My task – should I choose to accept it, which I soon did, because concocting a baffling mystery for the brilliant Belgian sleuth to solve was the most exciting creative challenge I had ever faced – was to bring the Poirot we all know and love a new case that would frustrate and puzzle him right up until he worked out the solution. He belongs to Christie and to her billions of fans. I soon realised that if I was to write real, proper Poirot, then I needed to write about Christie’s Poirot, not to change or add to him in order to “make him my own”. No writer can or should ever try to mimic the prose style of another, unless they are writing a parody or a pastiche. No, I’m not Christie, and so I decided very early on that I would not in any way try to copy her writing. They don’t know the correct term for what I’m doing. Often, at my events, people tentatively ask me things like: “So, are you Agatha Christie now?”. There’s a name for novels like my Poirots and others of their kind: continuation novels. No, I’m not Christie, and so I decided very early on that I would not in any way try to copy her writing Before I agreed to write any, however, I had to ask myself one crucial question: could I, notable for my comprehensive and eternal inability to be, or ever to become, Agatha Christie, write real, proper Poirot? If I couldn’t, it would surely be sensible to write no Poirot.
I’m working on a third, which will be published next year, and there will be a fourth in 2020. My first Poirot novel, The Monogram Murders, in 2014 was followed by Closed Casket in 2016. She is also Britain’s most successful female playwright, a fact rarely mentioned despite the 65-year run (and counting) of The Mousetrap. She’s the bestselling novelist in history, with sales exceeding 2 billion, and only the Bible and Shakespeare have sold better. I was honoured to be asked by Christie’s grandson and great-grandson, Mathew and James Prichard, to continue the character in new mystery novels.Ĭhristie is my favourite crime writer. What counts as a real, proper Poirot and what doesn’t is a question I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about since I was commissioned in 2013 to write a continuation novel starring the greatest fictional detective.
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