Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie
Words by Anne Martinetti and Guillaume Lebeau
Art by Alexandre Franc
Translated by Edward Gauvin
Paperback, 128 pp, $19.95
The life of Agatha Christie was as mysterious and eventful as her fiction. This insightful, surprising and definitive graphic novel traces the life of the Queen of the Whodunit from her childhood in Torquay, through a career filled with success, drama and adventure, to her later years as 'Dame Agatha'. Revealing a side to Christie that will startle and delight many readers, Agatha introduces us to a free-spirited and thoroughly modern woman who, among other things, enjoyed flying, travel and surfing. Centring around an episode in 1926 when Christie staged her own disappearance, Agatha is a fast-paced, intriguing and enlightening exploration of the twentieth century's best-loved crime novelist.
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Anne Martinetti
Editor at French crime publisher Éditions du Masque for more than ten years, Anne Martinetti is a specialist in the worlds of Anglophone cinema and literature. A contributor to the definitive edition of Agatha Christie's works, she also penned a worldwide bestselling cookbook based on the novels of the Queen of Crime, entitled Creams and Punishments. She is also the author of a literary guide to London and more than a dozen other works – novels, cookbooks and essays.
Guillaume Lebeau
A specialist in crime fiction, especially that from Scandinavia, Guillaume Lebeau is the author of more than fifteen books, novels and graphic novels, among them a biography of Stieg Larsson and a critical encyclopedia of French crime author Fred Vargas, as well as several documentaries on the worlds of crime fiction and cinema. He has won several prizes, and his books have been translated in over a dozen countries. Together, Martinetti and Lebeau have also written a cookbook drawing on Scandinavian crime fiction, Crimes on Ice, published by Éditions Marabout, and the encyclopedia Agatha Christie from A to Z.
Alexandre Franc
Born in 1973, Alexandre Franc grew up in Lyon. Since 2007, he has published over a dozen graphic novels, sometimes as a solo creator (Victor et l'Ourours from Actes Sud – l'An 2), sometimes as an artist (Mai 68. Histoire d’un Printemps, with Arnaud Bureau, Berg International), sometimes as a writer (Les Satellites, with Claire de Gastold, Gallimard) and sometimes in collaboration with a writer (Cher Régis Debray, Futuropolis). He is also an illustrator for youth periodicals, educational books and the communications industry. He lives in Paris with his wife and their two children.
Reviews
"A total delight. It's almost as if [Agatha Christie] has fallen into the pages of one of Tintin's adventures."
— The Observer