Andrew WILSON : A talent for crime - book review

Agatha Christie, in London to visit her literary agent, boards a train, preoccupied and flustered in the knowledge that her husband Archie is having an affair. She feels a light touch on her back, causing her to lose her balance, the a sense of someone pulling her to safety from the rush of the incoming train. So begins a terrifying sequence of events. Her rescuer is no guardian angel ; rather, he is a blackmailer of the most insidious, manipulative kind. Agatha must use every ounce of her coleverness and resourcefulness to thwart an adversary determined to exploit her genius for murder to kill on his behalf.

No. No. No, no, no !
That is what I kept thinking as I was reading this novel : unbelievable.

A caricaturesque evil villain willing to blackmail a famous writer into committing a murder for him (I thought of Patricia Highsmith, there). No. Would you chose Harlan Coben to commit a murder or a professional murderer ? Pffft ! She met Davison in the street, purely accidental. Ha ! No. You're a young woman in the 1920s and you tell an older doctor, a respectable man, that you're having an affair with a married man and you give him your love letters for him to hide them ? No. You're a maid in a respectable house and you let a complete stranger in, show her your mistress's desk and let her go through her papers ? No. Again, you're a woman who invites a complete stranger for tea and you tell her your intimate life, how you want to divorce your husband and that you have ovarian tumours ? And so on. I had trouble reaching the end of the book, I wanted to give up.

Another thing : I love Agatha Christie's books also for their humour, there's none of it here, the story is dark, be warned, even a bit gore (the dog).
And I didn't like Una : she lied, she snooped, she risked the maid being fire, she didn't even think about it.

There's one more thing that bothers me : famous singers are dead, they give concerts (via holograms). Famous authors are dead, they're used as main characters in books to make a series sell (Agatha Christie here, but there was also Jane Austen, among others). This way of using dead people to make money doesn't agree with me, it disgusts me.

So, in my opinion, the only good thing about this book was the cover : it's gorgeous !