The Christie Project

If you are in the mood to delve into a classic Mystery series, Heights Libraries is here to help! I myself have decided that it’s finally time to read all of Agatha Christie‘s mystery novels. Yes, all of them! It’s my own personal Christie Project! And I am off to a great start with our collection here in the Heights.

I’m not going to lie, Miss Marple is my favorite of Christie’s detectives. This fluffy little spinster is always knitting and never fails to spot the village parallel to whatever crime is in the spotlight. You can start the Miss Marple series with Murder at the Vicarage, and continue with The Body in the Library and The Moving Finger.

Hercule Poirot, Christie’s dapper little Belgian detective who loves order and method, is introduced in The Mysterious Affair at Styles. As we may well know from this year’s movie release, Murder on the Orient Express is one of his most famous cases, as are The ABC Murders and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

If you’re a classic mystery fan and you want to branch out from works by the Queen of Crime, Heights Libraries has a terrific collection of Golden Age detective novels by Dorothy L. Sayers. Her detective is book collector and man-about-town Lord Peter Wimsey (“cricket and crime!”) and the first in the series is called Whose Body? The adventures continue in Clouds of Witness and Unnatural Death.

And there’s more! Heights Libraries can also introduce you to the work of Josephine Tey, whose detective, Alan Grant, is renowned for his keen observation and understanding of the criminal mind. Meet Inspector Grant in The Man in the Queue, and keep on going until you get to Tey’s most famous title, The Daughter of Time, which is unlike any other mystery novel I’ve read. I can’t read it often enough.

Look, there’s a dozen! And I’ll make it a baker’s dozen with one of my favorite Josephine Tey books that is not part of a series. You’ve really got to read Brat Farrar. It’s got family drama and mysterious disappearances and subterfuge and it’s really just terrific.

Enjoy your literary journey to the Golden Age of detective fiction!

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