Everyman's Guide to the Mysteries of Agatha Christie [Paperback]

Bruce Pendergast (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 6, 2006

Everyman's Guide to the Mysteries of Agatha Christie is a reference book covering Christie's 238 stories. It provides data never before published about both important and trivial facts. Dedications, time periods, and locations have been laboriously researched, and provided with "time warp" explanations. Even trivial data such as newspapers (100 in all), pubs (95) and automobiles (136) are shown as well as each story in which they are listed. English sayings totalling 259 are shown with the book(s) in which they appear, including a brief explanation of their meaning.

Yet Guide is much more than a list of facts. It is an informative reference book about Christie's writings. As well, different perspectives on many of the perplexing mysteries within her mysteries are provided.

Finally, Guide is not an alphabetical list of stories or characters. Instead, it lists many entrancing "errors" of sketches and text with comments explaining where possible the reasons for their existence. Most importantly, "Guide" does not betray any book's endings nor the identity of the villain, a rule that genuine Christie devotees always try to uphold.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bruce Pendergast, born in 1933 in Toronto, Canada, is a retired professional engineer. He started writing as a hobby when he joined Rotary in 1980 where he wrote the weekly bulletin during the 14 years he was a Rotarian. Retiring from his engineering company in 1997, he has spent his retirement years writing four books, the first of which is "Everyman's Guide to the Mysteries of Agatha Christie". His other three books are all entirely different, one being a fictional murder mystery, one a puzzle book, and the fourth a whimsical, autobiographical book of anecdotes.

Bruce and his wife Marilyn have been married since 1959 and live in the small city of Guelph, Ontario, approximately 60 miles west of Toronto. They have two grown children, David and Suzanne.

Product Details

• Paperback: 446 pages
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing (July 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1412023041
• ISBN-13: 978-1412023047
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,495,308 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars too much opinion, too little christie, November 20, 2010

By 

iguanadon - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Everyman's Guide to the Mysteries of Agatha Christie (Kindle Edition)

I bought this book thinking that it would be a guide to all the little minutiae in Christie mysteries. Instead , I got lists of dedications, automobiles, first names, and other inconsequential details. The author seems obsessed with how reprehensible the heroes in the mysteries are, and how hypocritical he beleives Agatha Christie to be about her characters' attitudes about crime. He is especially livid about Rowley Cloade in Taken at the Flood. He drags him in at every opportunity, and pontificates on and on about him. The book assumes that you have all of the books at your fingertips, and can access them to understand what is being said. He has a chapter about how all the drawings in the books have errors, but he doesn't really tell you what the errors are. He doesn't seem to like Agatha Christie very much, and I found the book confusing, and far too full of the author(Prendergast), with not nearly enough of the subject (Chrisite's books). I would not recommend it to anyone.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not enough research, not enough editing, May 16, 2011

By 

G. G. Davies "from Anglesey" (Wales) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Everyman's Guide to the Mysteries of Agatha Christie (Paperback)

This is a self-published book, and is in great need of an editor, who would have ensured that the READER is not faced on EVERY page with capital letters used for EMPHASIS, and would have corrected errors of punctuation such as unclosed parenthetical comma pairs (of the pattern 'the man, who wore a hat went outdoors').

However I was most disappointed at the sloppy research - Ronuk, in a list of names, is described as 'probably a household cleaner', when anybody in the UK over the age of about 50 could have told the author what it was - and a Googling comes up with plenty of relevant hits.

Mr Pendergast also seems not to know (for example) that policemen lived and worked (and still do, in rural areas) in police houses in the UK, otherwise he wouldn't have made a crack about having a kitchen in a police station.

And there are many other examples of this sort of thing.

I'm only part way through the book, and am already wondering whether I want to put in the time to finish it; this is a great shame, because I feel the book would have been so much better had the author found a proper publisher to work with.

1.0 out of 5 stars Superficial, March 2, 2011

By 

F. W. Orde Morton (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Everyman's Guide to the Mysteries of Agatha Christie (Kindle Edition)

Judging by the sample very little research even such obvious sources as Who's Who or professional directories and not much thought either. Tabloid. Save your money and hope that one day there will be a serious study of Christie.