WHEN THE UNIVERSE SPEAKS
(and because I’m working on a middle-grade mystery)
I’ve learned to listen to the universe. Maybe it’s not speaking specifically to me when it seems to keep repeating itself, but when the message is interesting, why not pay attention? First though, let me backtrack several decades ago.
When I was 12 years old, after I’d exhausted our extensive (and perhaps, to that date, full) collection of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, I was looking around the house for something new to read (and actually a bit happy to move on from both formulaic series). I might have asked my mom to take me to the library, but there, lying in her nightstand drawers was a small collection of other mysteries, ADULT mysteries. Feeling very grown up—I was 12 after all—I picked one up. And for the next year or three, Agatha Christie became my reading habit of choice. It didn’t matter that these books had so many intertwined characters that it made them hard to follow or that some of the British terms and advanced words were beyond my vocabulary. They were thrilling and fresh and surprising, each one.
Side note: YA hadn’t yet surfaced as an exciting next option. Sure there were black-banded books designed for readers in 7th to 9th grades, but only an infrequent few scattered among the blue-banded books I felt as if I’d outgrown. Ha! Funny how those are the ones I now read (and write) most often.
After my Agatha Christie jag, I got busy being a teen and reading mostly for school assignments. And Agatha became someone to recall with a modicum of fondness.
But then, just several months ago, I ran across an interview where an author cited Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd as the book they wished they could read again for the first time. Hmm. I didn’t remember that title; not that I remembered many. Chances were that I’d read it. And I let that thought drop. Until the next week when, in a different article, another author talked about the influence of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Then two weeks later, yet another one mentioned the same book.
Okay. It was time to read it. Or reread it (in case I’d read it before). So, I snagged a copy to see what this was all about. The Murder of Roget Ackroyd is one from Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot line. Poirot, a retired Belgian detective is now living in London, but in this earlier work, he is not the focus of the book. Rather, the book is narrated from the point of view of the town’s doctor, who is frequently called in for some post-mortem work. From the title, we suspect that Roger Ackroyd has been murdered, but I will stop there. I don’t want anything I say to color your reading experience should you choose to pick this one up. And you should. This is such an impeccably crafted story.
And if my recommendation and that of those other three authors isn’t strong enough for you, there’s this. Just days ago, I read a fourth interview which also pointed to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. And all I could do was nod and smile. Thanks, universe. You didn’t disappoint me.