A Talent for Murder

2.5*

I had high hopes for this book. Andrew Wilson wrote an excellent biography of Patricia Highsmith, and I looked forward to seeing his research and writing skills applied to this ambitious projects which sought to feature Dame Agatha Christie as the protagonist in her very own mystery: the mystery of her disappearance for 11 days in December 1926.

A Talent for Murder starts out with Agatha standing on the platform in a London Underground station, contemplating the impending breakdown of her marriage and her husband's affair with a younger woman.

Wherever I turned my head I thought I saw her, a woman people described as striking, beautiful even.
That would never have been my choice of words.
Of course, when I looked again across the show more glove counter or perfume display it was never her, just another dark-haired woman trying to make the best of herself. But each of these imagined glimpses left a piece of scar tissue across my heart. I told myself to stop thinking of her - I would simply pretend the situation did not exist - but then I caught sight of another pale-faced brunette and the dull ache in my chest would flare up again and leave me feeling nauseous.

Suddenly, she feels disorientated and anxious, and cannot shake the feeling that someone is trying to push her onto the rails.

It is a great start to the book. Not only does Wilson create the very atmosphere of a crowded tube platform, but he also starts the story by recreating a scene from Christie's own story The Man in the Brown Suit. And while I read this part with the knowledge of how the scene develops in Christie's book it added some anticipation to see how Wilson would handle the scene.

As it turn out, he chose to make alterations and introduce a character that would have been more at home in Strangers on a Train (by Highsmith). I thought the idea of introducing a sociopath from Highsmith's world into the world of Agatha Christie was fun, exciting and somewhat of a geeky dream as it would allow to play around with a bit of a face-off between the seriously messed up minds of Highsmith's imagination and the mostly proper and twee characters of Christie's creation.

Seriously, I loved that idea. And I really liked the way that Wilson made the effort to emulate Christie's dialogues and give the book a real 1920s feel to it.
This is no mean feat. So many authors fail at this.

And, yet, A Talent for Murder did not manage to impress me. The plot that followed the initial scenes in London were contrivances that somewhat ignored Christie's own character and thus were just too unbelievable. The idea that Christie, even in her unravelling state of mind, could be blackmailed into committing a crime of the sort proposed in this book, was just too unrealistic. And I mean really too unrealistic. Agatha may have plumbed the depths of human villainy in her novels, but it is a fundamental mistake to presume that an author who can dream up a plot is also capable of living it.

Anyway, from this point on, the plot developed in ways which made very little sense, with characters acting ways that were inconsistent and showed that maybe the author had either rushed through some of the decisions or tried just a little too hard to shoe-horn real life events in Dame Agatha's biography into the life of the fictional characters - and let me say that I believe some of them were anachronistic.

Now, if a reader is able to disconnect the real Agatha from this book, or does not know or care much about the real Agatha, this book would probably work a treat. I mean, there really are some great ideas in this, that is, if the reader can also ignore some of the silly plot decisions. However, I was not able to do this. If the book proposes to be based on the real Agatha, then I find it difficult not to compare the proposed character with the real one. Maybe I'm just too much of a fan. I take the same issue with pastiches and fan-fiction based on other favourite characters - real and fictional - of mine.

As an example of one of the silly plot decisions, and one of various where I could not make sense of a scene, was the idea that the fictional Agatha would seemingly lack basic knowledge about chemistry and pharmacy. This also seemed to show some sloppiness on the part of the author. As most of us readers will know - and I suppose readers pick up A Talent for Murder because they already have some knowledge of Agatha Christie's life and work - the real Agatha had a working knowledge of chemistry and poisons which she acquired when training with a pharmacists in her youth. It therefore just makes no sense that she would conjure up a plot with another character that slipped up a detail such as where to get the ingredients to make saline solution.

There were just a few too many moments like this in the book, and after a while this became jarring enough for me that it could no longer be compensated for with Wilson great writing style.

So, what I have concluded from my venture into this new series is the following:

1. I now know who'd win in a fight between Highsmith's and Christie's fictional characters, and

2. Fiction based on my favourite crime writers is something I really should not seek out. Wilson's book, the first in a series, is not the first to try this and it is not the first of similar premises that I have tried to read. A Talent for Murder follows in the steps of Jill Dawson's The Crime Writer which features Pat Highsmith and Nicola Upson's series, which is loosely based on the life and character of Josephine Tey.

I have not tried Jill Patterson-Walsh's books, yet, but chances are I should give them a miss. show less

In 1926 Agatha Christie went missing for a few days, a massive police hunt followed to find the celebrated authoress, and Agatha was eventually discovered at a hotel in Harrogate. She said she had lost her memory & refused to discuss the incident.

Around these facts Andrew Wilson has woven a preposterous story of blackmail & murder. Entertaining, with nice period detail, if a little slow in places.

Thank you Net Galley for this free copy in return for an honest review.

Wilson's novel posits that the real reason Agatha Christie disappeared for eleven days in 1926 was because she was being blackmailed by the doctor of her husband's lover. The idea that Christie could have been coerced into murdering the doctor's wife to prevent a scandal is unimaginable. The aptly named Dr Kurs went to extreme trouble and expense in planning a hit-job that is glaringly obvious would have been simpler and considerably less risky to perform himself.

This contrived poorly written novel was an entire waste of time. Yes, it's fan-fiction and not to be taken seriously, but Wilson's tale was so ridiculously far-fetched that he scuttled my interest soon after starting. I'm convinced Christie's name was only used as an show more attention-getter to attract Agatha Christie readers.

If you are looking for a novel featuring Agatha Christie as a character I recommend The Woman on the Orient Express by Lindsay Jayne Ashford. show less

This story is about Agatha Christie and her mysterious disappearance in 1926, but somehow this story did not grab me right. The villain tries to create a Christie-style murder, but misses the lightness that comes with crimes. The story seems to me to be incongruous and in fact the handwriting of the great mystery writer is missing.

In 1926, author Agatha Christie disappeared. Ten days later she was found, nearly incoherent, in a hotel under an assumed name. She would never discuss the incident, even avoiding the subject in her autobiography. It was reported that she was suffering from amnesia brought about by stress from her failing marriage to Archie Christie, the pressures of her writing career, and severe depression.

Andrew Wilson's book, A Talent for Murder, suggests a different reason.

Blackmail.

This work of fiction takes Christie's factual disappearance and adds in a crazed doctor, a blackmail scheme and murder. Agatha does not want the press to know that her marriage is dissolving because her husband is having an affair. She wants to protect her soon-to-be show more ex-husband, daughter and precious dog, Peter, from harm and public scandal. They are all in danger from the corrupt, psychopathic doctor who offers the famous author an impossible choice -- the safety and privacy of her family....if Agatha will murder his wife.

Although I think the real Agatha Christie would have taken this matter straight to the police rather than be subjected to this sort of blackmail, I still loved this book! Agatha Christie has been my favorite author since I was 9 years old and read The Mysterious Affair at Styles. I found the story to be both creative and interesting. The mixing of fact and fiction was intriguing. Once I started reading, I couldn't put the book down! I definitely recommend it to any Christie fan, or mystery lover!

Andrew Wilson is the author of several other books including The Lying Tongue and Flame Thrower. show less

I was underwhelmed to tell the truth. The premise is decent, based as it is on the real life disappearance of Agatha Christie, but there were several things that bothered me. Her husband was a cad and not worth all the emotion Walker attributes to Christie, yet at the very end when he comes to her hotel and she is “found,” Christie still has moments of loving longing for him. Bah. The bad guy is very bad indeed and didn’t seem at all to fit in a polite English mystery, with suggestions of rape, disfigurement, mafiosi confederates and the like. Lastly, the entire premise of Christie being coerced or blackmailed into the circumstances the author set up just seem unlikely.

To be clear: This is not a mystery story, but it is a romance, a story told from different perspectives and a fictional history - purporting to be the tale of what transpired when Agatha Christie disappeared prior to her marrying a second time. It is very cinematic - I can imagine a BBC mini series. It also has a sympathetic heroine (Christie) and a cast of bumbling investigators, and people who get in over their heads trying to outwit a particularly dastardly villain. Rather resembles Collins'_The Woman in White_ in tone and fever-pitched action; and even has a scene resembling the one in _The Princess Bride_. The device of splitting perspectives serves to enhance suspense. This is a fast-paced, atmospheric and engaging book that may show more incite me to read _The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_ again due to the multiple references - while having read it will definitely enhance a reading, it is not a prerequisite. show less