Clues to Christie: The Definitive Guide to Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, and all of Agatha Christie's Mysteries

Clues to Christie: The Definitive Guide to Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot and all of Agatha Christie's Mysteries

The ultimate introductory guide to Agatha Christie and her detectives, including stories featuring Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and Tommy & Tuppence.

Ever wondered how Agatha Christie became the world's best-selling storyteller? Never read one even though you know someone who loves her? Too bewildered by the choice of books to know where to start? Then CLUES TO CHRISTIE could be the key that unlocks the door to a world of mystery, thrills and romance that has captivated readers from 9 to 90 for the last 90 years.

With more than two billion book sales, Agatha Christie is the world's best-selling novelist, translated into more languages than Shakespeare. And with more than 100 books and plays to her name, and over 150 short stories, it is no surprise that one-third of all fiction readers have read an Agatha Christie, and millions have seen the films and TV series.

This exclusive eBook sampler includes a specially written introduction by the award-winning author and world's foremost expert on Agatha Christie, John Curran. Together with other useful and enlightening material to help readers navigate the world of Agatha Christie, such as reading lists, suggestions on different ways to read the books, a Poison Primer, and an A to Z of characters, CLUES TO CHRISTIE also includes three specimen stories by the Queen of Crime, to introduce her world-famous detectives of Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple and Tommy & Tuppence Beresford, and to help you decide which Agatha Christie books you want to read next.

Calling this a definitive guide to anything, let alone to 'all of Agatha Christie's mysteries, is definitely taking artistic license too far. The introductory sections about Agatha Christie and the later section about her interest in poisons are certainly interesting, but don't really contain anything you wouldn't get from reading her autobiography, and the rest of the book is simply a reprint of three of her short stories and then lists of her works divided in different ways (by the means of death, by the detectives involved, by location, and so on) and a reprint of the covers of the novels the author says were Christie's personal favourites.

A Test of Wills by Charles Todd

A Test of Wills: Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery Series, Book 1 (Inspector Ian Rutledge Mysteries)

In 1919, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge remains haunted by World War I, where he was forced to have a soldier executed for refusing to fight. When Rutledge is assigned to investigate a murder involving the military, his emotional war wounds flare. It is a case that strikes dangerously close to home--one that will test Rutledge's precarious grip on his own sanity.

I cannot express how much I loved this book! Rutledge is a detective from Scotland Yard who has just returned to work after recovering from the injuries he sustained in the First World War. Although he has kept the fact from almost everyone what he is really recovering from is shell shock. He hears voices. One voice in particular - that of one of his men. I won't tell you why it is this voice in particular that haunts him since we don't discover that til about halfway through the book.