This is Jenn Delperdang, with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out.
“A mystery should end with a killer revealed…” and so it does in the book I am recommending today, The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont—a brilliantly-imagined historical fiction novel about the mysterious disappearance of legendary author Agatha Christie.
In December 1926, Agatha Christie’s husband Archie, tells her that he wants a divorce--He wants to marry his mistress. And then he takes off to spend time in the country. That same night, Agatha leaves her home, abandoning her car beside a chalk quarry with a suitcase full of clothes inside. After eleven days and a highly-publicized international manhunt, she is found at a spa hotel in Harrogate, having assumed the name of her husband’s lover. These are the facts as they happened. But Nina de Gramont’s delightful re-imaginging of this famous scandal gives us so much more. The author gives readers compelling storylines for both Agatha and the mistress, known in this story as Nan O’Dea--and a murder mystery to solve when two guests at the hotel in Harrogate turn up dead.
Told from the point of view of ‘the other woman,’ the story unfolds in carefully crafted and compelling flashbacks—slowly revealing Nan’s secrets with mesmerizing and unexpected turns along the way. The writing of this book is exceptional—at turns clever and complex.
Check out The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont at the Sioux City Public Library. If you’re looking for more fun book recommendations and author interviews, subscribe to our podcast, The First Fifty Pages.
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