Customer Reviews

Agatha Christie: A Reader's Companion

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I'm a huge Christie fan. This book takes a look at her books in order. It's a little collector guide and picture book of the first edition sleeves. It could be a little more edited or tightened up but it's a great book. I've read most of the Christie books but will re-read some of the information about the plots in this book. It's a great guide for any fan and it's priced reasonably too!

This book is well detailed about the early books and showing the covers of the first british editions. Later stories from 1950 on get only a 1/2 page mention.

I find it surprising that a readers companion book would NOT list the names of the short stories included in the short story collections. I found myself printing pages from Wikipedia to fill in the gaps. This was a big oversight!

It would have also been nice if the main character of the story (Poirot of Miss Marple) were more clearly marked at the start of the story description. You have to read in to find out which series the books fall into.

This companion book is only focused on the First Edition books, so there is no mention of any re-issues or combining stories in omnibuses. The American titles are mentioned for all of the books, and their First Editions are sometimes pictured for the major books.

Some space is wasted showing you an 'actual size' detail of a portion of a title page of jacket cover. These reveal nothing new and it leaves one to wonder why they were included when other information is omitted.

Otherwise this is a good complete companion for the Christie stories. I just found the above issues frustrating, requiring additional research by the reader when the authors already had the information right in front of them.

Any fan of Agatha Christie should find this book chock full of delightful and sometimes eye-opening visuals and facts. The press summary does a fine job, and frankly can't be improved on. I add my voice to encourage Amazon mystery buffs, who must number on the hundreds of thousands, to give it a try.

The book can be gently perused for an overview of Agatha Christie's home sites, travel locations, and the like. Ms Chrisite used her own backdrop to a far greater extent than many people might imagine. Anyone reading this book should certainly come away not only with a better sense for place and image the next time you begin one of her mysteries, but also for the sharpness of vision she brought to her best writing.

A chronological listing of the works is convenient, and all in all the book as a whole is quite charming. I like it a great deal, and can't imagine an Agatha Christie fan being disappointed.

Note: Pictures of the many book covers showcase the difference the Atlantic ocean made during the height of Christie's fame: the English covers (and titles) are sometimes marked with an ugly racism already tabu in America.

This is also available in paperback.

This is the best book for any agatha christie fan. A good book about the author and her inspirations. Book arrived in excellent condition.

Although I revere the name of Wagstaff and have been trained to believe that Wagstaff automatically equals quality, some aspects of Agatha Christie A Readers Companion disappoint. I think it must be the fault of the publisher, who apparently would not countenance Vanessa W's original plan for the book. Thus the very first novels by Christie are each lavishly illustrated with pages devoted to each one, but the authors seem to run out of space by the mis 40s, and the 50s and 60s and 70s are a perfect disgrace, with many of Christies' most interesting books given thumbnail treatment. The tragedy is, Vanessa Wagstaff wanted it to be rather different, and I believe her!

The great things about the book however make it genuinely worth buying and savoring. Wagstaff and her collaborator, Stephen Poole, have gone to great pains to show how Christie sometimes entered into contracts with magazines that ensured 12 stories apiece for Parker Pyne, Harley Quin, the "Tuesday Club" of Jane Marple, etc. After that, it was up to Christie's agents and publishers to measure out the stories into press volumes. I have always wondered why, for example, the Quin story The Love Detectives was left out of THE MYSTERIOUS MR QUIN and not published in book form till years later, and now I know--sort of.

The other great boon is introducing us to the work of a great cover artist, Christie's own anthropologist friend Robin Macartney. I don't know how she worked it, but apparently she got her publishers to have him provide the covers for four of her books during her very best period. He was great at providing an other-worldly look to Death on the Nile, Appointment with Death, and the books of foreign travel, but to my surprise he was also effective with the London-set MURDER IN THE MEWS. I would like a book entirely about Macartney and his graphic work. And also I'd like to find out much more about his relationship with Christie! I wonder if somewhere in his papers we might uncover rejected attempts at providing cover images for her other books. He's at least as striking as the much lauded Tom Adams of a later generation. Congratulations, Ms. Wagstaff, for giving us this much needed retrospective look at a great artist.