Agatha Christie: Autunm Chills (HarperCollins Publishers 2023)
After the Bible and Shakespeare, Agatha Christie’s books have sold the most in the world. She was a very fruitful writer: from her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which was published in 1920, until her death in 1976, she published a total of 66 novels, 14 volumes of short stories, 17 plays, 3 books of poetry and 2 autobiographies. She was one of the authors who made the mystery genre great. Her literary importance is shown by the fact that her books are still read with the same enthusiasm as when they were first published. Her works have been adapted into numerous TV shows and movies, radio plays, comics and even video games.
Since 2020, thematic collections of her short stories have been published in English by HarperCollins Publishers and in Hungarian by Helikon Publishing. In 2019, the collection of short stories titled Christmas Crimes* was published for the first time by Európa Publishing, which is unique and could only be read in Hungarian until now. This was also released for Christmas 2022 with the same cover style as the new series.
This volume of short stories contains chilling stories especially, set in autumn, which – like the other volumes in the series – are introduced by an excerpt from her autobiographical novel, An Autobiography. In addition to the stories of Poirot and Miss Marple, we can also read about the cases of Parker Pyne, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford or the mysterious Mr. Quin, and none of them appear in the famous short story The Witness for the Prosecution. My favorite is The Lemesurier Inheritance, in which Hercule Poirot has to unravel an old curse. I read this story for the first time. My other favorite, however, I have already read before: Tape-Measure Murder is one of Miss Marple’s cases in the charming St. Mary Mead, which, according to the stories set here, was a particularly dangerous place.
In the spring, I hope Sinister Spring, which was already published in English this year, will also be published in Hungarian. I wonder what selections they will come up with after that…
*my translation
