Marie Benedict •
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie •

For 11 days in 1926, Agatha Christie pulled off one of the most successful vanishing acts in history. Neither family nor friends could shed any light on her whereabouts. When she eventually surfaced at a resort in Harrogate—registered under the name of her husband’s mistress—the official explanation was amnesia.

In this masterfully woven novel, Marie Benedict imagines how and why Christie might have engineered her own disappearance. The chapters alternate between Agatha’s viewpoint and that of her husband, stretching back to the time when they met, through the early days of their marriage up to the moment when philandering Archie announces he wants a divorce. Agatha is devastated, and protects herself using the only weapon at her disposal: her ability to conceive and write complex plots.

Benedict adroitly spins her tale within the framework of the known facts. The police suspect Archie of murdering his wife. A massive manhunt is conducted, involving Scotland Yard, eager volunteers, and fellow mystery writers Dorothy Sayers and Arthur Conan Doyle. Christie’s seven-year-old daughter is subjected to cruel taunts and whispers at her school. The press have a field day with the whole affair.

We also get sidelights on other well-documented aspects of Christie’s life, such as her proficiency at surfing, love for her little Morris Cowley motorcar, and profound grief over the death of her mother. The voices and actions ring true throughout, making this an exceptionally believable page-turner.

The only person who really knew what happened during those 11 days was Christie herself—and she wasn’t telling. None of her autobiographical writings make any mention of the disappearance. We do know that following her divorce, she met and subsequently married archaeologist Max Mallowan, an extremely happy union by all accounts.

And she never went missing again.