Though I’d read many of Agatha Christie’s mysteries decades ago, I began rereading them when Covid disrupted our lives. Murder was more comforting than the world around us. After deciding to focus my 9th mystery on an amateur production of Christie’s play, THE MOUSETRAP, I delved into Christie’s life and career and educated myself about play production. Below I describe five books I used as resources, all of them fascinating reads.
But first, a little about my book, A PARFAIT CRIME, and its relation to Christie’s play. THE MOUSETRAP, the longest running stage production in the world, opened in 1952 in London and is still drawing audiences. It’s also a staple of community theaters, like the one in A PARFAIT CRIME. I’ve seen the play twice and remember its scary moments and its stunning ending. To avoid spoiling that experience for anyone who hasn’t yet seen it, I reveal the minimum about the plot and nothing about Christie’s culprit in the scenes where my characters rehearse.
The book begins as café manager Val joins her grandfather in rehearsals, replacing cast member Jane, who died in an arson fire. Sweet Jane was known for the parfaits she served. After skeletal remains are found in her freezer, Val and Granddad must solve a crime with as many layers as a parfait and with echoes of the crimes in THE MOUSETRAP. When their search for a killer takes them to an upscale spa, they discover that play’s cast aren’t the only ones playing roles.
CHRISTIE’S LIFE
An Autobiography by Agatha Christie
Christie’s 500-page autobiography details her life from her Victorian upbringing through two world wars and into a cold war. Her struggle to be published and recognized as a writer, her two marriages, her travels across the globe, and her years on archaeological digs make for fascinating reading. The one subject she didn’t cover is what happened when she disappeared for eleven days in 1926, hours after Archie Christie asked her for a divorce. Found after a countrywide manhunt, she never explained the curious incident.
Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley
This biography addresses Christie’s disappearance and debunks the notion that she staged it to publicize her books or to make her husband look guilty of murdering her. Worsley comes up with a more plausible explanation derived from her research into contemporary accounts and archived sources. But the disappearance forms only a small part of Worsley’s lively account of Christie’s life, her writing, and the connection between them.
The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont
This novel describes the eleven missing days in an inventive fiction narrated by Archie’s mistress, a character I didn’t expect to like but grew to understand. I love how the novel intertwines Christie’s disappearance with historical events of the early 20th century. It not only explores the effect of war on the hearts and minds of the characters but also includes a murder solution worthy of Dame Agatha.
STAGING THE PLAY
The Mousetrap And Other Plays by Agatha Christie
Before writing my mystery, I read and reread the script of Christie’s play. Not only did I learn what I needed to know for the rehearsals in my book, but I came to appreciate how Christie uses humor to lighten a grim story about murder. It’s a technique she also employs in her mystery books.
The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Amateur Theatricals by John Kendrick
Though rehearsals at Val’s and Granddad’s house are where my two sleuths pick up clues in A PARFAIT CRIME, a crucial scene takes place at the dress rehearsal in a theater. Though I’ve read and attended many plays over decades, I’ve never been involved in staging one. To write the dress rehearsal scene, I needed to learn about sound and lighting systems as well as backstage layouts. The Idiot’s Guide was perfect for me. Fortunately, I also have a friend who teaches college theater classes and has directed numerous student and amateur productions. He gave me tips and read my theater scene to make sure it worked correctly.
You don’t need to be familiar with THE MOUSETRAP to follow the mystery in A PARFAIT CRIME, but I hope you get the chance to see the play if you haven’t already. It’s about a group of people snowbound in a guesthouse with a murderer in their midst. My book doesn’t reveal whodunit in the play. When Christie licensed the play for production, she specified that no film version could be made of it until the play’s London run was over. She believed the production would last eight months, but it’s starting its eighth decade. Don’t bet on a movie of it anytime soon. Even if it were turned into a movie, it wouldn’t be the same as seeing it in a small theater where your closeness to the stage makes you part of the action. There are no restrictions on performing the play in school, community, and repertory theaters. Keep an eye out for a production of THE MOUSETRAP in a theater near you. You’ll enjoy it.
A PARFAIT CRIME by Maya Corrigan
A Five-Ingredient Mystery #9
A granddaughter-grandfather sleuthing duo take on a perplexing new case in the latest culinary cozy mystery, sure to appeal to fans of Diane Mott, Joanne Fluke, and Katherine Hall Page.
At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in the freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?
After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at their house to get to work—and enjoy Grandad’s five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Grandad try to retrace her final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler . . .
Includes delicious five-ingredient recipes!
Mystery Amateur Sleuth | Mystery Culinary | Mystery Cozy [Kensington Cozies, On Sale: October 24, 2023, Mass Market Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781496734594 / eISBN: 9781496734600]
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About Maya Corrigan
Maya Corrigan lives near Washington, D.C., within easy driving distance of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the setting for this series. She has taught courses in writing, detective fiction, and American literature at Georgetown University and NOVA community college. A winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery and Suspense, she has published essays on drama and short stories under her full name of Mary Ann Corrigan.
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