I've been dipping into this all month and found it fascinating. I believe I've read everything by Christie and a lot of what has been written about her, so although this appears to be all over the place, it actually made perfect sense in illustrating how the Queen of Crime planned her stories. The index is invaluable. I'm glad I got my own copy because it is something I'll refer to often especially when I re-read her work. Highly recommended for would-be mystery authors and Agatha Christie fans. ( )

Author John Curran was given unprecedented access to Agatha Christie's notebooks. Labeling them “secret” seems to stretch the point. “Private” would be more accurate. As Curran describes them, they sound like memorandum books. The notes and the notebooks themselves are mostly undated. Notes for any one novel may be scattered among several notebooks. Christie apparently used whichever notebook was closest to hand when she wanted to jot down an idea. It's unlikely that Christie expected anyone else to read these notebooks. Her handwriting is difficult to read, and apparently Christie sometimes had trouble reading her own handwriting.

The book is more descriptive than analytical. Curran sifted through the contents of the notebooks and organized Christie's notes around themes such as nursery rhyme murders, games, transportation, and travel. Through his study of the notebooks, Curran is able to identify the inspiration for many of Christie's novels and the linkages between them. If some of her novels give you the impression that you've read them before, it's probably because Christie often reworked her short stories into full length novels (usually with a change in the murderer or even the victim).

Curran necessarily includes spoilers for the novels and short stories mentioned in the books. It's a book for long-time Christie readers, not for those new to Christie's work. ( )

I stopped reading this book after about a hundred pages - not because it wasn't good, it was, but because I haven't read all of Christie's canon yet, and this books is 100% geared towards those that have (or have at least read a majority of it). The author states from the beginning that there are massive plot spoilers throughout every chapter; he even goes so far as to list the books a particular chapter is going to spoil.

I didn't care about the plot spoilers; when it comes time for me to catch up on Christie's canon, I will have long since forgotten who did what to whom (I've read some of her books twice - The Body in the Library for one - and I still can't remember who the murderer was). The fact of the matter, and why I DNF'd the rest of the book, was that Christie's notebooks and the author's commentary on them are largely meaningless to anyone who isn't familiar with the particular work in question.

I did read the two short Poirot stories at the end, (I'll review them under separate posts) and what I did read at the beginning was interesting and well written. If you're a huge Christie fan and know her work well, I'd recommend this book as a way of delving deeper into how this master of mystery's mind worked. Otherwise, most of the book reads a bit like someone's coded grocery list. ( )

When I first got this book, for some reason the title led me to believe that it was simply a reproduction of Agatha's notebooks, with endnotes and footnotes galore explaining the various references, and the occasional "illegible" in square brackets for the parts that couldn't be deciphered. After all, I'd read collections of letters that worked in much the same way. However, Agatha's notebooks are not as straightforward as a collection of letters would be. Although they have been numbered, they are not chronological -- Agatha would pick up a notebook at random and scribble her ideas on the first blank page she came across. John Curran, the Christie estate's literary advisor, decided instead to synthesize the information in the notebooks, sorting her jottings by theme, with the occasional image of an actual page so you can see her handwriting. (Personally, I would have called this Secrets from Agatha Christie's Notebooks, to emphasize that the book is more of an analysis/discussion than a simple reproduction.)

Once I got used to it, I came to appreciate this approach. The idea of sorting by theme means you can really dip into and out of this one -- no need to read cover to cover. There are chapters on murder abroad, murder on transportation, the choice of titles, true crime stories and their influence on her writing, and much more. Curran transcribes interesting notes, decodes their abbreviations and provides context for notes about current events. He also very thoughtfully provides a list at the beginning of each chapter indicating which books will be discussed, so that if you haven't read a particular book, you can skip over that part of the chapter. (I had to skip a fair bit of the sections about Peril at End House, which I haven't read yet.)

It was really interesting to see how Agatha plotted. She changed character names a lot, apparently choosing "placeholder" names until she'd firmed up the outline of the story, which was the more important part. She would talk to herself on the paper, reminding herself of research to follow up on and reproving herself for continually bringing up ideas that she liked but consistently found unworkable. The notes themselves were also very informative---especially the ones about Sleeping Murder.

The book also includes a few sample pages from the Notebooks. It's thrilling to see Agatha's actual handwriting, but at the same time somewhat sobering when you compare her writing from the beginning and end of her career---the deterioration is noticeable. Another treat is two previously unpublished stories: "The Capture of Cerberus" (an alternative version of the short story from The Labours of Hercules) and "The Incident of the Dog's Ball", which was subsequently expanded into the novel Dumb Witness.

This book is heartily recommended for Christie fans. It will give you new insights into the Queen of Crime and will likely prompt a (re)reading spree as well. Enjoy! ( )

Curran rambles and assumes savant-like knowledge of Christie's oeuvre, but what's here is fascinating, if not that well-organized. I was expecting more of a biography, I think; Curran is more interested in a critical approach, which is fine, but perhaps not as satisfying from a curiosity standpoint. Well worth reading, still. ( )