Great round-up of Agatha Christie shorts on love turned twisted. This one would make for a great read or re-read around Valentine's Day.

As with all of the stories by Agatha Christie you get hooked and try to piece the mystery together to solve it before the ending is revealed. These stories are no exception. Whether the main character is Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot or Tommy and Tuppence it makes no difference. That's what makes these murders fun to read.

** “How often must I tell you that clues come from within? In the little grey cells of the brain lies the solution of every mystery.” **

Agatha Christie fans will adore “A Deadly Affair: Unexpected Love Stories from the Queen of Mystery,” a compilation of many of her short stories.

Most tales contain a love theme — love triangles, thwarted love, unrequited love and forbidden love — and many feature some of Christie’s beloved characters, like Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, Parker Pyne, and Quin and Satterthwaite.

“A Deadly Affair” is like warm cocoa on a cold night, returning readers to the cozy mystery that Christie was an expert at delivering. It’s filled with stories mostly published in the 1920s and 1930s, some in publications like Cosmopolitan and the Daily Mail, and some in short story collections like Partners in Crime and Three Blind Mice.

Mostly featuring murders, some of the stories do include other crimes like theft. Allowing readers to use their “little grey cells” to solve the mysteries, “A Deadly Affair” offers a great variety of Christie themes, crimes and characters to delight both fans and non-fans of the Queen of Mystery.

For someone who is looking for an entertaining choice without committing to a complete novel, “A Deadly Affair” is a great option.

This book is set to be published Jan. 4 and does contain some mild cursing.

Five stars out of five.

William Morrow Paperbacks provided this complimentary copy through NetGalley for my honest, unbiased review.

A DEADLY AFFAIR is a collection of love-based short mysteries from the Queen of Mystery herself, Agatha Christie.

I will devour anything and everything Agatha Christie, and this one was no exception. Do I wish there was more love? Absolutely. But she hits the reader with her quirky writing style and ends each of these stories in a little twisty way with a litttttle bit of romance thrown in for good measure.

I think this book is perfect for avid Christie readers and will make them want to dive back into her beloved detective stories.

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow and Custom House for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Publication Date: January 04, 2022

Truthfully, I did not love all the stories and snippets in this collection. Some of them were simply not romantic in the traditional sense of the word. I'm not an avid Agatha Christie reader (though I've read the well known classics) and this collection has some hits and a few misses - which was surprising considering I've loved every Christie book I've read so far. Perhaps die-hard fans would be more comforted by this collection than me.

A great selection of short stories by one of the greatest mystery writers ever! Her stories are cleverly written and will keep you guessing. A must read for the mystery fan!

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A Deadly Affair by Agatha Christie is an outstanding book, although I have not read any of the others in the series.

This forthcoming collection of short stories by the aptly titled Queen of Crime is organized around the theme of love, following three previous themed collections, one each for Halloween, Winter, and Summer. (This one is, I believe, intended for Valentine’s Day, although it will be released in early January.)
If you haven’t read many of Mrs. Christie’s short stories previously, then you are in for a treat! This collection of short stories is an absolute delight! Although the stories have love as a central theme, just as often as not it is love that has gone wrong rather than anything actually resembling a romance. These are definitely mysteries.
As I’ve mentioned in other reviews, mysteries are hard to create in a short story form. There isn’t always time to lay down clues and misdirection as there is in a full-length novel. Mrs. Christie, however, does an excellent job even in this brief format. If you have enjoyed any of her full-length work, I think you will be just as pleased with her short stories and A Deadly Affair is an excellent place to start.
Although the stories have all been previously released in other collections, I love this recent trend of regrouping them by theme/season. I had read all of the stories previously, but really enjoyed having them in these new collections. By having the stories in a different context, it really made some of them seem new again. A few, also, were from collections that, although I had read them at some point, are more obscure, at least to me, so reading these felt like finding a long-lost friend.

#ADeadlyAffair #NetGalley
Loved this story collection by Agatha Christie.
I loved these stories. The King of Clubs
• The Face of Helen
• A Death on the Nile
• Death by Drowning
• The Double Clue
• Finessing the King
Others were good too. But I loved above.
Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for giving me an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

William Morrow and Custom House
For my first Agatha Christie short story read!
So much fun....

A Deadly Affair by Christie is a short story book about love gone horribly wrong!

This book has a lot of puzzle pieces to wrap one's mind around.
There were many twists and turns in this one but the ending was hard to decipher.
A murder mystery that it was well written on overall.
I particularly enjoyed the psychological portrayal of some of the characters.
For this to have been my first book of hers I was very surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did! I have been meaning to jump into one of her books.... Now I seriously have to because her writing if amazing.

Thank you again Publisher and NetGalley for this eARC!

Agatha Christie's work has left her mark on the world, stories that have birthed board and video games, movies, etc. They entertain millions of fans all over the globe. This compilation is exactly what is needed to bring her work to the younger generation - something that they can read one short story at a time.

Thanks to NetGalley & Wm. Morrow for providing a free digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Agatha Christie is genre kryptonite - at her best, she is the gold standard for English cozy mysteries, which is why she's the namesake for the Agatha Award. And some of these stories are indeed Agatha at, or close to, the top of her game. Those particular stories are so enjoyable, and it's always nice to read a new-to-me Poirot or Marple short. The tropes are tropes because she invented them! Those stories are wonderful.

Alas, not all of the stories in this collection are wonderful. If you've ever read a Christie clunker, you know what I mean. The story goes on "for ever," the cast of characters is lackluster, or, they're intriguing but the plot they're swimming around in doesn't do them justice. Worst of all, you get through the long winded plot/dialogue only to meet a "meh" ending to it all. There are a few of these in here.

I admire the fortitude it must have taken to go through all of Christie's short stories and pull them together, but "love stories" is a pretty loose term when applied to these. Adding in the bits about Christie's own romantic life doesn't really enhance the collection, IMO; that's a take that's really only for superfans (and does Agatha Christie *really* have those?).

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher. Great fun reading these Agatha Christie short stories and a must for her mystery fans.