Title: THE MYSTERY OF MRS CHRISTIE
Author: Marie Benedict
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Read: October 2020
Expected publication: 12 January 2021
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2
Book Description:
In December 1926, Agatha Christie
goes missing.
Investigators find her empty car on
the edge of a deep, gloomy pond, the only clues some tire tracks nearby and a
fur coat left in the car—strange for a frigid night. Her husband and daughter
have no knowledge of her whereabouts, and England unleashes an unprecedented
manhunt to find the up-and-coming mystery author. Eleven days later, she
reappears, just as mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming amnesia and
providing no explanations for her time away.
The puzzle of those missing eleven
days has persisted. With her trademark exploration into the shadows of history,
acclaimed author Marie Benedict brings us into the world of Agatha Christie,
imagining why such a brilliant woman would find herself at the center of such a
murky story.
What is real, and what is mystery?
What role did her unfaithful husband play, and what was he not telling
investigators?
A master storyteller whose clever
mind may never be matched, Agatha Christie's untold history offers perhaps her
greatest mystery of all.
My musings:
Ever since reading Agatha Christie’s autobiography
as a teen, after having binge-read my way through all her books, I have been
intrigued by the real life mystery surrounding her ten-day disappearance in
1926, a secret she has taken to the grave with her. I was therefore very
excited to read Marie Benedict’s interpretation of what could have happened,
and I must say that I liked this version very much!
The handsome and yet stiff-upper-lip
arrogant Archibald Christie did little to endear himself to me in Benedict’s
book, and yet the format of the two separate POVs – one told by Agatha and one
by Archie – worked very well here. Whilst Agatha recounts her love affair with
her handsome husband from the day she met him to the day she vanished, Archie’s
timeline starts at the time of Agatha’s disappearance. An air of foreshadowing
hangs over his head like a dark stain, and I became increasingly more
disenchanted with him as the story progressed.
I won’t say much more about the
story here, as the facts are well known and Benedict’s interpretation should
remain a surprise until you read it, but I can say that I found it very
satisfying. There also followed a period of furious googling to read old newspaper
articles about Agatha’s disappearance, and look at some old photos from the
time, and again it got me wondering ...
THE MYSTERY OF MRS CHRISTIE is a
satisfying, fun read that tackles one of the great unsolved mysteries of our
time. Whilst there are many theories about what happened to Agatha Christie in
the ten days she was “missing”, no one really knows the truth. I take my hat
off to Marie Benedict for tackling such a prominent historical mystery and do
it justice. Well done!
Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the
opportunity to provide an honest review.
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