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Agatha Christie’s Complete Secret Notebooks: Stories and Secrets of Murder in the Making
Agatha Christie’s Complete Secret Notebooks brings together for the first time Secret Notebooks and Murder in the Making, two volumes that explore the fascinating contents of her 73 notebooks. This includes illustrations, deleted extracts, unused ideas, two unpublished Poirot stories and a lost Miss Marple.
When Agatha Christie died in 1976, aged 85, she had become the world's most popular author. With sales of more than two billion copies worldwide in more than 100 countries, she had achieved the impossible – more than one book every year since the 1920s, every one a bestseller.
So prolific was Agatha Christie's output – 66 crime novels, 20 plays, 6 romance books under a pseudonym and over 150 short stories – it was often claimed that she had a photographic memory. Was this true? Or did she resort over those 55 years to more mundane methods of working out her ingenious crimes?
Following the death of Agatha's daughter, Rosalind, at the end of 2004, a remarkable secret was revealed. Unearthed among her affairs at the family home of Greenway were Agatha Christie's private notebooks, 73 handwritten volumes of notes, lists and drafts outlining all her plans for her many books, plays and stories. Buried in this treasure trove, all in her unmistakable handwriting, are revelations and details that will fascinate anyone who has ever read or watched an Agatha Christie story.
Christie archivist and expert John Curran leads the reader through the six decades of Agatha Christie's writing career, unearthing some remarkable clues to her success and a number of never-before-published excerpts and stories from her archives. This book features Agatha's original ending of her very first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, painstakingly transcribed from her notebooks. It also includes a number of short stories from the archives reproduced in full, including the unpublished The Man Who Knew, How I Created Hercule Poirot, and an early draft for a Miss Marple story, The Case of the Caretaker's Wife.
When Agatha Christie died in 1976, aged 85, she had become the world's most popular author. With sales of more than two billion copies worldwide in more than 100 countries, she had achieved the impossible – more than one book every year since the 1920s, every one a bestseller.
So prolific was Agatha Christie's output – 66 crime novels, 20 plays, 6 romance books under a pseudonym and over 150 short stories – it was often claimed that she had a photographic memory. Was this true? Or did she resort over those 55 years to more mundane methods of working out her ingenious crimes?
Following the death of Agatha's daughter, Rosalind, at the end of 2004, a remarkable secret was revealed. Unearthed among her affairs at the family home of Greenway were Agatha Christie's private notebooks, 73 handwritten volumes of notes, lists and drafts outlining all her plans for her many books, plays and stories. Buried in this treasure trove, all in her unmistakable handwriting, are revelations and details that will fascinate anyone who has ever read or watched an Agatha Christie story.
Christie archivist and expert John Curran leads the reader through the six decades of Agatha Christie's writing career, unearthing some remarkable clues to her success and a number of never-before-published excerpts and stories from her archives. This book features Agatha's original ending of her very first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, painstakingly transcribed from her notebooks. It also includes a number of short stories from the archives reproduced in full, including the unpublished The Man Who Knew, How I Created Hercule Poirot, and an early draft for a Miss Marple story, The Case of the Caretaker's Wife.
785 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 7, 2009
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340 people want to read
About the author
John Curran
21 books14 followersJohn Curran is an Irish literary scholar and archivist, best known as an expert on the work of Dame Agatha Christie, English author of detective fiction and the world's bestselling novelist.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 11, 2021
John Curran was an interesting and well informed speaker at a presentation I was fortunate enough to hear at Greenways, Agatha Christie's home. The talk gave listeners a wonderful insight into Christie's work that has been a favourite with so many readers. Sometimes such readers are self deprecating, listening all too often to the criticisms of detective fiction. One recently decried the author as formulaic when I mentioned her on Facebook. Curran's talk and now this well researched , detailed investigation of Christie's work puts paid to that assessment. Indeed, reading Curran's book demonstrates how immensely able Christie's work is. Although he has to be honest about some of the later novels and correctly assesses them negatively, this is what any Christie reader found...but the books still rushed off the shelves when they came into the market. I agree with Curran's assessment of the later novels and, although I read them, would only keep them for research. His high rating assessment of the remainder is as honest.
I particularly enjoyed reading this book because I do not care about 'spoilers', after all, I've read all the novels and have gone back to reassess the clues. Curran's book assists in doing this, and adds to the enjoyment of re-reading the novels. He also warns the reader at the beginning of each chapter where such spoilers will appear . If you are concerned, read the book, then the chapter. I am re-reading ABC Murders after reading the chapter on it - how fascinating it is to see the clues I missed the first time around.
Curran's writing style, in the main, is very pleasing. My only bugbear is the phrase 'would seem' . A clear assessment 'seems' is preferable. But apart from that grating phrase I enjoyed reading the book. I found the repetition helpful rather than annoying because it made sense. Repetition occurred when various aspects of a novel were investigated as part of a group of types of detection, rather than one chapter dealing with a different novel. After all, the notebooks fastened on one, then another novel, idea, set of characters or type of solution. Rather than formulaic, Christie's novels covered a huge range of ideas, solutions, set up and explanation. It is Curran's untying the knots to make these available to the Agatha Christie fan that is one of his major achievements.
Another achievement of the book is to foster a new interest in studying Christie. She is no longer easily dismissed as a middle class writer writing for middle class readers. Although in one novel we are treated to an obvious antagonism to left wing politics, another takes up cudgels against the right; people from new estates are given a place with the villagers; an elderly women joins a Belgian and two clearly middle class Britains as viable detectives and Curran describes how such characters joined Christie's repertoire . Curran's book encourages further investigation of such ideas, as well as alerting readers to the intricacies of plots and wonderful sleight of hand together with a solid commitment to fairness, with which Christie peppered her novels.
For any Agatha Christie fan, this book is a wonderful repository of her thoughts and ideas about her work. To readers of other detective novels it is a great insight to the work of the 'Queen of Crime' against whom such works might be measured.
I particularly enjoyed reading this book because I do not care about 'spoilers', after all, I've read all the novels and have gone back to reassess the clues. Curran's book assists in doing this, and adds to the enjoyment of re-reading the novels. He also warns the reader at the beginning of each chapter where such spoilers will appear . If you are concerned, read the book, then the chapter. I am re-reading ABC Murders after reading the chapter on it - how fascinating it is to see the clues I missed the first time around.
Curran's writing style, in the main, is very pleasing. My only bugbear is the phrase 'would seem' . A clear assessment 'seems' is preferable. But apart from that grating phrase I enjoyed reading the book. I found the repetition helpful rather than annoying because it made sense. Repetition occurred when various aspects of a novel were investigated as part of a group of types of detection, rather than one chapter dealing with a different novel. After all, the notebooks fastened on one, then another novel, idea, set of characters or type of solution. Rather than formulaic, Christie's novels covered a huge range of ideas, solutions, set up and explanation. It is Curran's untying the knots to make these available to the Agatha Christie fan that is one of his major achievements.
Another achievement of the book is to foster a new interest in studying Christie. She is no longer easily dismissed as a middle class writer writing for middle class readers. Although in one novel we are treated to an obvious antagonism to left wing politics, another takes up cudgels against the right; people from new estates are given a place with the villagers; an elderly women joins a Belgian and two clearly middle class Britains as viable detectives and Curran describes how such characters joined Christie's repertoire . Curran's book encourages further investigation of such ideas, as well as alerting readers to the intricacies of plots and wonderful sleight of hand together with a solid commitment to fairness, with which Christie peppered her novels.
For any Agatha Christie fan, this book is a wonderful repository of her thoughts and ideas about her work. To readers of other detective novels it is a great insight to the work of the 'Queen of Crime' against whom such works might be measured.
September 15, 2020
To celebrate AC's 130th birthday, I thought I would read this. I have made notes on this and must admit I skimmed through it. A lot of what was written I learned first hand from AC in reading her Autobiography that she wrote in 1977. Curran's notes on her Notebook writings was very disjointed and mentioned several books in several different notebooks, as well as she was making personal appointments and shopping lists all on the same page. lol
I did learn about a few authors that she learned from in her day and added a few of their books to my tbr list, Marjorie Allingham and Edgar Allan Poe, being two of them mentioned.
One of her most personal creations was Ariadne Oliver, depicted as a writer of detective fiction with much of the similarities that AC herself has. Also interesting and new info to me, her ideas were consistently drawn from things readers are familiar with, dogs, stamps, mirrors, telephones, medicine.
She details in her notebooks about the development of Hercule Poirot and notes as well of his demise in the book The Curtain.
This is definitely a book for a seasoned AC fan and would be wonderful to have on hand as I spend the rest of my life trying to read all of these treasures. I still marvel at her works and they are my "go to" when I am in a reading funk.
I did learn about a few authors that she learned from in her day and added a few of their books to my tbr list, Marjorie Allingham and Edgar Allan Poe, being two of them mentioned.
One of her most personal creations was Ariadne Oliver, depicted as a writer of detective fiction with much of the similarities that AC herself has. Also interesting and new info to me, her ideas were consistently drawn from things readers are familiar with, dogs, stamps, mirrors, telephones, medicine.
She details in her notebooks about the development of Hercule Poirot and notes as well of his demise in the book The Curtain.
This is definitely a book for a seasoned AC fan and would be wonderful to have on hand as I spend the rest of my life trying to read all of these treasures. I still marvel at her works and they are my "go to" when I am in a reading funk.
Read
August 5, 2024I’m counting this as read even though I’ve left many stories Notes unread. I think it was the author’s comments for the final Miss Marple book that soured me towards him. I’m not a fan. I’m not rating the book as I’m not fully done with it—may never be done with it—but I felt like voicing my dislike of the author warranted a review. John Curran, I don’t like your takes.
There, I said it. Read it or not. I’ll continue as I go along reading more Christie. I’ll just take the book with a grain of salt.
There, I said it. Read it or not. I’ll continue as I go along reading more Christie. I’ll just take the book with a grain of salt.
December 28, 2019
My 2019 reading challenge concludes with this book.
I am an ardent fan of A. Christie and am proud to say that I read all of her books. Several times.
I found this book by chance and boy, am I glad to read it. It demystified (to some extent, of course) her writing process, and left me amazed once again with her talent. It is clear from that we share the same feelings with John Curran about AC.
That said, I found the book hard to read. I think a better way would be parallel reading, that is reading the novel and and refer to AC's notes in this book.
I am an ardent fan of A. Christie and am proud to say that I read all of her books. Several times.
I found this book by chance and boy, am I glad to read it. It demystified (to some extent, of course) her writing process, and left me amazed once again with her talent. It is clear from that we share the same feelings with John Curran about AC.
That said, I found the book hard to read. I think a better way would be parallel reading, that is reading the novel and and refer to AC's notes in this book.
December 25, 2024
Must-read for Agatha Christie completists have to read this - not only do we get to look inside (part of) Christie's process of getting books from idea to page, but there are some unpublished short stories/essays in here (note: while they were previously unpublished, some of them have been adapted into other longer stories, so not entirely new).
There's a possibly apocryphal story in the book that Cecil Day-Lewis "offered to buy some plot ideas from Christie but she replied that she intended using them all herself". We can see that her ideas are voluminous, and mostly good (especially in the beginning and peak of her career). At one point she jots down ~10 story ideas (presumably almost at a go) and like seven of them would turn into published stories. As someone who would very much like to write a mystery novel but is struggling to put together the ideas for even one, let alone 70+, I am extremely jealous. She also explores various possibilities within a plot, e.g. having each of the suspects be the murderer, and thus refines the plot as she goes along.
The book is organised chronologically by publication order, going through for each novel/short story for which there is information in the notebooks, the notes that Christie made, with commentary from Curran. The commentary is rather opinionated, and even scathing when it comes to her later works. Most of it I agreed with, some of it I didn't - for example I have a much higher opinion of the final Miss Marple novel Sleeping Murder than he does.
Towards the end of the book there's a section called "Unused ideas" and I was like, ooh maybe there's something to poach here? But it turns out that these were basically plot ideas that don't accord with any book, but for most of them she managed to take one or two of the plot elements and use them elsewhere. In fact, this reuse while keeping things fresh is a favourite theme of Curran's, who points out many connections between stories that one might not otherwise make, e.g.
There is also some interesting insider baseball type analysis of various stories, e.g. were the final Poirot Curtain and the final Miss Marple Sleeping Murder really written during the war in case Christie didn't survive it? Curran uses clues from the (rather chaotic) notebooks to figure out a possible answer.
Finally, one other more personal note. I have seen criticisms of her descriptive prose that it's not rich enough, but personally I find that it's more than adequate for me. I feel like she sets up the atmosphere really well, enough description that I can get a sense of the layout, and then I can just watch the story unfold on that broad-stroke canvas. My own writing has been criticised for not being descriptive enough, so I have kinda wondered where my own aphantasia (inability to consciously visualise) might play a part in this, and by extension I wondered whether Agatha Christie herself might have had this condition. Well, there's an essay in this book called How I Created Hercule Poirot in which she says "I never do see pictorial things clearly". Ding ding ding! (Also: she was apparently rather untidy, so another point of resemblance perhaps...)
Overall, highly recommended but only once you've read most if not all of her stories - i.e. for completists.
There's a possibly apocryphal story in the book that Cecil Day-Lewis "offered to buy some plot ideas from Christie but she replied that she intended using them all herself". We can see that her ideas are voluminous, and mostly good (especially in the beginning and peak of her career). At one point she jots down ~10 story ideas (presumably almost at a go) and like seven of them would turn into published stories. As someone who would very much like to write a mystery novel but is struggling to put together the ideas for even one, let alone 70+, I am extremely jealous. She also explores various possibilities within a plot, e.g. having each of the suspects be the murderer, and thus refines the plot as she goes along.
The book is organised chronologically by publication order, going through for each novel/short story for which there is information in the notebooks, the notes that Christie made, with commentary from Curran. The commentary is rather opinionated, and even scathing when it comes to her later works. Most of it I agreed with, some of it I didn't - for example I have a much higher opinion of the final Miss Marple novel Sleeping Murder than he does.
Towards the end of the book there's a section called "Unused ideas" and I was like, ooh maybe there's something to poach here? But it turns out that these were basically plot ideas that don't accord with any book, but for most of them she managed to take one or two of the plot elements and use them elsewhere. In fact, this reuse while keeping things fresh is a favourite theme of Curran's, who points out many connections between stories that one might not otherwise make, e.g.
There is also some interesting insider baseball type analysis of various stories, e.g. were the final Poirot Curtain and the final Miss Marple Sleeping Murder really written during the war in case Christie didn't survive it? Curran uses clues from the (rather chaotic) notebooks to figure out a possible answer.
Finally, one other more personal note. I have seen criticisms of her descriptive prose that it's not rich enough, but personally I find that it's more than adequate for me. I feel like she sets up the atmosphere really well, enough description that I can get a sense of the layout, and then I can just watch the story unfold on that broad-stroke canvas. My own writing has been criticised for not being descriptive enough, so I have kinda wondered where my own aphantasia (inability to consciously visualise) might play a part in this, and by extension I wondered whether Agatha Christie herself might have had this condition. Well, there's an essay in this book called How I Created Hercule Poirot in which she says "I never do see pictorial things clearly". Ding ding ding! (Also: she was apparently rather untidy, so another point of resemblance perhaps...)
Overall, highly recommended but only once you've read most if not all of her stories - i.e. for completists.
Read
December 30, 2024Definitely written for the true fans - don't read it if you haven't read every or nearly every Christie novel - there are spoilers for most of them, which is, of course, unavoidable.
Very fun to read - a great insight into Agatha Christie's thought and work process. Tons of fun trivia, not just about the novels and short stories, but also about theatre plays and radio shows (some of which I've never heard of before, and I consider myself quite knowledgeable when it comes to AC). I admire and appreciate the hard work John Curran did here - just deciphering these handwritten notes couldn't have been easy. I do wish he offered less of his opinions presented as objective facts in very strong words, though. Phrases like "her best novel", "her worst novel of that decade", "obviously superior change of ending" appear all the time and while some of them might be the consensus (I don't think many people will argue with the statement that The Mystery of the Blue Train is a bad novel), many more are... quite debatable.
That being said, absolutely read this if you want to learn more about Christie's novels and the alternative ideas she had for them (including, often, completely different murderers!). The chapter on unused ideas is very enjoyable as well.
The Editor Should Have Caught This Award goes to the sentence "The story begins in Africa, a country Christie had recently visited on her world tour in the company of her husband Archie."
Very fun to read - a great insight into Agatha Christie's thought and work process. Tons of fun trivia, not just about the novels and short stories, but also about theatre plays and radio shows (some of which I've never heard of before, and I consider myself quite knowledgeable when it comes to AC). I admire and appreciate the hard work John Curran did here - just deciphering these handwritten notes couldn't have been easy. I do wish he offered less of his opinions presented as objective facts in very strong words, though. Phrases like "her best novel", "her worst novel of that decade", "obviously superior change of ending" appear all the time and while some of them might be the consensus (I don't think many people will argue with the statement that The Mystery of the Blue Train is a bad novel), many more are... quite debatable.
That being said, absolutely read this if you want to learn more about Christie's novels and the alternative ideas she had for them (including, often, completely different murderers!). The chapter on unused ideas is very enjoyable as well.
The Editor Should Have Caught This Award goes to the sentence "The story begins in Africa, a country Christie had recently visited on her world tour in the company of her husband Archie."
May 4, 2023
This one is concerned about Christie's notes about the murder novels (and couple of Ancient Agyptian tales), not Westmacott or Mr Quin stories, even if they are mentioned. It also includes some unpublished stories, includingone which was probably seen (and could be seen today) asn being too pro-Appeasement before the World War. It is still interesting to see ways she tried to develope her stories.
June 12, 2023
Absolutely brilliant. Full of fascinating insights into Agatha Christie's writing process, full of interesting and absorbing detail. I couldn't put it down.
April 14, 2023
Another awesome book by Dame Agatha Christie. The complete secret notebooks is an amazing collection of how the plot and crimes twist and turn to the who done it twist will have you certainly wondering if in reality the murders happened, if so by who, when and where, interesting collections of notes. John Curren gives the facts, in 73 private notebooks which was unearthered after her death in 1976, John Curren began to decipher her almost unreadable handwritting. Only then did the treasure trove that they contained become fully apparent.......
Thank you!
Thank you!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews