By Shari Randall
Mark your calendars - Cozy Mystery Day is September 15. This new holiday, created by author Sarah Weldon along with the hashtag #cozymysteryday, celebrates one of the literary world’s most popular genres.
The date couldn’t be more appropriate: September 15 is Agatha Christie’s birthday. Her work is seen as the ultimate traditional mystery – a play-fair puzzle set among a defined group, preferably in a small village in the English countryside, solved by an amateur sleuth. Cozy authors honor that tradition, as well as the requirement that there be minimal gore and bad language, and sex behind closed doors only, please. I’ve heard that the term “cozy mystery” springs from the tea cozy, an often ornamental covering for teapots.
Christie, known as the Queen of Crime, is the bestselling author of all time. According to Wikipedia, her 66 novels and 14 short story collections have sold over 2 billion copies, a number surpassed only by the Bible and the works of Shakespeare. She gave the world the occasionally irritating but brilliant Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, and the outwardly docile but devious Miss Marple.
This mystery superstar is feted every year in #3 on my bucket list, the International Agatha Christie Festival, taking place September 12 – 15 in Devon, England. Here’s the website so we can plan better next year: https://www.iacf-uk.org/festival/
Christie continues to fascinate. This mild mannered woman, educated at home in a quiet, genteel family, somehow concocted intricate plots and murder scenarios that continue to baffle readers today.
Here are some quick facts in honor of Agatha’s upcoming birthday:
Her first book languished five years before publication and was rejected by six publishers.
She was immortalized in Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum.
She never allowed any representation of Poirot to appear on book jackets.
She was the recipient of the first ever Grandmaster Award from the Mystery Writers of America (1954).
There is a memorial to Agatha Christie and her play, The Mousetrap, at St. Martin’s Cross near Covent Garden. http://www.agathachristiememorial.co.uk/home/4594369421
She wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.
Agatha Christie’sThe Pale Horse is currently being adapted for television. Rufus Sewell will star as Mark Easterbrook, a man who finds a piece of paper with a list of names in the shoe of a dead woman. The list leads him to The Pale Horse, a mysterious pub in the isolated village of Much Deeping.
Are you a fan of Agatha Christie?
I started reading mysteries with Agatha Christie (one of my aunts had a collection of her books, and let me borrow them.) I liked Nancy Drew, too, of course, and it was more appropriate for my age, but available Nancy Drew books were few and far between. And then they were over so quickly!
ReplyDeleteAgatha Christie, in company with Phyllis Whitney, Mary Stewart, and Victoria Holt, bridged the gap between Nancy Drew and adult fiction. I used my mother's library card to borrow them from the library because I didn't quality for adult section privileges until high school.
ReplyDeleteMy fav AC: At Bertram's Hotel, in which Jane Marple solves a murder of past and present circumstances through the filter of her own past and present.
Cannot tell a lie... I went hot and cold on Agatha Christie books. Some fascinated me. Others bored me because I could figure them out. Excited about the Pale horse... one of the first to intrigue me.
ReplyDeleteKM - I had to laugh when I read your comment - those Nancy Drew books were over too quickly!
ReplyDeleteHi Margaret, When I see those names - Agatha, Phyllis, Mary - I'm swept away again. For me, too, these ladies really captured the magic of reading.
ReplyDeleteHi Debra - I'm impressed that you could figure them out! Wow!
ReplyDeleteI, too, can't wait for The Pale Horse. It was different - more suspenseful.
When reading Agatha Christie, I always felt I had identified the murder only to find out I had been completely wrong. She always surprised me. Probably the best way of learning to write a mystery is to study her techniques for planting clues and using red herrings.
ReplyDeleteHi Grace, I agree. When I read her now, I appreciate her subtlety - she always fooled me!
ReplyDeleteI started with Nancy Drew when I was eight, moved to Zane Grey when I was ten, and picked up Christie when I was twelve but never put her down. At first I read for mystery; decades later, I depend on her elegant prose, and especially on the beautifully drawn Miss Marple, to take my mind off seasonal allergies and other miseries flesh is heir to. She's just so darned good.
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