The Real Mystery is How it Got Published

I LOVE Agatha Christie mysteries, as do so many of us. When I came across this book I was delighted, having read , The Six, a weighty book about the Mitford sisters, by the same author. Shortly after embarking on this project, it felt like the publisher mandated that any Thompson book be at least 400 pages, and while there was plenty of material to go around in the saga of the Mitfords (there were, after all, six of them), there was only one Agatha. So she fleshed out her Agatha bio with excerpts from seemingly every one of Agatha's books, equating what was written by her as validation for the author's interpretation of what she was feeling at that time. This was so excruciatingly tedious that I almost put this tome of a book down in the first 100 (out of nearly 500) pages. Isn't it a mark of any successful author that they can imagine what other people would be thinking, feeling, saying? Just because she wrote it in a story doesn't mean that was in the forefront of her own life experience at that time. Honestly, probably 50% of the first third of this book is material quoted from Agatha's own work. Cheater! Furthermore, the author riddles the book with many of her own opinions, as if they are facts. Agatha was "massive", and certain people were "not handsome", for example. Aren't those subjective determinations? What was really offensive to me was the extensive discussion about Agatha's play adaptation, Ten Little (N-word)s. WHAT??? I kept looking for a footnote, flipped back and forth assuming I'd missed the disclaimer there, but the author went on and on discussing this play as if it were no big deal, for approximately 50 pages, before there was any caveat at all. I found this flippant and jarring. Sure, it may have been the jargon of the time, but it's sure not now, and I was offended that the author felt no need to jump in with an explanation at the first mention of this inappropriate title. There were numerous photos described but not included, and one photo spread conveniently positioned with Agatha's face planted squarely in the gutter. Nice. Overall, this book was well-researched, but too cluttered, jumbled and biased for my taste.