The Crimes That Inspired Agatha Christie is a well researched and engaging monograph curated and written by Drs. Jonathan Oates and Anna-Lena Berg. Due out in the UK 30th Oct. 2025 (30th Dec, elsewhere) from Pen & Sword, it's 232 pages and will be available in hardcover format.
Well written and annotated, this is a collection of true-crime histories which influenced Agatha Christie (and other authors). Some, like Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, and Dr. Crippen, are still quite famous and well known down to the modern day, whilst some of the included stories (notorious in their day) have faded and will be unfamiliar.
The authors have done a good job of setting the real-life history in context, with contextual quotes from relevant works in Christie's oeuvre for readers to search up on their own. It's not annotated, there aren't really chapter notes, but the book's content is enhanced by numerous facsimile documents and archival photos of relevant locations and people, victims and perpetrators.
Four stars. Definitely one for the true crime podcast audience, and for die-hard Christie fans. None of the included photos are lurid, although there are some courtroom and media descriptions which were a bit explicit (but dulled from the passage of time). It would be a good choice for public library acquisition, or for the true-crime lover's home reference library. Potentially some good nuggets of info for mystery writers.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.
No comments:
Post a Comment