Next month, I’m scheduled to give a talk on the history of the mystery for the Center for Learning in Retirement, part of the offerings at our local community college.
I gave a version of the talk in September 2022 for one of my bookclubs, but that was an hour among friends. This is supposed to be two hours for people I’ve never met.
But while I’ve been working on expanding the talk, I’ve been discovering just how vast is the legacy Agatha Christie left behind. I like to think of her as the young woman who began a lifelong career of writing, as she is in this picture I found in an NPR article about her. (I couldn’t find my way back to the original article, but here’s another about her.)
And here are just a few of the things I plan to include in my talk.
Among contemporary writers who write Christie-style mysteries is Lucy Foley, whose 2020 debut The Guest List. Her was a Book of the Month Club selection when it came out.
Lori Rader-Day, a Chicagoan by way of central Indiana, wrote her only – so far – historical novel when she was reading about Christie and learned that Christie’s country home in southwestern Great Britian was a shelter for children – babies and toddlers, actually – evacuated from London during the war. Lori immediately thought she wanted to read the book about that moment in Christie’s life. But she learned no one had written it. So she decided to do it herself. Her Death at Greenway has since won an Agatha Award.
Because Christie’s family is still in the picture, they have been pretty focused on maintaining their rights to her copyrights and characters.
There is one authorized successor, however, who has their blessing to continue the Hercule Poirot stories. Sophie Hannah, who was a recognized Christie expert and fan, was invited by the family to continue the Poirot stories. I believe she’s up to five now.
It was through Lori that I met Sopie, who was a guest at the Midwest Mystery Conference before COVID. Back then it was called Mystery and Mayhem in Chicago, organized by Lori and book publicist Dana Kaye. Since then, Tracy Clark, another award-winning Chicago writer, has joined the MMC team. (This year’s conference is Nov. 9. Check it out here.)
If you like historical fiction, you might want to look into Marie Benedict’s The Mystery of Mrs. Christie. The novel focuses on the eleven days that Christie disappeared just before Christmas in 1926.
If you’d like to compare the novel to an actual biography, there are several. Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman, is probably the most recent. It’s not the one that inspired Lori Rader-Day, but I enjoyed reading it. I also enjoyed Worsley’s PBS series based on her research.
But, back to work on the talk.
À bientôt!
sharon p. lynn 