I walked over to the doll counter and a bank of china-white faces with blank blue eyes stared back at me. I had always adored Christmas and I was determined that this year was going to seem just as festive and jolly as normal, at least for Rosalind’s sake. The distant sound of a brass band playing carols lightened my mood for a moment. Now that Archie’s head had been turned by this creature, I imagined the dove being strangled with a necklace of barbed wire and slowly rotting away inside me. When I had first fallen in love with Archie, I had likened the feeling to a white dove trying to escape from my chest. I told myself to stop thinking of her-I would simply pretend the situation did not exist-but then I caught sight of another pale-faced brunette and the dull ache in my chest would flare up again and leave me feeling nauseous. But each of these imagined glimpses left a piece of scar tissue across my heart. Of course, when I looked again across the glove counter or perfume display, it was never her, just another dark-haired woman trying to make the best of herself. That would never have been my choice of words. Wherever I turned my head, I thought I saw her: a woman people described as striking, beautiful even. In this tantalizing novel Andrew Wilson ingeniously explores Agatha Christie’s odd ten-day disappearance in 1926 and weaves an utterly compelling and convincing story around this still unsolved mystery involving the world’s bestselling novelist. Writing about murder is a far cry from committing a crime, and Agatha must use every ounce of her cleverness and resourcefulness to thwart an adversary determined to exploit her expertise and knowledge of the act of murder to kill on his behalf. But, before then, you are going to disappear.” So begins a terrifying sequence of events-for her rescuer is no guardian angel, rather he is a blackmailer of the most insidious, manipulative kind. She feels a light touch on her back, causing her to lose her balance, then a sense of someone pulling her to safety from the rush of the incoming train. Unless you want the whole world to learn about your husband and his mistress.”Īgatha Christie is preparing to board a train, preoccupied with the devastating knowledge that her husband is having an affair. In this “audacious mystery…with thrilling results” ( The Guardian), Andrew Wilson investigates Christie’s unexplained ten-day disappearance and offers his own gripping explanation, in which Christie is pulled into a riveting case of blackmail and murder. Discover the real-life mystery surrounding the queen of crime herself: Agatha Christie.

A talent for murder by andrew wilson