A Different Kind of Evil

October 1, 2017

In his just published (and nicely reviewed) A Talent for Murder, award-winning journalist Wilson imagines what happened during Agatha Christie's famous disappearance in December 1926, conjuring up a murderous scheme that Christie must escape. That story is putatively told by British Special Agent John Davison, who recruits her to a secret branch of the British civil service and, in this quick follow-up mystery, wants her to investigate the death of an agent in the Canary Islands.

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Starred review from January 1, 2018
Agatha Christie makes a plausible amateur detective in Wilson’s stellar sequel to 2017’s A Talent for Murder, a crafty whodunit worthy of the queen of mystery herself. January 1927 finds the famed author aboard the SS Gelria headed for the Canary Islands. During a walk on deck, Agatha hears a scream and arrives just in time to see passenger Gina Trevelyan climb over the ship’s railings. Agatha and another passenger, Helen Hart, who’s been having an affair with Gina’s husband, do their best to talk Gina down, but the woman jumps to her death. The suicide devastates Agatha, whose own husband was unfaithful. John Davison, of the British intelligence services, distracts her from her emotional pain by enlisting her to investigate the murder of one of his agents, Douglas Greene, on Tenerife. Greene was bludgeoned to death, and his corpse was left in a cave, drained of blood and mummified. Wilson does a superior job of balancing surprising plot developments with a sensitive portrayal of his lead’s inner life. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Associates.

January 1, 2018
Free at last of the scandal of her notorious 1926 disappearance--though not quite yet of her adulterous spouse--Agatha Christie sails for the Canary Islands at the behest of the secret agent who helped rescue her from those complications (A Talent for Murder, 2017).The first death, that of Secret Intelligence Service agent Douglas Greene, precedes Christie's passage. In fact, it's what makes John Davison press her to go to Tenerife in the first place. Nor does the second wait for her arrival. As Christie looks on in horror, Gina Trevelyan, a wronged wife who's stowed away aboard the Gelria, launches herself over the side of the ship in a frenzy of grief, her body lost forever. Sculptor Helen Hart, the other woman whose affair with Guy Trevelyan has brought her to the ship as well, baffles Christie by taking moral responsibility for Gina's death shortly after announcing, "I'm pleased the bitch is dead." The Canaries themselves, home to sinister occultist Gerard Grenville, are equally dangerous for two of Christie's fellow passengers from the Gelria and indeed for the celebrated novelist herself, who ends up hiding in a closet from which she watches as another passenger's pearls are stolen by someone she can readily identify but declines to do so, even when Inspector Artemi Narciso Nunez arrests Christie herself for the theft and throws her in jail. The only way she'll be able to help in solving Douglas Greene's murder, it seems, will be if Wilson abates his fondness for local color long enough to allow His Majesty's most unlikely secret agent to decide that it's high time to link all the felonies that clutter this tangled tale.The problem with casting a famous real-life mystery writer as your detective is that you can't help inviting comparisons between your work and hers. It's no shame to say that Wilson can't stand up to such a comparison, but it's no recommendation either.

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