Agatha Christie: The Disappearing Novelist

Description

Agatha Christie was the most famous female crime writers of all time, and yet in December 1926 when she was 35 years old, became the subject of a mystery: her disappearance for a period of eleven days. Questions arose such as why did she abandon her motorcar on such a bitterly cold winter's night with her fur coat inside it? Why did Christie adopt a false name and claim that she originated from Cape Town, South Africa? Why did she not recognise either a photograph of her own daughter or husband when she was finally reunited with him? Some accused her of playing a deliberate hoax on the police in an attempt to generate publicity as a crime writer. Others declared that this was an attempt to embarrass her unfaithful husband Archie (whom she knew was about to leave her) and gain sympathy at the same time. But was there another far more profound reason for her behaviour whereby she became the innocent victim of circumstances completely beyond her control? Norman agrees with the "Fugue state" theory, suggesting that she had no conscious knowledge of her actions. All this and more can be revealed for the first time in Andrew Norman's gripping Agatha Christie: The Disappearing Novelist.

Andrew Norman was born in Newbury, Berkshire, in 1943. Having been educated at Thornhill High School, Gwelo, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, he qualified in medicine at the Radcliffe Infirmary. From 1972-1983, Norman worked as a general practitioner in Poole, Dorset, before a spinal injury cut short his medical career. He is now an established writer whose published works include biographies of Thomas Hardy, T. E. Lawrence, Sir Francis Drake, Adolf Hitler, Enid Blyton, Charles Darwin and Agatha Christie.