When I was asked to write the first full-length Miss Marple novel since Sleeping Murder was published posthumously, 50 years ago in October, I immediately thought of my granny. My first encounter with the world of Agatha Christie was through her. Now I come to think of it, she was a rather Marple-ish figure in many ways: a keen knitter and gardener with a brilliant mind (she could complete the “big” crossword in seemingly about 15 minutes), highly perceptive about people and human nature and with a powerful moral compass.
While kind and generous beyond measure, at times, like Miss Marple, she showed a steelier side. Christie created Jane Marple in a Christmas magazine story called The Tuesday Night Club in 1927, and this “white-haired old lady” made her book debut in 1930 with The Murder at the Vicarage. Rivalling Hercule Poirot in her readers’ affections, Miss Marple eventually appeared in 12 of the author’s 66 detective novels, plus 20 of her 160 short stories.
With more than 1bn Agatha Christie books sold in English, and another 1bn sold in translation, they are some of the most perpetually loved works ever written. But though Sophie Hannah was commissioned by Christie’s family to publish an authorised continuation of her Poirot novels in 2013, no one had ever been asked to write a new Miss Marple. Until now … As well as feeling honour, and terror, at the invitation to take up Christie’s beloved character, I had a funny sense of homecoming.
Christie has always been so important to me as a reader and writer. Hers was the first adult fiction I read, at around 12 or 13, beginning with Murder on the Orient Express – what a place to start! I’m not sure I was even really aware of the death and darkness there, I was just taken up by the game of it all: trying to spot the clues and dodge the red herrings, to guess the solution before the big reveal.
I remember distinctly the experience, that any mystery reader will recognise, of wanting to race through the pages to get to the solution and yet also to eke it all out. I worried: what if this brilliant writer, this plotting magician, hadn’t written anything else? Thankfully, that wasn’t a problem.
Like many readers, I was drawn to the Poirot books first. Perhaps because I’d started with Orient Express, a glamorous setting was a foundational part of the Christie experience for me, especially after I’d watched the 70s film with Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman and Sean Connery sweeping down the platform trailing smoke and old-school Hollywood style. Poirot gets most of the fun, far-flung locations: the French Riviera, Egypt, the Greek islands and the Dolomites, to name a few.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
