A fun read. Author writes her narrative of what may have occurred when Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days in Dec. of 1926. A very clever story. Kirkus: In December 1926, mystery writer Agatha Christie really did disappear for 11 days. Was it a hoax? Or did her husband resort to foul play?When Agatha meets Archie on a dance floor in 1912, the obscure yet handsome pilot quickly sweeps her off her feet with his daring. Archie seems smitten with her. Defying her family?s expectations, Agatha consents to marry Archie rather than her intended, the reliable yet boring Reggie Lucy. Although the war keeps them apart, straining their early marriage, Agatha finds meaningful work as a nurse and dispensary assistant, jobs that teach her a lot about poisons, knowledge that helps shape her early short stories and novels. While Agatha?s career flourishes after the war, Archie suffers setback after setback. Determined to keep her man happy, Agatha finds herself cooking elaborate meals, squelching her natural affections for their daughter (after all, Archie must always feel like the most important person in her life), and downplaying her own troubles, including her grief over her mother's death. Nonetheless, Archie grows increasingly morose. In fact, he is away from home the day Agatha disappears. By the time Detective Chief Constable Kenward arrives, Agatha has already been missing for a day. After discovering�and burning¥a mysterious letter from Agatha, Archie is less than eager to help the police. His reluctance and arrogance work against him, and soon the police, the newspapers, the Christies? staff, and even his daughter?s classmates suspect him of harming his wife. Benedict concocts a worthy mystery of her own, as chapters alternate between Archie?s negotiation of the investigation and Agatha?s recounting of their relationship. She keeps the reader guessing: Which narrator is reliable? Who is the real villain?A compelling portrait of a marriage gone desperately sour.

Agatha Christie disappears in 1926. This is an historical fiction as to what happened.

I enjoyed this book. I liked the dual time frames. The one beginning in 1912 which gives the back story. The one in 1926 focuses on the mystery. I like that Agatha gets herself back to who she was before her marriage. I liked as it is all laid out in the end as to why she disappeared and how it all worked out. Archie, her husband, was a jerk--well, he was worse than that, but I have to keep it clean. I was glad she did what she did. He got what he deserved.

Well worth reading. ( )

Mystery writer Agatha Christie is the world’s best-selling fiction writer, with estimated sales of over 2 billion books. In December 1926—at a time when she began garnering a large fan base—Agatha left her home in London without a trace, the same day she and her husband, Archie, have a loud argument during breakfast.

Her disappearance without a clue, save for the discovery of her abandoned car, had the police and thousands of civilians comb the British countryside in search of her. Even Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was brought in!

Agatha Christie went missing for eleven days. The Mystery of Mrs. Christie is Marie Benedict's version of what might have happened in those eleven days based on the research she has done.

The Mystery of Mrs. Christie tells Christie’s story through parallel constructs, alternating times and points of view. The "Manuscript" is told by Agatha, recounting her love affair with her husband, their marriage, the start of her writing career, and the challenging social norms of the day.

The novel’s second and more intriguing POV, is told by Archie. The timeline starts at the time of Agatha’s disappearance. In these chapters, Benedict alludes to the secrets the cruel and manipulative Archie is hiding from the police, including his engagement to another woman.

In 'Part Two', as the novel winds down, Archie and Agatha’s stories intertwine.

More than the mystery surrounding Agatha's disappearance, I felt like Marie Benedict gives more importance to revealing the famous author's upbringing, her relationships with the women in her family, her early career as a writer, as well as her deeply conflicted personality, specially when it comes to trying to be the perfect wife for her manipulative husband.

But while there are several theories about what happened to Agatha Christie in those eleven days she was “missing”, no one really knows the truth. She never spoke about it nor mentioned it in her biography. Being the unmatched mystery master storyteller that she was, I suppose Agatha wanted these 11 days to remain a mystery forever.

This book, however, gives us quite an interesting speculation on what may have happened. If you have read any of Agatha Christie's novel or love historical fiction, I highly recommend this book.

PS: Was it truly necessary for the author to spoil the plot for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd? I'm sure not everyone who is reading this book has read all of Agatha Christie's novels.



( )

Benedict's novel explores a what-if scenario regarding Agatha Christie's stint as a missing person in December 1926. The disappearance of the young, newly-successful author attracted worldwide attention and searches unlike the country had seen before--and also revealed that her husband Archie was engaged in an affair and was preparing to divorce Agatha.

Chapters go back and forth between the present, wherein Archie looks increasingly more suspect in his wife's disappearance, and the past, where Agatha's experiences are laid out in a manuscript. The book intimately focuses on the relationship of Agatha and Archie, and to my frustration, largely focused on Archie. He's a repugnant person. His nastiness is clear right away, and it made the repeated emphases on his awfulness feel tedious. Without delving into spoilers, the end fell flat for me because it set up an expectation for Archie that just didn't make sense with the pressure he's under because of the investigation. The book is manages to be a fast read, helped along by very short chapters. ( )

In December 1926, mystery novelist Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days. The entire country of Britain was searching for her, worried that she had harmed herself or become a victim of foul play like so many characters in her own books. Then she reappeared quite far from home, at a hotel, registered under the name of her husband's mistress, and claiming amnesia. She never really spoke of this disappearance, where she was the whole time and exactly why she took off. This gap in her story has left it open for authors to interpret and imagine their own reasons behind it all. The Mystery of Mrs. Christie is Marie Benedict's version of Christie's motivations and the secrets surrounding Christie, her husband, and their marriage.

It is no small feat to take an historical figure, about whom much is known, who has even written an autobiography or two--I highly recommend Come, Tell Me How You Live, which details her writing life not at all, but who has one gigantic, unanswered mystery at the center of her life and to make that mystery the fascinating, unsubstantiated focus of a novel but Benedict pulls it off. Alternating between the past, when Agatha meets her husband Archie and the present, when she has disappeared and is directing Archie on a quest she has designed, the novel gives the reader the background into a whirlwind love affair and marriage that perhaps inevitably went wrong and into the psyche of the woman who remains the best selling novelist of all time. Benedict has gotten the period details down pat, although occasionally they read as info dumps rather than organic pieces of the story. Her Agatha grows from the giddy young woman who met Archie to an intelligent, determined author who can't and won't fit into the box her husband wants her to place her in. Given the characterization of Archie here, it's a wonder she didn't disappear earlier.

Although this is an historical fiction, it fittingly reads a bit like a mystery itself as the reader works towards the reveal at the end. And that ending is worthy of Christie herself. The story is a page turner as the forces that shaped Christie personally and as an author play out on the page. There are some spoilers for several of Christie's mysteries in here so readers who haven't yet read her novels might want to beware. The majority of the book, which is separated into two parts, is focused on Christie's life before her disappearance, the unhappiness and loneliness, the anger and the sorrow of a life so different than the one she once envisioned, and the disappearance itself. The second, quite brief part reveals the story and motivation behind the missing 11 days, how she and Archie will play it out for the world, and how she will move on for the future. Benedict has written a captivating and plausible story to account for Christie's missing days while also drawing the picture of an almost Machiavellian woman scorned, a woman far smarter than her husband, one who has finally seized control of her life and found herself. An interesting read for sure. ( )