New Agatha Christie Tapes Discovered

Dame Agatha Christie, noted mystery author, dictated numerous tapes on a Grundig Memorette machine in the mid-1960s to help write her autobiography. Matthew Prichard, Christie's grandson, found the tapes in a cardboard box at her Devon house. Before he could play them, he had to fix the machine on which the tapes were recorded. Christie can be heard musing about Miss Marple, one of her well-loved detectives: "I have now no recollection at all of writing Murder in the Vicarage. I don’t even remember why it was that I selected a new character, Miss Marple, to act as a sleuth in the case. Certainly, at the time I had no intension of continuing her for the rest of my natural life. I didn’t know then that she would become a rival to Hercule Poirot." Only one or two recordings of her voice were previously known to exist. Christie wrote 80 mysteries, most featuring either Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot. An estimated 4 billion of her novels have been sold. Her play, The Mousetrap,holds the record for the longest opening run in the world. It began at the Ambassadors Theatre in London in November 1952. After 23,000 performances, Mousetrap is still on in the West End.
The Fremont Public Library has most of her novels available for checkout. Also available are Poirot's famous cases, Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and Evil Under the Sun in DVD format. Miss Marple's cases 4:50 from Paddington, The Mirror Cracked, Caribbean Mystery, and Sleeping Murder also are available for checkout. Marple's cases are either in DVD or VHS format. Agatha Christie was born 118 years ago on September 15.