Description
Half a century after her death, Agatha Christie remains the undisputed Queen of Crime. Her plots uncracked, her characters unforgotten, her influence undiminished.
To mark the 50th anniversary, Janice Hallett, Tom Hindle and Hazell Ward, three of today’s finest crime writers, come together to celebrate the woman who made the whodunnit an art form. All three have been shaped by Christie’s genius: her locked rooms, her unreliable narrators, her uncanny understanding of what makes us suspect our neighbours.
Expect affectionate tribute, sharp literary debate and one urgent question: 50 years on, why can’t we resist a good whodunnit?
About the Authors
Tom Hindle
Tom Hindle is a Leeds-born crime writer living in Oxfordshire. His debut novel, A Fatal Crossing, was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, while The Murder Game was named a Waterstones Paperback of the Year in 2023. His recent Sunday Times bestsellers include Murder on Lake Garda and Death in the Arctic. His writing is inspired by crime masters including Agatha Christie and Anthony Horowitz.
Hazell Ward
Hazell lives in Wrexham. For many years as an adult education teacher, she worked with young adults to encourage them to aspire to achieve their dreams. Taking inspiration from her young mentees, she followed her own dreams and completed a PhD in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. She credits her mum with instilling in her a love of reading and a fierce desire to be a writer.
Hazell has four grown up children and a granddaughter, who take up most of her spare time. She also plays the piano (badly). She was short-listed for the Margery Allingham Short Story Competition in 2021, and won the CWA Short Story dagger in 2023 for her story, Cast a Long Shadow, published by Honno Press. Her debut novel, The Game is Murder, is published by Penguin Michael Joseph. She is currently working on her second novel.
Janice Hallett
Janice Hallett is the author of six Sunday Times bestselling novels, most recently The Christmas Appeal and The Examiner. Her smash-hit debut novel, The Appeal, was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month and won the CWA Debut Dagger Award. The Twyford Code won the British Book Awards Crime and Thriller Book of the Year, and The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick. She lives in West London.
About the Chair
JM Hall
J.M. Hall is an author, playwright and deputy head of a primary school. His plays have been produced in theatres across the UK as well as for radio, the most recent being Trust, starring Julie Hesmondhalgh on BBC Radio 4. He writes about retired primary school teachers who turn to sleuthing. He lives in Shipley, Yorkshire.
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