Agatha Christie is about to embark on a new, gripping murder case. But this time, she’s not the author – she’s a suspect…
1926 – Christie is a darling of the literary circuit and the most desired guest in London’s glittering social scene. She can often be found at meetings of the Detection Club – where mystery writers come together to share ideas, swap secrets and drink copiously. But then a fellow author's initiation ceremony takes a gruesome turn, and one of the group ends up dead. Now, Agatha is no longer just the creator of great mystery plots – she’s a player in one.
And when Agatha disappears the day after the murder, she’s widely assumed to be guilty. Only Eliza Baker, assistant to the Club’s enigmatic secretary, Dorothy Sayers, is interested in investigating the case. But in a world where murder is the ultimate plot device, can Eliza piece together the evidence and find the killer before it’s too late?
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I love anything to do with Agatha Christie, so the title was an instant attraction for me. However, the book itself isn't really about the great writer. She is a minor character and her disappearance is used to add a twist to the plot. I liked this fact immensely because usually when this real-life event is used in fiction, it is a major focus of the book. That it isn't, immediately marks this book out as being a little different, which is always a bonus for me.
The plot itself centres around Eliza and her quest to discover who is guilty of murder. Added into the mix, are Eliza's sister Jane, who does something very secret at work and Theo, who it is quickly established is in love with Eliza. Hints are made about a tragic event in Eliza's past and at a mystery person who is passing on state secrets. Neither of these are fully resolved by the end of the book, which sets things up nicely for the rest of the series and draws the reader in with tantalising hints about what is bubbling beneath the surface of seemingly everyday lives.
As I was reading, I had a feeling that there was something familiar about the spying subplot and then remembered reading something about MI5 investigating Agatha Christie during WW2, fearing she had a spy in Bletchley Park. I like it when authors take real life events and give them a bit of a twist and a shake-up to make something new from it. It's something I do a lot in my own writing and so I love seeing how other writers approach it.
There is clearly still a lot to find out about Eliza and her backstory and Book 2 is definitely one I'll be looking out for.
Kelly Oliver is the award-winning, bestselling author of three mysteries series: The Jessica James Mysteries, The Pet Detective Mysteries, and the historical cozies The Fiona Figg Mysteries, set in WW1. She is also the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and lives in Nashville, Tennessee. She is bringing new titles in the Fiona Figg series to Boldwood, the first of which, Chaos in Carnegie Hall, will be published in November 2022.
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