All of this feels well-researched, and we feel pity for the young woman, and understand why she’d go to great pains to get close to Archie. Much time is spent on Nan’s backstory, which involves an unplanned pregnancy and a man whom she loves but won’t marry her, first due to the flu epidemic and then to fight in the First War – which naturally results in a trip to penance in a Magdalene laundry for poor Nan, and eventual separation from their daughter.

But because of this choice we never get Christie’s point of view on her own life, and that is irritating. The problem with The Christie Affair is that De Gramont thinks her audience will be compelled enough by Nan to enjoy her as an omniscient narrator making presumptive statements about Christie’s actions during the disappearance, having Nan explain that she knows what happened because the people concerned later informed her of it, which is already a wobbly narrative conceit.

Where is Agatha, and what of Nan’s own romantic foibles? Meanwhile, people turn up dead at the hotel where Nan is staying. Left to wonder what Agatha is up to over the days of her disappearance, Nan simultaneously wanders the backroads of her own past while plotting to secure her position in Archie’s life for mysterious reasons. She rapidly learns that in spite of Archie’s vows, the upper crust will lie inflexibly to get what it wants, so she’d better make her own inroad. Nan is an Irish girl determined to rise from her poor roots and enter the high society world of the Christies for secret and ulterior motives. But how did the mistress in this situation feel? That’s the subject Nina de Gramont fictionalizes in The Christie Affair, which disappoints in spite of its strong narrative voice.ĭe Gramont centers her story on Nan O’Dea, a fictional counterpart for Nancy Neele, the also-married woman who was Archie’s mistress. Christie was eventually found eleven days later, hiding out in a hotel and using the surname of her husband’s mistress – and eventually granted Archie his divorce and married a second time. When she became the center of her own mystery – disappearing in December of 1926 after her husband Archie requested a divorce – she made worldwide headlines. Mystery writer Agatha Christie was a legend in her own time.

The christie affair release date