Real-life disappearance of Agatha Christie inspired SMµ÷½ĢĖł Boulder Creative Writing student's New York Times bestselling novel The Christie Affair
In December 1926, six months after the publication of her novel āvoted best crime novel of all time by the British Crime Writersā Association in 2013āDame Agatha Christie mysteriously disappeared.
The story made front pages on both sides of the Atlantic and inspired a massive search by land, air and sea. The author turned up 11 days later at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, England, registered under the last name of her husband Archieās lover.Ģż
Nearly a century later, the incident remains a mystery; even Christieās autobiography makes no mention of it. But writers and filmmakers have been filling in the blanks for decades, from the 1979 film Agatha, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman, and ā,ā an episode of the British science-fiction series Dr. Who.
had never even read one of Christieās novels when she first learned about the disappearance on a true-crime website in 2015. But it immediately struck her as an intriguing foundation for a novel.
āThe aspect that gelled in my mind was that she was registered under her husbandās mistressā name,ā says de Gramont, the author of eight novels who started her masterās degree in the SMµ÷½ĢĖł creative-writing program before completing it at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she is now an associate professor. āIt sparked me into thinking about the little-explored idea of intimacy between rivals.ā
Six years later, itās fair to say that spark caught fire. De Gramontās fictionalized exploration of the incident, , is a New York Times bestseller and was the February 2022 selection of actor Reese Witherspoonās influential .
De Gramont says the novel is inspired by, rather than based on, Christieās disappearance.
āItās in no way a theory, no way a re-enactment,ā she says. āIt goes off on its own alternate history.ā
In de Gramontās version, an Irish woman named Nan OāDea insinuates herself into the wealthy lives of Dame Agatha. Nan and Agatha become swiftly, deeply entwined, but soon Nan is trying to lure Archibald away. Rather than excoriate Nan, de Gramont takes readers on an exploration of her complicated, violent past.
āA long time ago in another country, I nearly killed a woman,ā Nan confesses in the bookās opening line. āAgatha Christie had a fascination with murder,ā she continues a few lines later. āBut she was tenderhearted. She never wanted to kill anyone. Not for a moment. Not even me.ā
Kirkus Reviews the novel as, āDevilishly clever, elegantly composed and structuredāsimply splendid.ā The Wall Street Journal wrote, āIn The Christie Affair, Nina de Gramont revisits the story with arguably more artistry and ingenuity than any previous novel.ā
Once she had the idea, de Gramont plunged right into writing. She limited her research primarily to the kinds of literature being published in 1926, so she could ādo a play on different styles of storytelling.ā
āIn that regard, it wasnāt that different from the other novels Iāve written. I lean heavily on my imagination,ā she says.
At one point, feeling overwhelmed, she set The Christie Affair aside.
āI decided it was too hard. I took a break from it to work on something else,ā she says.
But once she finished, everything moved very fast, especially for the often-ponderous pace of book publishing.
After making some changes suggested by her agent Peter Steinberg, de Gramont sent it back to him on a Sunday afternoon. He sent it to top editors at big New York publishing houses the following Monday. They received their first offer on Tuesday. On Wednesday, de Gramont inked a deal with St. Martinās Press.
De Gramontās husband, (MA, Englā98), bestselling author of and chair of Creative Writing at UNCW, āalways says good things happen fast,ā she says with a laugh.
St. Martinās submitted The Christie Affair to Reeseās Book Club for consideration in late 2021.
āWhen my editor called to tell me it had been chosen, that was a pretty exciting phone call. But it was two months before publication, so we had to keep it top secret,ā de Gramont says.
The novel has been optioned for a limited TV series. But de Gramont has been around the business long enough to know that Hollywood is fickle and nothing is guaranteed until you actually see it onscreen.
Amid continuing uncertainty about the COVID-19 pandemic, de Gramont has been promoting the book on podcasts and through both virtual and in-person events.
āI think a lot of things put in place to accommodate the pandemic are here to stay, including the virtual book tour,ā she says. āItās much less expensive for the publisher, you can bring in authors from out of state and you can have conversations that you might not have otherwise.ā
Having finally hit the bestseller lists, de Gramont acknowledges she feels a little pressure about what to write next.
āItās daunting, for sure. But itās all a matter of degree. Itās always a terrifying thing to face a blank page and decide what you are going to commit to next,ā she says.
For all her hard work, de Gramont emphasizes that luck plays a big part in any writerās success.
ā(Author) Harry Crews says ideas are a writerās cheapest currency,ā she says. āYour idea could be marketable. Then you have to write the book you want to write, tell the story you want to tell, and do the best job you can on it. But itās always going to be luck, in the end.ā