Tag: books

  • The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Turns 100: Suspense and Spoilers

    Agatha Christie published her daring and innovative crime novel in June of 1926. This month there are festivities galore to celebrate the centenary. It’s not like the novel hasn’t already been fêted extensively: in 2013, the British Crime Writers’ Association declared Christie the best crime novelist of all time, and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd…

  • The Writing (and Reading) Life

    Photo of the University of King’s College Arts and Administrative Building by Robert Alfers, used with permission under CC license. I’ve recently returned from an intense (exhausting, exhilarating) 10-day MFA residency in Creative Nonfiction. I spent my evenings and our one day off keeping up with my online students, who quite reasonably still needed timely…

  • Agatha Christie’s Third Girl

    Agatha Christie was in her mid-seventies when she published Third Girl, an Hercule Poirot/Ariadne Oliver murder mystery (of sorts) set in London during the Swinging Sixties. The beatniks and starving artists in velvet pants are singled out for their peculiarities, and there’s a lot of tsk-tsk youth today chatter. But this book really has everything:…