The Mystery of Mrs. Christie

by Marie Benedict

As I reread it for a final time, it occurred to me that we are all unreliable narrators of our own lives, crafting stories about ourselves that omit unsavory truths and highlight our invented identities.

This statement is one of the key themes and ideas that permeates THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE — in so many ways and on so many levels. The notion for the multi-varied usage of the “unreliable narrator” in the novel stems from Agatha’s own masterpiece—the one she published the year before her disappearance—THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD. After reading it, I became overtaken by the sense that a woman as brilliant as Agatha couldn't have been a victim in her own vanishing, and as an homage to her, I wove unreliable narrator elements into the plot, and it became a theme in my Agatha’s character. Also, the more I played with the theme, the more modern it seemed to me; after all, aren't we all unreliable narrators these days in the manner in which we curate our lives for public consumption, particularly with social media?