Saturday Review: “An Agatha Christie Mystery – NOT Written By Agatha Christie”
a review by Shane Trayers of The Christie Affair (2023) by Nina de Gramont.
Trayers starts the review with “While Nina de Gramont’s The Christie Affair has “no allegiance to history” (305), what it accomplishes is creating a novel in the style of Agatha Christie, a twisting and turning mystery underlying the accidental connections between wife and mistress.” Writing a review for a mystery novel without giving away anything is a tall order. Trayers acknowledges this tightrope, instead focusing on the overlap between the real life events that influenced the fictional portrayals in the novel.
Besides the still unsolved question of Christie’s real disappearance in 1926, the book also portrays the hell of working homes of unwed mothers and the joy and suffering after World War I. This novel would be a good fit for both Christie mystery fans and those of pure historical fiction. Trayers said, “Without giving too many clues to the overarching mystery, by the end of the novel, the speculative history takes over the main storyline as the fictional Nan O’Dea’s life collides with Agatha Christie’s disappearance, and the novel shows us a story that is likely more interesting than reality, one that diverges from known Agatha Christie biography.”
Read the entire review in the Online Winter 2024 issue out now! And order the book from Bookshop.org.
