The Mystery of the Last Supper

A fascinating exploration of the contents of Agatha Christie's seventy-three private notebooks, including illustrations and two unpublished Poirot stories

When Agatha Christie died in 1976, at age eighty-five, she had become the world's most popular author. With sales of more than two billion copies worldwide, in more than one hundred countries, she had achieved the impossible—more than one book every year since the 1920s, every one a bestseller.

So prolific was Agatha Christie's output—sixty-six crime novels, twenty plays, six romance novels under a pseudonym and more than one hundred and fifty short stories—it was often claimed that she had a photographic memory. Was this true? Or did she resort over those fifty-five years to more mundane methods of working out her ingenious crimes?

Following the death of Agatha's daughter, Rosalind, at the end of 2004, a remarkable legacy was revealed. Unearthed among her affairs at the family home of Greenway were Agatha Christie's private notebooks, seventy-three handwritten volumes of notes, lists and drafts outlining all her plans for her many books, plays and stories. Buried in this treasure trove, all in her unmistakable handwriting, are revelations about her famous books that will fascinate anyone who has ever read or watched an Agatha Christie story.

How did the infamous twist in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd really come about? Which very famous Poirot novel started life as an adventure for Miss Marple? Which books were designed to have completely differ-ent endings, and what were they? What were the plot ideas that she considered but rejected?

Full of details she was too modest to reveal in her own autobiography, this remarkable new book includes a wealth of excerpts and pages reproduced directly from the notebooks and her letters, plus, for the first time, two newly discovered complete Hercule Poirot short stories never before published.

Mick Nash’s summer is off to a bad start.  The Last Straw, his once thriving sports bar, is deep in the red.  His wife Amy is overweight and bullied by her students.  Teen son Kyle has just met alcohol and is willing to steal anything to impress the right girl, while young daughter Briela is gripped by tantrums and recurring nightmares that foretell an approaching menace.

Meanwhile, transplants to the health and outdoor living mecca of Boulder, Colorado, the Renders have taken up residence in the gaudy spec home behind the Nash acreage.  Wife Cassandra offers uncanny solutions to Amy’s suburban doldrums, and husband Vince becomes instrumental in rescuing the Last Straw from financial ruin.  Teen goddess June entices Kyle into ever more dangerous thrills, while ten-year-old Adolph has a narcotic influence on Briela.

But there’s something abnormal about the Renders, and every favor has its price.  They keep strange hours and intervene at the most inappropriate times.  Wounds from common household accidents heal too quickly, and the Renders seem to thrive on the misfortune of others.  While the Renders turn dangerously more native with each passing day, Mick’s investigations into their past uncovers a hidden trail of treachery, violence, and a pact with unholy forces.

Struggling to extract his family from the Renders’ influence, unable to keep friends and adversaries of the two families from meeting with untimely fates, Mick becomes convinced that a new breed of evil has settled in his utopian home town.  As their summer turns into a crash course in survival, the Nash family must confront the forces that have driven them apart, and uncover the terrifying truth about the people next door. 

What they find may have the power to change the way we look at our neighbors -- and our own family members -- forever.

About the Author:

Christopher Ransom is the author of the internationally bestselling novels The Birthing House, Killing Ghost: The Haunting of James Hastings, and The People Next Door, and his most recent novel, The Fading. After studying literature at Colorado State University and managing an international business importing exotic reptiles, he worked at Entertainment Weekly magazine in New York, various now deceased technology firms in Los Angeles, and as a copywriter at Famous Footwear in Madison, Wisconsin. Christopher now lives near his hometown of Boulder, Colorado.

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