I've long been fascinated by the life of Agatha Christie, and particularly intrigued by her mysterious disappearance.

Any excuse to lose myself in her world of 1920s glamour is welcome, but I was slightly apprehensive about the premise for this book. An unfamiliar (to me) writer imagining the truth behind the disappearance. Could he pull it off?

As I started to read, I feared that I wasn't going to enjoy this at all. Agatha Christie seemed a feeble, weak willed individual. Would she really succumb to the crude manipulations of this caricature of a doctor? This man, with bad breath(!), sought to blackmail Agatha into performing the perfect murder. He would facilitate her disappearance so that she could kill his wife.

It all seemed ridiculously far-fetched at the beginning, but the characterisation and scene-setting soon developed to make the story compelling and convincing, with a surprisingly plausible outcome. I thoroughly enjoyed it!