Reviews

Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets from Her Notebooks by John Curran

whats_margaret_reading's review against another edition

3.0

Murder in the Making roughly follows the format of Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, where John Curran's analysis is interspersed with his transcriptions of Christie's notebooks. Christie was a constant notebook keeper but not so good at keeping all the notes chronologically. There are solutions to some of the novels revealed in the discussions of her methods, so only a well-read Christie fan or someone who doesn't mind spoilers would find this particularly interesting. However, there is a great discussion about Christie's work in the context of other detective writers and tropes of the detective story and insight into Christie's process as well as her personal life with respect to her work. This particular work is organized chronologically, with Christie's life events being discussed along with what she had written those years. All in all, this is essential reading for the diehard Christie fan but not so much for the casual reader.

chocklad's review against another edition

4.0

I love her books and it was great to understand how she used to create the stories. And you can read a short story never publishied before and belive me that's worthy. If you are a fan I definetely recommend this.

vinithepooh's review

3.0

This book was neither completely boring nor endlessly fascinating - it was a neat look into the ways in which Agatha Christie came up with the ideas for her novels (and for someone like me, who's read every book she's written, that was super interesting) but I did wish there was a bit more tying together of all the things the author found in her notebooks rather than just a disjointed "and then here's something else I found" type of presentation. There was a lot of information on how certain novels came about, but less of the overarching look at Mme. Christie I was hoping for.