Agatha Christie: The Mother of Cozy Mystery, by Nancy West
By some measures, Agatha Christie was the world’s best-selling author. Familiar even to people, millions of people, who never actually read one of her 66 novels or numerous short stories, Christie lives on through screen and stage adaptations. Although not all of her murder mysteries take place in quaint English settings, she is deemed as the leading author of the “cozy” crime genre.
Hence the title: Agatha Christie: The Mother of Cozy Mystery. Author Nancy West divides her biography into 100 short vignettes encapsulating the mystery writer’s life and work. And indeed, there is a mystery at the heart of it: Christie’s 11-day disappearance in 1926, which triggered a media uproar similar to Nancy Guthrie, a nationwide police investigation and 15,000 civilians who beat the bushes searching for her remains. Christie was discovered alone in a hotel. Was her disappearance spurred by the collapse of her marriage? Did she suffer a breakdown of some sort? Christie never spoke of those missing days.
Like many of her characters, Christie’s superficially calm life was roiled below the surface. West’s compact portrait of Christie links her life to her stories and explores many of the movies and series (Christie didn’t care for television) made from her work since her death in 1976.
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