Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery

Exhibition ticket in hand, straight off a flight from Hong Kong to London, preceded by one from Brisbane to Hong Kong, I headed from Heathrow Airport to the British Library before the crack of dawn. After a mug of cappuccino and several walks around Saint Pancras, including through the old churchyard, I joined the queue outside the library and awaited the opening of the doors at half past nine on a Wednesday morning. I'd given myself somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours to discover Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery before catching a Great Northern train to Cambridge, where I would visit the Fitzwilliam Museum in the afternoon. The question, therefore, begs an answer... Was it worth it? And the answer? It's a resounding "yes!", you'll be pleased to hear.

This fascinating exhibition takes the visitor on Agatha's journey, unearthing her childhood in Devon (this English author who had an American father and Irish mother) and her wartime service (dabbling in poisons) as a Red Cross nurse. We then have the adventuress crossing continents by train and joining her second husband, Sir Max Mallowan, on archaeological digs. The exhibition concludes with her work as a West End playwright. Her life is on display here...the girl, the woman, the legend. But of course, this exhibition is as much about her characters as herself, with Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple in the limelight, naturellement, but Ariadne Oliver and others also getting some well-deserved attention.

There are letters, notebooks, photographs, personal belongings, early manuscript drafts and many objects on display for the first time, including her passports, Remington Portable typewriter, and camera. My personal favourite was probably was one of David Suchet's costumes from the TV series Poirot. It almost felt like he was there with me, ready to share a crème de menthe. 

The exhibition will run through to June next year, so if you're calling on London any time soon, book your ticket and spend an hour or two with the Queen of Crime! Buy your ticket here.

Review: Thief

Thief: Tales of Rogues and Robber is the debut anthology from Salty Dog Press, and Paulene and Andy Turner have really hit the nail on the head here...or would it be more fitting to say they've managed to pick that lock? In any case, the book itself is a dazzling jewel with an eye-catching cover (by Holly Dunn) and professional internal layout. The editing is top-notch, which is no surprise knowing the Turners, and the stories chosen were more fun than you can shake a lock pick at.

Now, as a fan of puzzle mysteries, I was hoping for a couple of real headscratchers, but that wasn't the point of this anthology. What we have here is a rollicking selection of short stories loosely bound together by theme of thieves, with forays into science-fiction futures and the pioneering past. There's even a spot of time travel, and I have to say that The Mysterious Smile, a tale of art and quantum physics, and the editor's own offering, was my personal favourite. While the anthology as a whole is upbeat and positive, sticking to the glamorous side of thievery or ending the adventures with a human touch and a hint at the real treasures beyond the trinkets, there were some darker escapades as well, particularly the gritty Honor, Thieves, Etc. by Trey Dowell, which adds a bitter shot of noir crime to the anthology... Okay, sorry Paulene, but I'm going to say Dowell's tale gets equal favourite alongside yours.

This is a great anthology to dip in and out of, to keep on your bedside table for those nights when you can't fall asleep for one reason or another... Why is that, by the way? Wait, what was that noise? Didn't it come from downstairs? Should you get out of bed and check it out? No. Never mind. Best ignore it. Stay curled up in your blankets and enjoy these tales of fictitious thieves instead. 

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Review: Colours of Death

I rarely take advantage of the ebook giveaways offered by BookBub, but this one caught my eye, and I'm glad I downloaded it. I hadn't heard of Robert New before (which probably makes sense considering his name) and so the prospect of giving a fellow Australian author of fair-play mystery puzzles a go was one I couldn't let slip by...like an elusive clue! Colours of Death was more than I hoped it would be. Sergeant Thomas is a likeable protagonist who in true Sherlockian tradition bedazzles us with insight into the workings of his brilliant mind. There's also entertaining banter and splashes of wit as he navigates cases with his team of admirable colleagues. These elements, alongside the backstory of his upcoming wedding, give the reader a relatable and human hero we can believe in.

With nine short mysteries adhering to the theme of "colours" in this collection clocking in at just under a hundred and ninety pages in the edition I read, the pacing is spot on. These are stories for fans of the puzzle mystery, particularly those readers with a penchant for forensics. Numerous readers have called my protagonist, Oscar Tremont, Investigator of the Strange and Inexplicable, a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, and I think Sergeant Thomas is also worthy of that accolade, perhaps even more so taking into account the nature of the mysteries in this casebook.

I'm looking forward to further glimpses into the workings of Robert New's mischievous mind and cracking more cases alongside the intrepid Sergeant Thomas. My hat is well and truly off, Mister New!

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Review: Death and the Conjuror

Tom Mead has conjured the Golden Age of Crime with this first novel featuring puzzle-solving magician, Joseph Spector. In "Death and the Conjuror", Tom Mead aims to pay homage to John Dickson Carr and Jonathan Creek, but he succeeds in doing a whole lot more than that, because this novel is just as clever and entertaining, earning its spot on the very same podium.

Tom convincingly plunges us into the heart of London society in the thirties with a cast of colourful and quirky characters, headed by the most spellbinding of them all, Joseph Spector. He takes us from the bright lights of the stage to haunted nightmares and from the darkest corners of the Black Pig to the trendiest clubs, all the while keeping the locked study foremost in our minds.

Tom Mead deftly shuffles his pack of playing cards in which plot, cast, setting, and atmosphere are the suits and entices the mystery hounds of the world to pit wits against him.

I was particularly pleased because I identified the murderer and guessed a couple of the tricks put into play. However, I didn't figure out all the ins and outs of the puzzle. This is a complicated mystery, and Tom Mead scatters the pieces far and wide, but the dark tableau is coherent once Spector puts them together for us.

If, like me, you're hooked on locked-room puzzles, you need to read Tom Mead!

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The Bridge and the Dolmen

I pondered that question readers and interviewers love to hurl at authors earlier this month. You know the one I mean, don't you?

Where does your inspiration come from?

I long found it so hard to answer, and since it seems to be the bait favoured by scammers nowadays, I've become wary of it. It is, however, an interesting question, and one I think all writers, musicians, and artists of any ilk ought to reflect upon. This morning, I decided to start my day off from the day job as a heritage tour guide (guide-conférencier) by visiting a couple of the numerous remarkable sites in my neck of the woods here in the Brière, southern Brittany. In other words, the tour guide gave himself a guided tour. After all, why not?

The first site was one I already knew, and which I drive past regularly on my way to the quaint village of Kerhinet, but today was the first time in years I actually stopped to pay it the homage it deserves. The Kerbourg Dolmen is one of the best-preserved examples of Neolithic architecture in the Brière Regional Natural Park. This impressive corridor dolmen, or passage grave, is capped by four large "table stones" (which is the literal translation of the Breton word taol-vaen, which gives us dolmen, the word we typically use to refer to the structure as a whole) and is almost eight metres long. William Collings Lukis, an English archaeologist, conducted a dig here in 1879 and two polished stone axes discovered are displayed at the British Museum. There are in fact two dolmens at Kerbourg, but the second one remains collapsed. Legend has it a fifty-metre underground passage used by korrigans (the pixies or brownies of Breton folklore) connects the two dolmens. I found no trace of it...

The influence the folklore, landscape, and heritage of Brittany has on my fiction can't be overstated, and the inspiration (or awen, as I prefer to call it) with which this ancient land feeds my imagination is nowhere more apparent than in Dead on the Dolmen, my mystery novel featuring Oscar Tremont, Investigator of the Strange and Inexplicable. 

I followed up my pilgrimage to Kerbourg with a visit to an ancient bridge I had been meaning to cross ever since hearing about its existence several years ago. The Gras Bridge, which is technically a ford, dates from the 1st century and was restored in 2014. It is a stone walkway for most of its length and spans the river Mès in the middle. Along the banks of the Mès reeds sway in the wind, and it is this plant that is used to thatch the roofs of the traditional cottages (including mine) here in the Brière.

I'm sure you can appreciate that I no longer have any doubts about how to answer The Question. Awen is all around me, in the stones, the soil, the wind, the water, the reeds, and the trees, and it has been there all along.