Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days [Paperback]

Jared Cade (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2000

In December 1926, Agatha Christie vanished mysteriously from her home in England. She was found eleven days later in a hotel, claiming amnesia. Until now, no one knew what happened during the first twenty-four hours of her disappearance or if her amnesia was genuine. Christie never recovered from the press' scrutiny, and the private anguish ensured that she made no reference to it in her own memoirs. This paperback edition of Jared Cade's riveting book has the answers, with startling accounts by her relatives that reveal why she staged the disappearance and how it went terribly wrong. The kind of extended footnote that might well delight, with its attention to detail and Cade's analysis of how Christie wove bits of her own story into her subsequent fictions.""-The Baltimore Sun. ""Cade is quite convincing in his new biography.""-The Christian Science Monitor.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Agatha Christie's bizarre 11-day disappearance in 1926, an episode that seems right out of one of her detective novels, has elicited endless speculation, a 1997 BBC documentary (for which Cade was a research consultant) and the 1979 movie Agatha, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman. Most biographers assume Christie suffered a nervous breakdown; others believe she pulled off a major publicity stunt, noting that the nationwide search that led to her sensational discovery in a posh Yorkshire hotel catapulted her from moderately well-known crime writer to household name. Christie told the police she had amnesia, a story reiterated by her husband, dashing WWI flying hero Colonel Archibald Christie, but Cade charges coverup most foul. Marshaling the available evidence from eyewitnesses, police records and surviving friends and relatives (most notably Nan Watts, Agatha's sister-in-law), Cade builds a credible case that the writer's disappearance was an ill-conceived attempt to exact revenge on her cheating husband by publicly embarrassing him and throwing suspicion of murder his way. By this account, Agatha's discovery that Archie was having a clandestine affair with a young woman, Nancy Neele, and wanted a divorce drove her to stage a reckless vanishing act. Unfortunately, there is no smoking gun and Cade's riveting, stylish procedural gives way, in the last 70 pages or so, to workmanlike biography along with an analysis of tantalizing, alleged allusions to the 11-day disappearance in Christie's fiction. It's a case to challenge Miss Marple. Photos, map. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

A sympathetic biography of the celebrated mystery writer that focuses on her strange disappearance in 1926. Londoner Cade, who researched a BBC documentary about Christies disappearance, pored through archives and interviewed scores of friends, relatives, police officials, and others connected to the event. On December 4, 1926, Christie vanished from her home only to be found 11 days later living in a posh hotel under a false name. The implausible story she and her husband gave out at the time was that she was suffering from amnesia. Cades simple, quite convincing explanation is that, having been informed by her husband that their marriage was over, Christie staged the disappearance to punish him. By creating clues that suggested murder, she hoped the police would pick him up for questioning, thus embarrassing him and ruining his weekend with his mistress. Cade reveals how her closest friend helped her concoct her plan and carry it out. What she had not anticipated was the length of time required to locate her, the sensational press coverage that ensued, and the intense public interest and speculation that were aroused. She embarrassed not just her husband but herself and was deeply chagrined at being suspected of arranging a publicity stunt to help her book sales. Cade recounts particulars of the search, Christie's anguish over the divorce that followed, and her subsequent marriage to another, also unfaithful husband. In tiresome detail he relates the plots, characters, and feelings expressed in her literary creationssome unremarkable romances under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott as well as the scores of mysteries for which she is best knownto painful episodes in her real life. First published in England in 1998, this uncritical biography provide a glimpse into the anguish of a writer who tried hard to keep her unhappy private life from public view. Ardent fans may be enthralled; she would be appalled. (31 b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 258 pages
• Publisher: Peter Owen Ltd (December 31, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0720611121
• ISBN-13: 978-0720611120
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,907,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revealing the mystery writer's mystery., November 27, 2003

By 

John Austin "[e-mail]" (Kangaroo Ground, Australia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days (Hardcover)

Fame and wide acclaim came to Agatha Christie in 1926 when "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" was published. In the same year, however, her disappearance and the eleven-day search for her attracted even more attention. Subsequently in interviews and in her own autobiography, Agatha Christie refused to explain or refer to the incident. It was inferred that the breakdown of her first marriage had been one aspect of the mystery, and her reluctance to refer to anything so painful was respected.

Since her death, she has been the subject of several biographies. None that I have read, even that of her second husband, Sir Max Mellowan, provides a satisfactory motivation or time table for the eleven missing days in 1926.

It seems remarkable that a young writer from the smallest state in Australia should be the one to adequately research the subject and to have access to the best informants. Jared Cade knows Agatha Christie's novels, plays, poetry and short sories well, and demonstrates how insights into this major crisis in Agatha Christie's life reside in them. His theories are sound, his rebuttal of false and misleading explanations is strong, and his judgments - even of Dame Agatha herself - are balanced.

Interest in what happened to the world' best-selling author back in 1926 may no longer be strong, but it is good to read something that at last sets the record straight. It is, moreover, a fascinating and focussed biography of someone who tried to keep herself away from public scrutiny. I like the compliment paid to the author by his principal informants, descendants of Agatha Christie's best friend: "This is the only biography that tells Agatha's life as it really was. Your insight into her life and personality is unsurpassed."

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Glimpse into a Human Life, September 10, 2010

By 

C. C. Black (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days (Paperback)

This is a good and interesting read. Its basic thesis is that Agatha Christie plotted her mysterious disappearance in December 1926 to spite her then husband for his adultery. What she was unable to predict and to control, as she could with characters she created, was how others would respond, particularly her husband and the ravenous English press--and, Cade suggests, that explosion scarred a very private person to the end of her days. The book is very well researched, drawing on the knowledge and inferences of Christie's relatives, Judith and Graham Gardner. The latter point is important, because in the aftermath of her reemergence her family circled the wagons and kept her secrets alongside her. (As Christiephiles know, this most famous event in her life is not discussed in her memoirs.) Cade writes well and clearly and, to my mind, does an excellent job of tracing his subject's oblique references to the event in her novels, particularly those published under the name of Mary Westmacott. It is a sympathetic and persuasive reconstruction.

My quibble with the book, which often shades into quarrel, is that the author tends to write as though he has entered Miss Christie's mind, even as a child, and can articulate for her what she herself refused to confirm, or even to address. No matter how sympathetic an author tries to be, such an endeavor is simply impossible. Even if Agatha Christie herself had done so, human beings reflect on significant events of their lives in different ways at different ages. Cade reconstructs and recounts his subject's life the way that a mystery novelist does, such that Cade casts himself as Poirot or the "omniscient narrator," in effect if not exactly by intent.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting and informative biography, because Cade uses "the eleven missing days" as a window onto the whole of his subject's life and the peculiarities of Edwardian England. I left it appreciative of the imperfections, fragility, and toughness, not only of Agatha Christie, but of the people around her. Human beings are complicated creatures; few are outright heroes or villains. Miss Christie's finest mystery turns out to have been not one she wrote but one she lived. Such is true of us all, whatever our professions.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revealed at Last, December 28, 2001

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days (Paperback)

I loved this book and have given several copies to people with great results.

It's not only an investigation into the "eleven missing days," it takes great pains to tell the entire story of Agatha Christie's whole life. The way Cade was able to match Christie's work with her various traumas is wonderful, and it's hard to believe that seventy years later anyone can come up with something new about such a famous unsolved mystery, and yet Cade has done exactly that, with the help of Nan Watts' daughter. I wonder what Rosalind Hicks, Agatha Christie's daughter, thinks of this book? It's marvelous. We'll never be able to read, for example, "Verdict" in the same way, knowing it reflects on Max Mallowan, Christie's second husband, and his liaison with his executive assistant Barbara Parker, who became the second Lady Mallowan after Christie's death. How she was able to keep a sense of humor I'll never know.

Surprisingly the book makes one feel more, not less, admiration for Christie. Good on you, Jared Cade! Can't wait to see where you turn your hand to next.