thug who wants to find the father as the father is suspected of a multimillion-dollar theft. It is a well written easy to read book. The story
line holds your interest. The characters are well drawn as the chapters alternate between Easter, the social worker and the gangster.
Wonderful dedication: “for families of all kinds”.
Todd, Charles - A QUESTION OF HONOR
This was my least favorite of the 6 books I read. Amateur sleuth,
Bess Crawford, is a nurse serving in Europe during WWI. She is
looking back into a murder that took place during her childhood in
India.
Continued on page 6
2
Agatha Christie
3
4
5
Member reviews cont.
(Continued from page 2)
story that should have been more entertaining than it was.
Parks, Brad - THE GOOD COP by Brad Parks
Newspaper reporter, Carter Ross, looks into the suspicious suicide
of a New Jersey cop. A fast moving thriller that includes a good
sense of humor a la Janet Evanowich.
Susan
Terry Shames – A KILLING AT COTTON HILL
Louise Penny – HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN
Shames, Terry - A KILLING AT COTTON HILL
Retired sheriff, Samuel Craddock, feels compelled to investigate the
murder of his old friend Dora Lee Parjeter. This book takes place in
a small town in Texas and will remind readers of Walt Longmire. An
enjoyable read.
Joan
McPherson, Catriona – DANDY GILVER AND A BOTHERSOME
NUMBER OF CORPSES
Three tries and out..DNF
Coyle, Matt – YESTERDAY’S ECHO (2013) – 3.5
Rick Cahill was accused of his wife;’s murder, but was not found
guilty. He is now in San Diego and finds himself mixed up with a
reporter whose wife has been murdered. Once again Rick is accused.
Karen
Taylor Stevens – THE DOLL 5.0
Lachlan, Smith – DEAR IS BROKEN = DNF
Terry Shames – A KILLING AT COTTON HILL 4.9
Parks, Brad – THE GOOD COP – 3.75
Carter Ross, a reporter, is investigating the dearth of Darius Kipp, a
Newark police officer. The cop’s wife cannot her husband would
commit suicide. Her pastor gets involved in the investigation. When
Kipp’s partner commits suicide Carter is in deeper than is safe for
him.—Corruption is involved.
Hank Phillippi Ryan – THE WRONG GIRL – 2.75
A death by a foster parent, abandoned children, an adoption agency
hands our incorrect pairings when reunions are sought A reporter
and a cop seek answers. .
Louise Penny – HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN 5.0
McPherson, Catriona – DANNY GILVER AND A BOTHERSOME
NUMBER OF CORPSES
Wm Kent Krueger, ORDINARY GRACE – 5.0
Wiley Cash – THE DARK ROAD TO MERCY – 3..5
Two girls, whose mother has died, adjust to a group home when their
father takes them on a trip. The case worker follows them to baseball game.. Girls come to realize their father really does care for
them. Too many viewpoints to be engaging.
Chitra
Connelly, Michael - THE BURNING ROOM - 2014 - Harry Bosch &
Lucia Soto - 4.0
Ng, Celeste EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU - 2014
3.0
Koenig, Minerva – NINE DAYS – 2014- #1 – 3.75
Set in Texas small town, WitSec female whose handler (town police
chief) is killed gets involved with locals efforts to solve various puzzlements. Took too long to read…thus a lower score than it deserves.
Kerr, Philip - IF THE DEAD RISE NOT - 2010 – 3.0 A Bernie Gunther Novel
Erskine, Kathryn – MOCKINGBIRD -2010 – 4.0 Juv.. book
Young girl with Asperger’s syndrome learns to find closure over her
brother’s death.(at a school shooting) .as well as helping her father
find closure too.
Gawande, Atul. - BEING MORTAL: MEDICINE AND WHAT MATTERS IN THE END - 2014 – 4.0
Pinker, Steven - THE SENSE OF STYLE: THE THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO WRITING IN THE 21ST CENTURY – 2014 – 2.5
Symmes, Patrick - THE BOYS FROM DOLORES: FIDEL
CASTRO'S CLASSMATES FROM REVOLUTION TO EXILE – 2007
– 3.5
Connelly, Michael – THE BURNING ROOM - 4.7 - #19- 2014
Bosch and new partner Soto, work to solve two cases – One of a
recently deceased person from a gunshot received some 10 years
earlier. The second of the case of the burning building where 9 children died and was the place where Soto had lived. For me slow
getting into but careful development of both stories finally convinced
me that this was one of his best
Swarup, Vikram - THE ACCIDENTAL APPRENTICE - 2014 – 3.0
Nafisi, Azar - THE REPUBLIC OF IMAGINATION: AMERICA IN
THREE BOOKS - 2014 – 3.0
Shames, Terry - A KILLING AT COTTON HILL – 2014 - A Samuel
Craddock Mystery – 3.0
Chazin, Suzanne – LAND OF CAREFUL SHADOWS – 2014 – 5.0
Jimmy Vega, detective, investigates a murder of a Hispanic woman
in his home town north of New York City…and the towns reactions to
the illegal immigrants.
Helton, Peter - SLIM CHANCE – 2006 - Chris Honeysett Mystery
set in Bath – 3.5
Straley, John - COLD STORAGE ALASKA -2014 – 3.0
Small town on coast of Alaska where one brother is the medical
officer (by default) and his recently released from prison brother
returns home bringing trouble with him. Something of an unhinged
Colquhoun, Kate - MURDER IN THE FIRST-CLASS CARRIAGE:
THE FIRST VICTORIAN RAILWAY KILLING - 2011 – 3.0
Payton, Brian - THE WIND IS NOT A RIVER
Islands – 3.0
6
2014 - Aleutian
McCully, Emily Arnold – IDA M. TARBELL: THE WOMAN WHO
CHALLENGED BIG BUSINESS - AND WON! - 2014 – 3.0
Barbara
McPherson, Catriona – AS SHE LEFT IT 4.5
After her alcoholic mother’s death, 25-year-old Opal Jones returns to
gritty Mote Street in Leeds, England, where she grew up. There she
encounters many of the same people she knew at age 12 when she
left home. When Opal learns that three-year-old Craig Southgate,
whom she used to babysit, disappeared shortly after Opal’s departure from Leeds, she resolves to find out what happened to him.
Opal discovers that everyone in the old neighborhood has a secret—
even elderly Mr. Gordon, the New Orleans jazz musician known as
Fishbo, who taught her to play trumpet. Opal must summon the courage to face some hard truths about her own past.
Budewitz, Leslie - DEATH AL DENTE - 3.5
First in the new culinary mystery series!-- The town of Jewel Bay,
Montana-known as a Food Lovers' Village-is obsessed with homegrown and homemade Montana fare. Murphy’s Mercantile, known as
the Merc, has been a staple in Jewel Bay for over a hundred years.
To celebrate their recent makeover as a gourmet food market, Erin
has organized a town festival, Festa di Pasta, featuring the culinary
goods of Jewel Bay’s finest-including her mother Fresca’s delicious
Italian specialties. Likeable book, good start to series but a terrible
but exciting ending. The perpetrator pretty much goes berserk and
blurts out everything.
Lapierre, Janet - UNQUIET GRAVE 1987 – 3.9
After a dinner party, a beautiful young computer genius is beaten
and murdered. All clues point to the dinner's host, college professor,
one of her teachers. Soon two other unsolved attacks in the northern
California town of Port Silva are also pinned on Mancuso, who is
under suspicion because of his friendship with another beautiful
young girl. Add to this a young Hispanic police chief who feels his
reputation is at stake. A police force that ranges from friendly grandfather types to very conservative ones. Various red herrings, and
enough hints that should clue you in to the killer. , Subplots that are
introduced and forgotten, and frequent scenic descriptions slow the
momentum But over all a nice start to a new series. Will read the
next one if I find it.
A few interesting facts
to ruin the day
By the Civil War’s end in 1865 Union general, Ulysses
S. Grant owned 4 slaves, whom he refused to free,
Confederate general, Robert E, Lee , had freed his
slaves in the late 1840’s.
The United States has 2.3 million people behind bars,
making it the world leader in the number and percentage
of residents we incarcerate. China is a distant second.
In 1999 a Gallup poll revealed that 1 in 5 Americans believed that the sun orbits the earth.
There are about 10 quintillion insects on Earth at any
given moment: that’s 5 billion bugs for every human on
the planet.
An Australian writer was sentenced to three years in a
Thai prison because of a few lines in his self-published
novel that were deemed insulting to the monarchy. The
book sold only seven copies.
Donald Duck was once banned in Finland because he
doesn’t wear any pants.
Injuries in equestrian sports are almost twenty times
more common than injuries in motorcycling.
A major new BBC drama to celebrate Agatha Christie's 125th
anniversary
Agatha Christie Limited and Endor
Productions bring Agatha Christie’s married couple Tommy and
Tuppence to life in a brand new six
-part adventure series, to be
broadcast on BBC One. Partners
in Crime stars David Walliams
(Little Britain, Big School) as Tommy and Jessica Raine (Call the
Midwife, Wolf Hall) as Tuppence.
(The show is not due to air until late
2015)
7
This and That
Mystery Writers of America is proud to announce, as we
celebrate the 206th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan
Poe, the Nominees for the 2015 Edgar Allan Poe
Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and
television published or produced in 2014. The Edgar® Awards
will be presented to the winners at our 69th Gala Banquet,
Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New
York City.
BEST NOVEL:
This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash 3.5
Wolf by Mo Hayder
Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
The Final Silence by Stuart Neville
Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin
Coptown by Karin Slaughter
BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR:
Dry Bones in the Valley by Tom Bouman
Invisible City by Julia Dahl 3.75
The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens
Bad Country by C.B. McKenzie 4.0
Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh
Murder at the Brightwell by Ashley Weaver
BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL:
The Secret History of Las Vegas by Chris Albani
Stay With Me by Alison Gaylin
The Barkeep by William Lashner
The Day She Died by Catriona McPherson
The Gone Dead Train by Lisa Turner
World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters
THE SIMON & SCHUSTER – MARY HIGGINS CLARK
AWARD:
(Presented at MWA’s Agents & Editors Party on Tuesday,
April 28, 2015)
A Dark and Twisted Tide by Sharon Bolton
The Stranger You Know by Jane Casey
Invisible City by Julia Dahl 3.75
Summer of the Dead by Julia Keller
The Black Hour by Lori Rader-Day
I’ve put my rating on the three books out of this list that I’ve
read. One other I did not finish for some reason. I think I’m
gong to pass on reading any except a couple of the Mary Higgins Clark nominees. I’ve really enjoyed the other books in
the Julia Keller series. Maybe I will also try the Catriona
McPherson book as I’ve read many good things about
her...even if this book didn’t get very good reviews by Publishers Weekly. Perhaps I won’t suggest a month of reading
Award winners this year
8
For those of you who like the old shows and have
Comcast,- is showing Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue,
Mannix, Man From UNCLE, and other mystery/spy/
detective shows as well as westerns like Branded,
Wanted Dead or Alive, and Wagon Train, and war
series 12 O'Clock High, Rat Patrol, Combat, etc, on
channel 345
Coming soon to TV
THE WALKING DEAD, AMC, Feb. 8
RIZZOLI and ILES, TNT, Feb. 17
SECRETS AND LIES, ABC, March 1
BATTLE CREEK, CBS, March 1
CSI:CYBER, CBS, March 4
The DIG, USA, March 5
AMERICAN CRIME, ABC, March 5
ORPHAN BLACK, BBCA, April 18
WAYWARD PINES, Fox, May 14
Michael Connelly’s BOSCH series begins on Amazon Prime on Feb. 13th.
The internet group, 4 Mystery Addicts picked the
following 2014 books their favorites of the year:
Bradley, Alan – The Dead In Their Vaulted Arches
Burke, James Lee – Wayfaring Stranger
French, Tana – The Secret Place
Hallinan, Tim – For The Dead
Hallinan, Tim – Herbie’s Game
Healey, Emma – Elizabeth Is Missing
Krueger, William Kent – Windigo Island
Penny, Louise – The Long Way Home
Not a single match with the Edgar’s, but I prefer
this list. Now I’m waiting for the other online group,
Dorothy L. to provide their 2014 favorites.
Karen Cooper has sent me the invitation to the
Anaheim Library Foundation’s annual mystery
luncheon. The authors are:
Allison Brennan
Teresa Burcell
and
Craig Johnson
Tickets are $60.00
More information at the meeting.
Where Agatha Christie Dreamed up Murder
from June 2011 Smithsonian
On a crisp winter morning in Devon, England, sunlight
streams through the floor-to-ceiling French windows of
the manor house called Greenway, the secluded estate
where Agatha Christie spent nearly every summer from
1938 until her death in 1976—and which opened to the
public in February 2009. Gazing beyond a verdant lawn
through bare branches of magnolia and sweet-chestnut
trees, I glimpse the River Dart, glinting silver as it courses past forested hills. Robyn Brown, the house’s manager, leads me into the library. Christie’s reading chair sits
by the window; a butler’s tray holds bottles of spirits; and
a frieze depicting World War II battle scenes—
incongruous in this tranquil country retreat—embellishes
the cream-colored walls. It was painted in 1944 by Lt.
Marshall Lee, a U.S. Coast Guard war artist billeted here
with dozens of troops after the British Admiralty requisitioned the house. “The Admiralty came back after the
war and said, ‘Sorry about the frieze in the library. We’ll
get rid of it,’” Brown tells me. “Agatha said, ‘No, it’s a
piece of history. You can keep it, but please get rid of
the [14] latrines.’”
Agatha Christie was 48 years old in 1938, gaining fame
and fortune from her prolific output of short stories and
novels, one series starring the dandified Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, another centered on the underestimated spinster-sleuth Jane Marple. Christie’s life had
settled into a comfortable routine: part of the year was
spent at her house in Wallingford, near Oxford, and part
on excavations in the deserts of Iraq and Syria with her
9
second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan. But
Christie longed for a vacation refuge. That summer, she
heard of a handsome Georgian manor house, built
around 1792, going up for sale; it was set on 33 acres,
15 miles from her birthplace, the village of Torquay. For
Christie, Greenway—reachable only by boat or down a
narrow country lane one and a half miles from the nearest village of Galmpton—represented, as she wrote in
her autobiography, “the ideal house, a dream house.”
The estate’s owner, financially strapped by the Great
Depression, offered it for just £6,000—the equivalent of
about $200,000 today. Christie snapped it up.
Here, the author and playwright could escape from her
growing celebrity and enjoy the company of friends and
family: her only child, Rosalind Hicks; son-in-law Anthony Hicks; and grandson Mathew Prichard, whose father, Rosalind’s first husband, Hubert Prichard, had
been killed in the 1944 Allied invasion of France.
Greenway served as the inspiration for several scenes
in Christie’s murder mysteries, including the Poirot novels Five Little Pigs (1942) and Dead Man’s Folly (1956).
After Christie died, at age 85, the estate passed to
Hicks and her husband. Shortly before their own deaths
in 2004 and 2005, respectively, the couple donated the
property to Britain’s National Trust, the foundation that
grants protected status to historic houses, gardens and
ancient monuments and opens the properties to the
public.
In 2009, after a two-year, $8.6 million renovation—“the
house was in terrible shape,” says Brown—Greenway
opened to the public. Today, Greenway offers an opportunity to view the intimate world of a reclusive literary master,
who rarely gave interviews and shunned public appearances. “She was hugely shy, and this was her place of solitude, comfort and quiet,” Brown says. Greenway
“represents the informal, private side of Agatha Christie,
and we have striven to retain that atmosphere.”
Greenway’s success is the latest, most visible sign of the
extraordinary hold that Agatha Christie continues to exert
nearly 35 years after her death. Her 80 detective novels
and 18 short-story collections, plus the romances written
under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, have sold two
billion copies in more than 50 languages—making her by
far the most popular novelist of all time. Her books sell four
million copies annually and earn millions of dollars a year
for Agatha Christie Limited, a private company of which 36
percent is owned by Mathew Prichard and his three children, and for Chorion Limited, the media company that
bought a majority stake in 1998. A stream of dramatized
Poirot and Miss Marple whodunits continue to appear as
televised series. Meanwhile, Christie’s Mousetrap—a thriller
centered on guests snowed in at a country hotel—is still in
production at the St. Martins Theatre in London’s West
End; the evening I saw it marked performance number
23,774 for the longest-running play in history.
Every year, tens of thousands of Christie’s admirers descend on Torquay, the Devon resort where the author
spent her early years. They walk the seafront “Agatha
Christie Mile” (“A Writer’s Formative Venue,”) that delineates landmarks of her life, from the Victorian pier, where
the teenage Agatha roller-skated on summer weekends, to
the Grand Hotel, where she spent her wedding night with
her first husband, Royal Flying Corps aviator Archie Christie, on Christmas Eve 1914.
And Christie’s own story is still unfolding: in 2009, HarperCollins published Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks, an
annotated selection of her jottings, unearthed at Greenway
in 2005 before renovations began there. The cache provided new insight into her creative process. “There are notes
for a single novel scattered over a dozen notebooks,” says
John Curran, a Christie scholar at Trinity College Dublin,
who discovered the 73 notebooks after he had been invited
to Greenway by grandson Mathew Prichard. “At her peak,
her brain just teemed with ideas for books, and she scribbled them down any way she could.” The book also includes a never-before-seen version of a short story written
in late 1938, “The Capture of Cerberus,” featuring a Hitlerlike archvillain. Earlier in 2009, a research team from the
10
University of Toronto caused an international tempest
with its report suggesting that she had suffered from
Alzheimer’s disease during her final years.
The restoration of Greenway has also catalyzed a reappraisal of Christie’s work. Journalists and critics visited
Devon in droves when the estate opened, pondering the
novelist’s enduring popularity. Some critics complain
that, in contrast to such masters of the form as Arthur
Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, or Georges
Simenon, the Belgian-born author of the Inspector Maigret series, Christie was neither a prose stylist nor a
creator of fully realized characters. “Her use of language
is rudimentary and her characterizations thin,” Barry
Forshaw, editor of British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia, recently opined in the Independent newspaper.
Christie set her novels in “a never-never-land Britain,
massively elitist,” he declared; her detectives amounted
to “collections of tics or eccentric physical characteristics, with nothing to match the rich portrayal of the denizen of 221B Baker Street.” To be sure, Poirot lacks the
dark complexity of Sherlock Holmes. And alongside her
own masterpieces, such as the novel And Then There
Were None, published in 1939, Christie produced nearly
unreadable clunkers, including 1927’s The Big Four. But
Christie’s admirers point to her ability to individualize a
dozen characters with a few economical descriptions
and crisp lines of dialogue; her sense of humor, pacing
and finely woven plots; and her productivity. “She told a
rattling good story,” says Curran. What’s more, Christie’s flair for drama and mystery extended to her own
life, which was filled with subplots—and twists—worthy
of her novels.
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on September 15,
1890, at Ashfield, her parents’ villa on Barton Hill Road
in a hillside neighborhood of Torquay. Her father, Frederick Miller, was the charmingly indolent scion of a
wealthy New York family; because his stepmother was
British, he grew up on both sides of the Atlantic. Her
mother, Clara Boehmer, instilled in Agatha, the youngest of three children, a love of reading and an active
imagination. “I had a very happy childhood,” she wrote
in her autobiography, which she began in 1950 and
completed 15 years later. “I had a home and garden that
I loved; a wise and patient Nanny; as father and mother
two people who loved each other dearly and made a
success of their marriage and of parenthood.” Christie’s
idyll disintegrated in the late 1890s, however, when her
father squandered his inheritance through a series of
bad business deals. He died of pneumonia at age 55
alty after the first 2,000 books were sold, and locked
Christie in for an additional five novels under the same
terms.
Then, in 1926, Christie experienced a series of lifechanging turns. In June of that year, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, her sixth novel, was published by William
Collins to critical acclaim and far more generous remuneration. The book, notable for its surprising denouement—Poirot exonerates the original suspects and identifies his own assistant, the story’s narrator, as the murderer—“established Christie as a writer,” says Curran.
That summer, Archie announced that he had fallen in
love with his secretary and wanted a divorce. And on
December 4, Agatha Christie’s Morris car was found
abandoned at the edge of a lake near the village of Albury in Surrey, outside London, with no sign of its owner. Her disappearance set off a nationwide manhunt that
riveted all of England. Police drained ponds, scoured
underbrush and searched London buses. The tabloids
floated rumors that Christie had committed suicide or
that Archie had poisoned her. Eleven days after her disappearance, two members of a band performing at the
Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire, reported to police that a guest registered as “Mrs. Teresa
Neele” from Cape Town, South Africa, resembled newspaper photographs of the missing writer. Tracked down
by police and reunited briefly with Archie, Christie never
explained why she had vanished. The never-solved
mystery has, over the decades, prompted speculation
that she was seeking to punish her husband for his desertion or had suffered a nervous breakdown. The episode also inspired a 1979 film, Agatha, starring Dustin
Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave, which imagined Christie heading to Harrogate to hatch a diabolical revenge
plot.
(Another internet article shows how this incident
was the model for GONE GIRL –including the revenge plot)
One frigid December morning, I visited Prichard in his
office at Agatha Christie Limited, in central London. He
greeted me in a bright room filled with framed original
covers and facsimile first editions of Christie’s novels,
now published by HarperCollins. Since his mother’s
death, Prichard, 67, has been principal guardian of his
grandmother’s legacy, screening requests to adapt
Christie’s work for media from film and computer games
to graphic novels, overseeing merchandising agreements, and, on occasion, taking trespassers to court. In
1977, Agatha Christie Limited filed a lawsuit against the
when Agatha was 11. From that point, the family scraped
by with a puny income that Clara received from the law
firm of her late father-in-law.
Agatha grew into an attractive, self-confident young woman, the belle of Torquay’s social scene. She fended off a
dozen suitors, including a young airman, Amyas Boston, who would return to Torquay 40 years later, as a top
commander in the Royal Air Force. “He sent a note to
Christie at Greenway requesting a meeting for old times’
sake,” says John Risdon, a Torquay historian and Christie
expert. “And he got a reply back saying no thanks, she
would rather have him ‘cherish the memory of me as a
lovely girl at a moonlight picnic...on the last night of your
leave.’” She had, says Risdon, “a thread of romanticism
that went right through her life.” In 1912 she met Archie
Christie, an officer in the Royal Flying Corps, at a Torquay
dance. They married two years later, and Archie went off
to France to fight in the Great War. During his absence,
Agatha cared for injured soldiers at Torquay’s hospital,
then—in a move that would prove fateful—she distributed
medicinal compounds at
a local dispensary. That
work alerted her to the
“fascination for poison,”
wrote Laura Thompson
“The beautiful look of the
bottles, the exquisite precision of the calculations,
the potential for mayhem
contained within order”
captivated the future
crime writer.
By the time Christie tried
her hand at a detective
novel, in 1916, “I was
well steeped in the Sherlock Holmes tradition,” she would
recall in her autobiography. The story she devised, a whodunit set in motion by a strychnine poisoning, introduced
some of her classic motifs: multiple suspects and murder
among the British upper classes—as well as a Belgian
refugee who helps Scotland Yard solve the case. Poirot
“was hardly more than five feet four inches, but carried
himself with great dignity,” Christie wrote in her promising
debut, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. “His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little
on one side. His moustache was Four years later, by
which time Christie was living in London with Archie and
their infant daughter, Rosalind, the publishing firm Bodley
Head accepted the manuscript. They offered a small roy11
and an apple.” In their last years, Rosalind and Anthony
Hicks had been too ill to maintain the house properly;
Brown points out evidence of renovations that shored up
sagging walls, replaced rotting beams, repaired dangerous cracks—and revealed intriguing glimpses of the
house’s history. Standing outside the winter dining room,
she gestures to the floor. “We did some digging, and
found a Victorian underfloor heating system here,” she
tells me. “Underneath the flue we found cobbled pavement that was in front of the Tudor court. So in fact we
are standing in front of the original Tudor house.” (That
house, built around 1528, was demolished by Greenway’s late 18th-century owner, Roope Harris Roope,
who constructed the Georgian mansion on the site.)
Stepping outside, we admire the house’s graceful, butterscotch-yellow facade, with its two-columned central
portico and single-story wings added in 1823. Beyond a
curving gravel driveway, a steep drop-off descends to
the Dart. I follow a forest path for several hundred yards
to a slate-roofed, stone boathouse, one of Christie’s favorite places, which sits above a sandy strip of river
beach covered with clumps of black-green seaweed. In
Christie’s 1956 novel, Dead Man’s Folly, Poirot joins a
mystery writer, Ariadne Oliver, for a party at a Devon
estate called Nasse House—a stand-in for Greenway—
and there discovers the corpse of a young girl lying beside the secluded boathouse. The Battery is nearby—a
stone plaza flanked by a pair of 18th-century cannons; it
made a cameo appearance in Five Little Pigs.
Although the estate inspired scenes in several of her
novels, Christie seldom, if ever, wrote at Greenway. It
was, Brown emphasizes, an escape from the pressures
of work and fame, a restorative retreat where she
slipped easily into the roles of grandmother, wife and
neighbor. “It’s the place where she could be Mrs. Mallowan,” Brown says. “She went to the village shop to get
her hair cut, went to a fishmonger in Brixham, hired a
bus and took local school kids to see Mousetrap. She
was very much a part of the local community.” The opening of Greenway has shed some light on the author’s
private world. But, three and a half decades after her
death, the source of Agatha Christie’s genius—and
many aspects of her life—remain a mystery worthy of
Jane Marple or Hercule Poirot.
Writer Joshua Hammer lives in Berlin. Photographer
Michael Freeman is based in London
creators of Agatha, claiming that the film, then in production, took liberties with the story of her disappearance.
The company lost its case, although Prichard believes
that the lawsuit probably made the film “marginally less
fictional than it might have been.” More recently, Prichard
approved a revival of A Daughter’s a Daughter, a loosely
autobiographical drama Christie wrote as Mary Westmacott. Prichard, who attended the December 2009
opening of the play, admitted its depiction of a troubled
mother-daughter relationship mirrored that of Christie and
her daughter, Rosalind. Writing in the Daily Telegraph,
critic Charles Spencer characterized the work as “a fascinating, neglected curiosity.”
Prichard describes his childhood at Greenway during the
1950s as “the anchor of my growing up...I used to toddle
down the stairs, and my grandmother would tell me early
morning stories, and she followed my career when I was
at [Eton], my cricket.” He settled back in his desk chair. “I
was fortunate. I was the only grandchild, so all of her attention was concentrated on me.” After dinner, Prichard
went on, Christie would retire to the drawing room and
read aloud from corrected proofs of her latest novel to an
intimate group of friends and family. (Intensely disciplined,
she began writing a novel each January and finished by
spring, sometimes working from a tent in the desert when
she accompanied Mallowan on digs in the Middle East.)
“My grandfather’s brother Cecil, archaeologists from Iraq,
the chairman of Collins and [Mousetrap producer] Peter
Saunders might be there,” Prichard recalled. “Eight or ten
of us would be scattered round, and her reading the book
took a week or ten days. We were a lot more relaxed
back then.”
Prichard says he was taken aback by the 2009 research
paper that suggested his grandmother suffered from dementia during the last years of her life. According to the
New York Times, the researchers digitized 14 Christie
novels and searched for “linguistic indicators of the cognitive deficits typical of Alzheimer’s Disease.” They found
that Christie’s next-to-last novel, published in 1972, when
she was 82, exhibited a “staggering drop in vocabulary”
when compared with a novel she had written 18 years
earlier—evidence, they postulated, of dementia. “I said to
my wife, ‘If my grandmother had Alzheimer’s when she
wrote those books, there were an awful lot of people who
would have loved to have Alzheimer’s.’”
Back at Greenway, Robyn Brown and I wander through
the sun-splashed breakfast room and cozy salon where
Christie’s readings took place, and eye the bathtub
where, Brown says, “Agatha liked to get in with a book
12
Have decided not to include a reading list as the library
has 287 entries for that name… many of them TV shows
or movies. Have fun with Agatha.