Authors join celebration of Queen of Crime

TOP authors including Lucy Worsley and Kate Mosse will be part of the International Agatha Christie Festival in Torbay next month.

The event, from September 10 to 17, will celebrate the centenary of the author’s world trip that inspired some of her greatest stories.

Dame Agatha was born in Torquay in 1890, and spent her summers in later life at Greenway on the banks of the River Dart.

The festival offers a week of more than 40 events, including Meet the Author sessions, musical mysteries and family sessions. Three of the world’s best-selling women crime writers – Elly Griffiths, Dreda Say Mitchell and Kate Mosse – will speak about reinventing Miss Jane Marple as part of the new short story compilation Marple: 12 New Stories, to be published in September.

Fringe events include walks on Dartmoor, cocktail-making workshops and even roller-skating on Torquay’s Princess Pier, just as Dame Agatha once did.

Historian and biographer Lucy Worsley opens the festival, speaking about her new biography Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman, produced with exclusive access to many of Christie’s papers. Christie expert Dr John Curran will explore how she came to write her first crime novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and how it influenced her writing career.

Crime fiction author Ruby Gupta, the festival’s 2022 international writer in residence, from Dehradun, India, will be in conversation with best-selling author of crime novels set in India, Vaseem Khan. The Charles Court Opera will perform Express G&S,a musical murder mystery tour of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, while Framed!, a festival commission by Paddleboat Theatre for young families, will introduce a new generation to the mystery genre.

Festival director Daniel Schumann said: “The festival provides everyone who loves reading the crime fiction genre, and all those around the world who are fans of the work of Agatha Christie, a chance to meet new writers, new researchers, experts of Christie’s work on stage and screen.”