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?
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.
Facebook: @KellyOliverAuthor
Twitter: @KellyOliverBook
Instagram: @kellyoliverbooks
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My thoughts: Blending fact and fiction, this is a fun historical crime caper. Agatha Christie was indeed a member of the Detection Club, a group of the top crime writers of the era, and she did disappear for a while in 1926, turning up in Harrogate with apparent temporary amnesia. This is usually attributed to the fact that her husband had asked for a divorce so he could marry his secretary. Agatha never revealed anything about this episode and after some time refused to discuss it at all.
But here an alternative theory is proposed, following the murder of a fellow crime writer, one of which she is accused of doing, she flees in fear. Although shooting someone in the dark isn’t very Christie – a former pharmacist she knew her poisons very well and many of her books feature death by deadly dose.
Luckily for her, Dorothy Sayers, the club’s secretary is on the case (Sayers and Arthur Conan Doyle did really look for her when she went missing) and so is her assistant Eliza Baker (sadly, fictional), who has some experience in these matters after working at Scotland Yard during the war.
I really liked Eliza, she was smart, resourceful and a lot more intuitive than the police, solving both the murder and Mrs Christie’s disappearance with apparent ease and playing a lot of chess along the way. I hope this is the start of a cracking series featuring the Detection Club and Eliza, who is a better detective than the creators of some of the most famous. She also has a faithful canine companion, and as you probably know by now, an animal detective is always a bonus in my book.
And don’t worry about Agatha, as well as being one of the most successful writers of all time, she also found love again with archaeologist Max Mallowen, and even went on digs with him, which inspired some of her more far flung books like Death on the Nile. Yes, I am a huge fan and a total nerd, why thank you.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 