Christie's Mysteries: Explore Author's Life, Work At Somerset Library

SOMERSET COUNTY, NJ — Agatha Christie's mystery books are widely known, but the author herself had her own mysteries that the Somerset County Library System of New Jersey will help bring to light in August.

Maureen Corrigan, a book critic and author of “The Mysterious Case of Agatha Christie," will discuss the author's life and work, a news release said. Corrigan will hold a virtual program on August 8 through the Somerset County libraries "to seek the curious truths and mysteries surrounding Christie."

“I’m really looking forward to talking about Christie with your library patrons,” said Corrigan, who can be heard on NPR's "Fresh Air" as a book critic. “Christie is fun to talk about because so many people know her work and have strong opinions, especially about her characters.”

The Somerset County Library System keeps a "robust" collection of the English writer's works, including the Poirot series, the Marple series, and the Tommy and Tuppence series.

“After the Bible and the Works of William Shakespeare, Agatha Christie’s novels have sold more copies than any other books in publishing history," Corrigan said in a news release provided by the library. "I am fascinated by her power as a writer and I like to think about its mysterious sources. Her stories seem so simple on the surface, but, of course, they’re ingeniously plotted and contain depths of meaning.”

Corrigan has researched and taught about Christie for decades and alluded to the author's disappearance in 1926.

“I think Christie’s first masterpiece, ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,’ is one of the all-time great mysteries and a perfect example of Christie’s technique of hiding clues in plain sight that we readers simply don’t see. It was published in 1926, the most notorious year of Christie’s life.”

Where Christie went during these 11 days is still under debate.

“I’ve read, researched, and taught Agatha Christie for decades,” said Corrigan. “One of the highlights of my life as a mystery lover was serving as the academic lecturer on a Smithsonian Mystery Tour of Great Britain in 1998. I had the pleasure of lecturing on ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ at Dartmoor and on the Inspector Morse mysteries at Oxford. But, the greatest thrill was meeting Agatha Christie’s daughter, Rosalind, and her personal gardener at Christie’s house in Devon called Greenway. I also lectured on her mysteries in the ballroom of the Victorian-era Imperial Hotel in Torquay where some of her novels were set. Seeing the early landscape that shaped Christie’s imagination helped me understand one of the sources of her mysteries’ uncanny atmosphere.”