I read my first mystery in second grade, and the genre has captivated me ever since. My mother loves jigsaw puzzles—without the picture, so it’s a challenge—while I prefer to work through clues in books from Agatha Christie to Stephen King, to C. J. Box…no matter the author, my goal is to find the answer before the author reveals it. Seven of my books fall under the mystery, suspense, and thriller categories, and I want to pen many more as I enjoy the thrill of perfectly plotted prose. I hold a bachelor’s degree from TCU, and I’ve spent twenty-plus years immersed in psychology and behavioral science.
This book is not a typical sleuth novel. The story is from each suspect’s point of view, all unreliable.
I loved that my perspective of Rosemary Barton shifted with each retelling of the night that she supposedly committed suicide by drinking a glass full of cyanide-laced champagne. Was Rosemary actually a doting sister? Perhaps she was a happy, lovely younger wife. Maybe she was a rival or a schemer.
I read the novel because of its irresistible title and intriguing questions. Although I’m familiar with most Poirot and Marple books, I wasn’t as familiar with the Colonel Race mysteries. By this, Ms. Christie’s thirty-sixth book, she’d honed her craft to such a degree that I still think about it often.
A beautiful heiress is fatally poisoned in a West End restaurant...
Six people sit down to dinner at a table laid for seven. In front of the empty place is a sprig of rosemary - in solemn memory of Rosemary Barton who died at the same table exactly one year previously.
No one present on that fateful night would ever forget the woman's face, contorted beyond recognition - or what they remembered about her astonishing life.
This book has inspired an entire genre of content where a group of people find themselves in a situation similar to her secluded island...and they cannot leave. I just ticked off a handful of books and TV shows that use this model, and I enjoy them all.
In the novel, multiple points of view drive the narrative, and the perpetrators choose the victims based on their own dubious, possibly criminal, histories. I found the reduction of the soldiers on the dining room table as each person dies to be diabolically brilliant, ratcheting up an already unbearable tension.
I strive to achieve her novel’s seemingly effortless pacing…as the clue drops sprinkled meticulously throughout the book. This is one I re-read simply because I always learn something new.
Agatha Christie's world-famous mystery thriller, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers.
Ten strangers, apparently with little in common, are lured to an island mansion off the coast of Devon by the mysterious U.N.Owen. Over dinner, a record begins to play, and the voice of an unseen host accuses each person of hiding a guilty secret. That evening, former reckless driver Tony Marston is found murdered by a deadly dose of cyanide.
The tension escalates as the survivors realise the killer is not only among them but…
The Road from Belhaven is set in 1880s Scotland. Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small girl that she can see the future. But she soon realises that she must keep her gift a secret. While she can sometimes glimpse…
Long labeled Christie’s best work, I agree that this book is a top-notch read.
Christie’s mysteries set in the English countryside are always so refreshingly charming…even when dealing with murder. And Christie meticulously planned this one—a tangle of knots that no one should be able to untangle. Yet, the killer is battling wits and lives against the inimitable Hercule Poirot, who always catches his culprit.
I love this mystery because, once I’d read it for the thrill ride of discovery, I went back and wrote all the clues. Christie’s subtlety is one of her greatest strengths and one I hope one day to achieve in my work. Often overlooked in novel writing, imagination is fundamental to Christie’s books, and I love how convoluted hers must have been to come up with these scenarios.
Even after eighty years, Agatha Christie’s books are refreshingly modern constructs (not so much some beliefs, sadly), and readers and writers can delight in her complexities.
The classic "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", finally at a fair price!The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in June 1926 in the United Kingdom. It is the third novel to feature Hercule Poirot as the lead detective.
In 2013, the British Crime Writers' Association voted it the best crime novel ever.
This book is signature Christie: well-plotted and paced, full of exciting characters, all of whom had motive and potential to kill…and we meet her most beloved character, Poirot. What’s not to like?
I hadn’t read any Christie books in decades, and this was the one that rekindled my love affair with her craft.
Captain Hastings narrates these books (a la Watson’s retellings of Holmes’s brilliance) and points out Poirot’s eccentricity and fastidiousness from the initial introduction. Poirot seems so silly and stuffy…until those little gray cells kick in, and we get some keen insights.
Someone pointed out to me that Christie’s work is now considered historical. This book is also a classic mystery worth reading.
One morning at Styles Court, an Essex country manor, the elderly owner is found dead of strychnine poisoning. Arthur Hastings, a soldier staying there on sick leave from the Western Front, ventures out to the nearby village of Styles St. Mary to ask help from his friend Hercule Poirot, an eccentric Belgian inspector. Thus, in this classic whodunit, one of the most famous characters in detective fiction makes his debut on the world stage. With a half dozen suspects who all harbor secrets, it takes all of Poirot’s prodigious sleuthing skills to untangle the mystery—but not before the inquiry undergoes…
A spy school for girls amidst Jane Austen’s high society.
Daughters of the Beau Monde who don’t fit London society’s strict mold are banished to Stranje House, where the headmistress trains these unusually gifted girls to enter the dangerous world of spies in the Napoleonic wars. #1 NYT bestselling author…
Ah, Miss Marple! She’s probably the most iconic amateur female sleuth and spawned an entire mystery genre (I love a good cozy!).
I chose this novel because the plotting is excellent, and I appreciate Agatha Christie’s subtleties. She respected her readers’ intelligence…and enjoyed playing with our observation skills. We get a slew of culprits, all with the motivation to murder the Fortescue patriarch.
So when Inspector Neele, whose perspective overtakes much of the book, needs help to understand why the bickering family is more interested in Mr. Fortescue’s fortune than his untimely death and pocketful of rye that seem to follow a nursery rhyme, of all things, well, only Miss Marple can solve this tangled web.
A classic Marple mystery, superbly read by Joan Hickson. Available for the first time on audio.
Rex Fortescue, king of a financial empire, was sipping tea in his 'counting house' when he suffered an agonising and sudden death. On later inspection, the pockets of the deceased were found to contain traces of cereals.
Yet, it was the incident in the parlour which confirmed Jane Marple's suspicion that here she was looking at a case of crime by rhyme...
I grew up in Houston, TX, near a bayou with possums, turtles, fish, Palmetto bugs, and snakes. I don’t like snakes, but I’m fascinated by them. Learning that a peptide in opossum blood made the creature immune to snake venom filled me with elation. But then I questioned this discovery. If we could revolutionize antivenin production by harnessing this natural defense mechanism, someone could exploit this newfound knowledge to create a more toxic response.
Motivated by these contemplations, I crafted this book. Set against the backdrop of America’s most renowned swamp, New Orleans, the narrative unfolds as a wrong place/time trope. I wove together elements of suspense, intrigue, and the latent dangers associated with unbridled scientific exploration.
From the author of Washington’s Spies, the thrilling story of two rival secret agents — one Confederate, the other Union — sent to Britain during the Civil War.
The South’s James Bulloch, charming and devious, was ordered to acquire a clandestine fleet intended to break Lincoln’s blockade, sink Northern…
In 1662, a man is wrongly executed for signing the death warrant of Charles I. Awaiting execution, he asks to speak with a priest, to whom he declares a curse on the village that betrayed him. The priest responds with a counter-curse, leaving just one option to nullify it.
