Forgotten Agatha Christie novel discovered 30 years after her death... in the attic of her holiday home
By Paul Harris in The Daily Mail
By Paul Harris in The Daily Mail
They had lain undiscovered for decades, gathering dust in a battered cardboard box.
There were shopping lists and jottings, hastily scribbled notes, and page after page of virtually indecipherable handwriting in blue-lined notebooks.
Had this been a clear-out of some anonymous old woman's attic, the musty papers would surely have been sent to the dump.
But these particular papers belonged to Dame Agatha Christie. And somewhere in the 70 years of ideas and inspiration that they chronicled lay a priceless literary jewel.
For when the notebooks were analysed, the draft of an unknown and unpublished Hercule Poirot story emerged.
Now - in a piece of detective work worthy of the moustachioed detective himself - it has been extracted to produce the first new Poirot tale since 1975 from the so-called queen of crime, who died in 1976.
Author and dedicated Christie enthusiast John Curran has painstakingly threaded together the secret notes and handwritten ingredients of an unseen story that eventually became a typed script.
The jottings were scattered with other notes throughout some of the 73 exercise copybooks found 30 years after her death among possessions in her seaside home.
Mr Curran's four-year labour of love means that from beyond the grave, one of the nation's best-loved authors has effectively rekindled the wily Belgian sleuth's career.
In true Christie style, it also means that readers have had to wait until this final chapter in her remarkable life to discover the denouement.
The Daily Mail.
There were shopping lists and jottings, hastily scribbled notes, and page after page of virtually indecipherable handwriting in blue-lined notebooks.
Had this been a clear-out of some anonymous old woman's attic, the musty papers would surely have been sent to the dump.
But these particular papers belonged to Dame Agatha Christie. And somewhere in the 70 years of ideas and inspiration that they chronicled lay a priceless literary jewel.
For when the notebooks were analysed, the draft of an unknown and unpublished Hercule Poirot story emerged.
Now - in a piece of detective work worthy of the moustachioed detective himself - it has been extracted to produce the first new Poirot tale since 1975 from the so-called queen of crime, who died in 1976.
Author and dedicated Christie enthusiast John Curran has painstakingly threaded together the secret notes and handwritten ingredients of an unseen story that eventually became a typed script.
The jottings were scattered with other notes throughout some of the 73 exercise copybooks found 30 years after her death among possessions in her seaside home.
Mr Curran's four-year labour of love means that from beyond the grave, one of the nation's best-loved authors has effectively rekindled the wily Belgian sleuth's career.
In true Christie style, it also means that readers have had to wait until this final chapter in her remarkable life to discover the denouement.
The Daily Mail.
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