Teen Book Review  

Graphic Novel, published 2016

Anne Martinetti, Guillaume Lebeau, Alexandre Franc

Agatha Christie is famous for her mysteries featuring the legendary fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, but is almost as well-known for her own mysterious disappearance.

Written by three authors: a publisher of crime novels, a crime writer, and an author and established graphic novel illustrator, Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie, opens with Agatha’s disappearance. The story of her life is revealed within the framework of the authors’ attempt to solve this 1926 puzzle. Poirot, Jane Marple and other characters from her novels appear throughout, with Poirot being especially integral to explaining how and why Agatha lived, loved, and wrote.

Normally the word “charming” would ensure the book never reached my hands, but this is a charming, highly engaging, thoughtful and loving portrait of a writer whose work outsells everything except The Bible and Shakespeare. It manages to be new, and fresh, and the solution given to the puzzle is tantalisingly probable.

The book does leave the reader with a question: did Agatha really have red hair? And as she never allowed any depiction of Poirot on her book covers, what would she think of the portly Belgian’s inclusion in a graphic novel?