Richard Hack

Both Murdoch & Turner are such cartoonish caricatures, that this is a for-sure entertaining read. The narrator launching into the Australian and Atlantan accents with such gusto adds to the entertainment. The moguls' arcs of lives is fascinating; Rupert from shallow rebel to neo-con going from printing boobs and airing car chases to Fox News' bastion of conservatism. Ted Turner from reactive Southern gentleman seems to have emerged from the salt spray of competitive sailing to be a Lorax show more trying to save the world. show less

Richard Hack’s Duchess of Death: The Unauthorized Biography of Agatha Christie is an exceptional read. Her life is portrayed in a tasteful way, allowing the reader to see the faults in our lady, and yet not judge her for them. The biography is written with a startlingly honest approach, making Christies motives and actions human rather than untouchable, cold, or remote. This book is intricate in nature, containing not only the well documented professional triumphs and tragedies, but also show more giving a glimpse into the mind of this great author.

In the early chapters, the opulence of Agatha’s youth, followed by an unhappy marriage to her first husband during WWI, leads to a crisis of self. Through Mr. Hack’s use of a literary device, we jump out of sequence and start where her life begins to change – the mysterious disappearance of Agatha Christie. Then we are quickly transported back to her youth so as to build the understanding in the reader of how these circumstances came about. Having been brought up to speed by the back-story, we see the evolution of the woman, and are eventually introduced to the Agatha Christie so loved by so many – and due in large part to her second husband. Happy in this second marriage, the emotional instability that marked her dissapearance fades, and her behavior after this is more reminiscent of a deep-seated desire for privacy than a psychosis.

Though the time in which this author lived and the circumstances of her life played a part in her success, Agatha Christies travels also lent themselves to the development of her clever characters and vivid descriptions of setting. She had a certain je ne sais quoi about her; an elusiveness that still draws people to her work. Agatha Christie is portrayed as a passionate, sometimes vulnerable woman, but also one who has starch, an observer, yes, but also a participant in life. show less

From the Prologue to the Epilogue, Richard Hack has written a fast-paced, entertaining, and informative biography of one of the most prolific writers of our times. Duchess of Death: The Unauthorized Biography of Agatha Christie paints a portrait of a woman more complex than she herself would have had us believe, yet in that complexity we never lose sight of the simple woman with simple dreams.

Agatha Christie guarded her privacy fiercely, as did her family and now her estate. But Hack, show more drawing on unpublished letters, diaries and other documents, has proven his investigative chops. Duchess of Death begins with a Prologue reminiscent of a good Agatha Christie mystery with the never before explained disappearance of the writer in 1926 and continues on to show us a woman full of adventure, spontaneity and fascination with the world. Hack clearly has great respect and admiration for Christie and while he doesn't shy away from mentioning language in one of her novels that smacks of racism, he brushes it aside as a result of the times in which she lived. Likewise, we never fully understand the tension that exists between Ms. Christie and her daughter. Those quibbles aside, Duchess of Death is a great read and left me not only wanting to read Agatha Christie but also Richard Hack. show less

The subtitle here of "The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters" made me think this would be a compendium of correspondence and indeed kept from reading it from some time. This does draw a lot on Hughes memos (like his increasingly bizarre tissue-handling directions) to his rare letters as well as court documents, quotations from other memoirs and manuscripts and diaries not by Hughes. The actual telling, which may drift into novelization with imagined interior thoughts tells the tragic tale of show more the hotshot pilot playboy that became the first billionaire to become a coddled recluse drug addict that ultimately died intestate.

One of his many 40s-era love interests that he faithlessly chased (without permanent success, like Ava Gardner) was Faith Domergue. Funny, until now I thought the Jennifer Jason Leigh character Daisy Domergue in The Hateful Eight had a made up last name. show less