If you are an Agatha Christie fan this book is for you. Delving into the bio of her and Interesting thoughts behind the stories she wrote.

While not too in-depth, this is an enjoyable enough read for fans of the Queen of Crime. It felt more like juvenile nonfiction in some ways, with reviews at the end of each chapter, and may actually be good for budding mystery enthusiasts rather than adult readers. The text boxes with random facts scattered throughout the book were unrelated and felt unnecessary. Most importantly, this book is full of spoilers for Christie’s biggest mysteries - and the warnings aren’t clear or entirely absent. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. All opinions are entirely my own.

I really liked this book, it was different than anything else I've read which was a breath of fresh air. I will be recommending this to my friends, and auto buy this author!

I have to admit the big reason why I decided to request an Arc of this book was the sub-title: 'The Truth Behind Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and More Iconic Characters from the Queen of Crime.' I thought this book would give me information on how and why Agatha Christie created her iconic investigators but it wasn't about that at all.

Plus, I have just started reading Agatha Christie and from the 20 book titles covered (chapter wise) in this book most were ones I still have to read. I read a couple of chapters pertaining to the unread books and it had major spoilers! As a result, I decided not to read the remaining chapters and only read those of the titles I have read (which amounted to only 3-4 chapters).

My thanks to NetGalley, the publisher Skyhorse Publishing and the authors for the e-ARC.

Rating: ⭐⭐✨💫

I very much enjoyed the ins and outs of information within Agatha's catalog. The writers gave a lot of fun tidbits about Agatha, her life and the inspirations behind her stories.

This would be a nice coffee-table(ish) book for Agatha fans.

The issue I had with the book was all of the facts NOT related to Agatha's works. The chapters started off strong with information about Agatha and whichever book the chapter was focused on, but then several tangents would appear with facts about various things not actually related to the story (or somewhat related).

It kind of threw me off and it felt like forced word filler.

Thank you NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing for an e-copy of THE SCIENCE OF AGATHA CHRISTIE to review.

I rate THE SCIENCE OF AGATHA CHRISTIE three out of five stars.

Looking to read a bio about the stories she has written, this is the book for you.
Interesting thoughts behind the stories she wrote.
Thanks to skypublishing, netgalley and the author in exchange for a review.
Published Sept 5th 2023

Now, this book does exactly what it says it’s going to do: it looks at a variety of question that might come to mind when reading Agatha Christie’s work. And while the actual replies are, undoubtedly, well-researched, after the fifth time I read “In (title of book), x y and z happens. What would that look like in …?” I was kind of wishing for something with a bit more … Cohesion?

Inserted were a couple of interviews with people who, again, might have something useful to add … But they mainly seemed to be pulled into the book because they collaborated with the authors at one point or another, or because they admired them.

The rating: 2,5/5
While this was a pleasant read, the repetitiveness combined with the ‘meandering’ structure of this book left me feeling kind of unsatisfied. So, while I did enjoy this read as a whole, it probably wouldn’t be my number one recommendation for someone interested in learning more Agatha Christie.

The authors did a great job researching the background of the topics they cover in The Science of Agatha Christie! It is laid out well, and the writing is really good and keeps what may be a dry subject interesting. The science is interesting, the why of so many things Agatha Christie is really interesting as well! It is really fascinating to hear back stories, and motivations of Agatha to place her crimes and characters in certain places. This book is not just science, but an exploration of what made the ultimate mystery writer of all time tick, and it is cool to remember just how original Agatha Christie was and her indelible mark on writing.
The Science of Agatha Christie is the book that I needed but I did not know that I needed! I love Agatha Christie mysteries, in novels, in movies, television and even to lull me to sleep! I felt like I was behind the scenes and almost like collaborating with Agatha as she came up with her stories. Even if you haven't read many of her mysteries, it is a good read if you are curious about how to craft a tale or if the creation of a story is interesting to you, or if you like the science of a crime (lots of poison, debate about time of death).
Agatha Christie fans, this is a definite one to add to your collection. I received this as an ARC but am ordering to add to my Agatha Christie bookshelf. It would also be a great listen on audiobook!

“𝑳𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒃𝒆𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒅 𝒑𝒚𝒓𝒂𝒎𝒊𝒅𝒔, 𝑪𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒆’𝒔 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌 𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆, 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒗𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒏𝒐 𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝒔𝒐𝒄𝒊𝒆𝒕𝒚 𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒇𝒕𝒔,”

As an Agatha Christie fan, I’m always intrigued by a new book highlighting her characters, her stories, and her life. This book promised to highlight the science behind her works that have become an integral part of modern mysteries.

Authors Meg Hafdahl and Kelly Florence’s appreciation for Christie shines through as they highlight twenty of Christie’s works. There are the ones we expect like The Mysterious Affair at Styles, or And Then There Were None; I love that it highlights some lesser known stories (or maybe ones that do not seem as popular, as they feature neither Marple or Poirot), such as The Sittaford Mystery and The Seven Dials Mystery, two of my personal favourites. Hafdahl and Florence also discuss the influence the television, film and theatre adaptations have had, which I appreciated too. I liked when it acted as a partial biography, relating to elements surrounding Christie’s life during the writing of a certain novel or certain novel themes (such as Rosalind’s relationship with her mother when talking about mother-daughter relationships in Murder in Retrospect). Some of the scientific pieces were really neat too, like what is an unreliable narrator or the use of poisons. However, it does read choppy and bounces around quickly. There’s also an assumption that you are familiar with each of these stories, and if you aren’t, there are some major spoilers.

The Science of Agatha Christie showed a lot of potential as an idea, but the execution didn’t quite work. However, if it does push someone to discovering Christie’s works, re-reading them or checking out her autobiography, then it will have done part of its job. Thank you to Skyhorse Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC.

Prior to reading this book, I knew nothing about the authors; I have since learned that they are the co-hosts of the podcast “Horror Rewind”, and have written six books together.

Given the title and blurb, I expected focused analysis of both Christie’s oeuvre, how she used both physical means and psychology to set up her stories and to manipulate her audience’s reading of them, and how forensics and other sciences have changed since her time. I was quite wrong.

Allow me to start with a brief rant about apologia for the past.

A common excuse given for racist antisemitic xenophobes of bygone days is that they were “people of their time”. This ignores two realities: one, there are plenty of racist antisemitic xenophobes today; and two, there were plenty of people alive all throughout Christie’s long life who weren’t any of those things. Are both those groups of people atemporal then? Why are dead people’s beliefs and attitudes excusable if we aren’t willing to excuse those same beliefs and attitudes today?

As I said above, I expected to learn more about both Dame Christie and the science present in her work, and was therefore less than pleased to find a note from the authors, at the end of the introduction no less, that basically goes, “Agatha Christie was a woman of her time. There is an unfairness in judging her by the societal standards of today.”

Not a great start.

The book is divided in chapters that purport to focus on twenty individual works, in chronological order, and is full of endnotes to modern studies, essays, and other writings. At first, I thought every one of this would lead to either Christie’s work, or literary or forensic scholarship. It does not.

A signal weakness of the book, aside anything else, is not including even the most basic plot summary for most of the stories examined; unless the reader is very conversant with Dame Christie’s work (basically, either perfect recall or multiple re-readings), as well as with the many adaptions of some of her best known stories, they would likely be lost for most of the book.

While the style of writing is quite readable, it can be best described as chatty and meandering, peppered with exclamation points, rhetorical questions, and digressions about topics as disparate as medical issues to adaptations of Christie’s works. I was not impressed myself with the level of analysis or the supporting bits; some sections are so nebulously related to the book supposedly under discussion, it felt like grasping at straws.

For example, when discussing The Seven Dials Mystery, the authors write that “Gerry has a habit of oversleeping. What causes this?” After providing a cursory definition and mentioning two disorders that cause it, they insert a page and a half of basic advice–from “talk to your doctor” to “set your alarm clock away from your bed”; in the chapter devoted to The Sittaford Mystery, the mention of a character misplacing her eyeglasses leads to a digression on the history and mechanics of glasses, and the mention of multiple suspects in the same book is the springboard to introduce a short interview with the director of a recent horror comedy mystery (really), who, by the way, hasn’t read any Christie; and when talking about Murder in the Orient Express, we get a brief pep talk on coping with grief “in a healthy way” that includes the line: “It’s okay to feel sad and sit with your feelings” (Chapter 5).

There are also little inserts with some tidbit loosely tied to the particular topic of the chapter, that section of writing, or Christie’s life, some with really questionable writing. To wit, this gem:

“A real, unsolved murder r on a train carrying seventy people in London in 1988. The victim, twenty-six-year-old Deborah Linsley, had her cold case opened by detectives again in 2022 as police push to solve this horrible murder.” (Chapter 5; the notes mark it as an excerpt from a news bit from a website called MyLondon.news)

Beyond this, I am concerned with several bits of pseudo-science given equal billing with real science, such as in Chapter 11, linking phrenology and invasive police surveillance as potential ways to ‘predict and stop criminal behavior’. Yes, there’s one line addressing that “experts” worry about racial profiling, etc., after a full page dedicated to explaining the racist, classist, and ableist belief that who you are determines your ‘propensity for crime’. Later on, next to a digression on prosopagnosia, there’s a little insert suggesting that “certain foods can improve your memory”; whether that’s the authors’ intention or not, the impression this gives is that a physical condition can be ‘cured’ through ‘healthy eating choices’, which is the trick of every snake oil “wellness” influencer ever.

As I found myself increasingly skimming the text, I gave up a few pages into chapter 12 (of 20), and jumped to the last chapter, “Conclusion”; which is when I found out that a full 17% of the digital file is dedicated to the end notes, and gave up for good.

I wrote this review wondering who the intended audience for this book is.

It can’t really be Christie’s fans: in the eleven chapters I read, there was only one fact in Christie’s work that I wasn’t already aware of. It can’t be Christie scholars, as no new ground is broken; in fact, the authors rely heavily on what other people have written about Christie’s life and work for the few sections that do address these topics. And it really can’t be for people who haven’t read any Christie, as it gives away both the murderer and the twists in every one of the books it mentions.

With sadness, I’m inclined to borrow one of SuperWendy’s phrases and declare the book “a hot mess”.

The Science of Agatha Christie is a DNF, and I now know to steer clear of these authors’ work, and the series as a whole.

I have not read enough Agatha Christie to read this whole book, but I did read the chapters relating to the stories I had already read.

It was an enjoyable read though not necessarily what I was expecting in terms of the science behind the murders.

I would definitely recommend to other fans of Christie's work though.

I have been a long time fan of Agatha Christie’s work. And I was intrigued by the idea of a deep dive into the science behind her mysteries.

Each chapter is focused on a mystery novel by Agatha Christie, examining the science behind a multitude of pieces of each mystery from the poisons used to motives.

There is a lot of information in this book. So it’s easy to see how much research went into this. But within each chapter, there’s a lack of cohesiveness. Paragraphs switch around on topics and aren’t connected. And there are text boxes inserted with asides that are sometimes related to the chapter and sometimes not at all, which really took me out of the book.

I’ve seen other reviews reference the authors podcast, and I have to agree. This really does feel like transcriptions of podcast episode, from diverting tangents, random asides in the footnotes, and episodic guest interviews. Not that that was a bad thing, but if you go into this expecting a more academic style, you will be disappointed.

I did really like all the minor asides dealing with Agatha Christie’s background. Her training in pharmaceuticals, her work in archaeological digs, all these bits and pieces that add up together to make one of the greatest mystery writers of the English language.

This was a fun read, but didn’t really go into as much depth on anything as much as I wanted.

Thanks to NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing for this ARC.

I was a big fan of Agatha Christie as a child, devouring every one of her mysteries that I could find, it don’t recall ever reading one as an adult. The last ten years or so have seen her roar back into fashion, with movies, TV adaptations, new Poirot and Marple books by current authors, and a flood of Golden Age-inspired fiction being published. I was therefore intrigued to read this non-fiction tome purporting to be about the Science behind her books. Sadly, while it had several interesting nuggets, the disorganised structure and overly chatty writing style was annoying, and there was way too much irrelevant filler.

Written by two American horror podcasters, who are clearly big fans, this has each of twenty chapters focussing on one book, then throwing in whatever factoids, opinions, analysis and digressions they can relate to it, jumping incoherently from one topic to another, and sometimes even giving lifestyle advice! Most of the topics could only be loosely referred to as science. They would’ve been far better organising chapters by characters, themes, branches of science, and murder methods, for example. Unforgivably, there are numerous blatant spoilers for many of the books, with no warning given. They also include interviews with a random selection of people from the theatrical and gaming world, with only loose connections to Dame Christie’s work. I found the historical and pharmacological aspects the most interesting, and enjoyed the quotes from Agatha the most - what a remarkable woman she was.

Now it may be hypocritical to say this, as I use a lot of them myself, but I don’t think that many exclamation marks are appropriate for a supposedly serious non-fiction work. I also didn’t like the very random boxed facts that appear throughout, printed in bold, for no obvious reason - it’s possible these will contain photos or illustrations in the published version, but in my ARC copy they were just confusing. There are also multiple pages of “end-notes” or references at the end, which would be useful if you wanted to check sources I suppose, but on a kindle I would rather see them at the end of a chapter. They show the extensive research the authors have done, which is admirable, but unfortunately the outcome is a jumbled mess that I would recommend to only only the most ardent Christiephile. 2.5 rounded up because I did at least learn some interesting things.
I received an ARC from NetGalley and am posting this honest review voluntarily.
The Science of Agatha Christie is published on September 5th.

First, I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book. I really wanted to like it, but I don't think it quite hit the mark.

At times, the almost stream of consciousness writing was quite confusing… Subtitles would help I think. One minute, we would be talking about the mystery, the next minute, a disease would be brought up that had very little to do with the book to something else entirely different.

I like how the authors shared opinions on the best film/tv/radio versions of each book. In talking about each book, I am once again in awe of Ms. Christie's strength to stretch and grow as a writer. Her plots never got old. In fact, they got better with time, I think. Their enthusiasm is palpable (and I love that!). They did a good job at writing an ode to her works and her life, but unfortunately it didn't delve into the subject matter of science like it could have.

I read all the novels quoted in this book and it's a good thing because there were some spoilers.
I thought it was a book about the scientific aspects of those mysteries or the psychology of the characters.
I found it was more a sort of podcast in paper.
Not my cup of tea
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Perhaps not the book I expected; but a ideal read for any fan of Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

The enthusiasm of Kelly and Meg propel you through this book and your interest is maintained l throughout by their obvious appreciation of this wonderful author.

Taking time to forensically review her craft and style through a scientific approach to structure, character and plot. Including her use of motive, opportunity and access to poisons.

This certainly is a book you will read and refer back to on many occasions. For me it is pure Agatha Christie as it reflects the world in which she lived and wrote while revealing the legacy her writing has produced.

What I found a little frustrating were the elements that were included that seemed a stretch beyond her own experience. Interviews with a costume designer and an escape room designer demonstrate the width of these authors’ research and the lengths undertaken to produce this informative reference book.

With many quotes, annotated and referenced in the endnotes at the close of the book again show the detail and extensive research engaged on this project.

Perhaps a little American in some perspectives it is undoubtedly the result of a shared love for Agatha which transcends culture and elevates your knowledge and love for the Queen of Crime.

The Science of Agatha Christie by Meg Hafdahl and Kelly Florence had my name written all over it, as does anything with the words "Agatha Christie" on it. I have read all of her works a minimum of three times, including those under Mary Westmacott and secretly pretended she was my relative when I started reading her at the age of twelve. Like many of her fans I feel a very special affinity with her. Reading this book made me smile and brought me a lot of joy reliving her stories and learning more about the science behind the clever and endearing woman. Using her medical experience and background, she did meticulous research for murder methods and weapons. Here they are analyzed and discussed in compelling detail. The boxed blurbs are incredibly interesting!

Referring to several of Christie's books and characters (particularly the incomparable Miss Marple and Hercules Poirot), the authors take a concept or actual item and build on it in that chapter, such as strychnine poisoning, origin of "red herring", determining approximate time of death, toxicology, hydrotherapy, maps and shoe size in the early 1900s and now. I was happy to learn more about prosody, proxemics and chronemics, malingering and loads of other bits.

Before reading this book, just know it contains spoilers so perhaps read the books first (as every reader should, anyway). But this is a perfect companion book with a lighter tone than some others. Though Edgar Allan Poe is credited for the genre, Agatha Christie is a genre all her own in my view.

My sincere thank you to Skyhorse Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this splendid book.

I really enjoy Agatha Christie's books and went into this one thinking it would be along the lines of "The Science of Murder", where the author gets into the science of different poisons, or the evolving science of fingerprint analysis, etc. Maybe how a more 'everyday' person of the time period would know or understand the science compared to an expert. Instead, "science" was really the red herring here.

The book divides each chapter into a look at specific Christie books (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, And Then There Were None, etc) with the idea of looking at things specific to that book. I was good with that. But after that, things started to fall apart for me. In a breezy, conversational style (I found out along the way they do a podcast, so I guess we could call it a podcast style of writing?) they bounce from topic to topic and you never get more than a short paragraph on anything. Nothing is really science either, or a way to help you understand the books in a deeper way. Unless you consider things like lists of symptoms for arthritis, how many cases of polio were in the US in a given year or what you should do with grief instead of murdering people science. I can handle a little tongue-in-cheek humor like the last one, but only when you actually deliver on what you promise for the rest of the book.

There are numerous interviews with people that add nothing to the book, an extreme excess of exclamation marks that would probably work in a podcast but didn't do it in a book I already wasn't enjoying, and lots of recommendations to read their other books for more information of various things like serial killers. Plenty of quotes from different biographies of Agatha Christie.

Sorry to say, I really didn't enjoy this book. If you're looking for more understanding on the science of murder as Agatha and her characters would have known it, try "The Science of Murder" by Carla Valentine instead. Sorry to sound mean, but there's actual information and research in that one.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

The perfect book to shine in society when you say you're an Agatha Christie fan! You can impress your guests and friends by telling them when the invention of glasses dates back and how much Agatha Christie was keen on being as close as possible to the scientific aspects of her heroes's investigations! However, caution is advised: to be read only after having read the mentioned books in order to avoid spoiling the suspense!

I love the conversational tone of this book, with its tidbits about the novels, the science and history about the plot, characters, and author. I think it would be better to have read the novels before reading this book, as there are some spoilers. I'm interested in reading more in this series. There is a Stephen King version, as well.