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first Agatha Christie novel


EmilyGF
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I'd love to introduce my daughter to Agatha Christie but with a book that isn't too gory for someone with a good imagination.

We spent last summer in the Middle East, so maybe one that takes place there?

She is 13, so almost too old for this board. 🙂 But I'd like a younger AC.

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I introduced my son to her when he was 15 and I wasn’t too concerned with gore. He doesn’t necessarily like gore, but he wouldn’t be bothered by it. I also didn’t really know which books would be gory or not, so it’s not like I could have known which ones to avoid.

For myself, when I was a young teen, I used to be ok with murder mysteries until the moment the murderer was revealed, and then somehow when they knew who did it and the person was confronted, I’d get creeped out.  I only read a few as a teen because I’d get so creepy feeling in the last chapter when the murderer was found.

When it was time to introduce my 15 yo to Agatha Christie, I used this article to get him up to speed on who Agatha Christie was and who her main characters were.  It includes a list of some of her best books.  I told him son to pick any book from the list.  He ended up picking “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.”. It was a good pick. Not gory and cleverly done.  As it says in the article, go into it without spoilers.  And just remember that a lot of the “tropes’ of murder mysteries were invented by Agatha Christie and were astonishing and surprising to her original readers. https://bookriot.com/2018/01/09/best-agatha-christie-books/

After reading that book we watched the most recent version of Murder on the Orient Express and then by chance a local theater did a play of Three Blind Mice that year and we went to it.  For Orient Express, I feel like it might be gory.  I don’t want to give anything away, but the killing part seems excessive.  And for Three Blind Mice, that killer in that one would have totally creeped me out as a kid.  It would have jarred my world a bit and shook my sense of safety.  (Don’t want to give away spoilers to anyone whose reading these!  OP if you need more info and don’t mind spoilers, then PM me.)

Edited by Garga
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The first one I read was the Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I don't remember it being gruesome and I was definitely younger than 13 -- what I do remember is my total shock at the twist ending 🙂

 

I also remember loving Dorothy Sayers and Josephine Tey. Tey has a "mystery" based around Richard III which I think is called the Daughter of Time and is a lot of fun.

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On 6/20/2020 at 3:50 PM, square_25 said:

I learned a lot from that one! Although I think there's a lot of debate about how, err, factual it is ;-). 

I think we're reading that in our homeschool this year, along with actual history related to it. I'm trying to ramp up with more mainstream mystery this summer. I'll look into Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Thanks!

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I cut my teeth reading Nancy Drew (my mom's childhood best friend had kept all of hers from the 50s and given them to me). Then I read some Agatha Christie before reading all of Sherlock Holmes in German during high school for fun. I moved onto Dorothy Sayers in my twenties and I want to invite dd13 into the mysteries. 🙂

OK, it looks like The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a popular first AC. I just put that on hold. Maybe I'll read Roger Ackroyd at the same time she reads that!

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