Burgh Island and a Day to Remember

I love islands, and this, combined with my love of Agatha Christie's books, means that for many years I've harboured the ambition to visit Burgh Island, off the coast of Christie's native Devon. It's a small tidal island with a fantastic Art Deco hotel where she stayed, as did many celebrities of her era. Burgh inspired Evil Under the Sun and also, though less directly, And Then There Were None. The Peter Ustinov film of Evil Under the Sun was not filmed on the island - at the time, the hotel had ceased to function as a hotel, and it seems to have operated as a sort of very upmarket holiday camp. But the hotel was restored, and provided the setting for the David Suchet version of the story. These days it's very luxurious - so much so that an extended stay was financially out of the question. But when I was invited to the Agatha Christie Festival in nearby Torquay, I resolved to stay on Burgh the night before.

My excitement mounted when news came from the hotel that a tropical storm was forecast for the night of my visit. What could be more atmospheric? At low tide, you can walk across the sand from the mainland to Burgh, but at high tide there is a sea tractor, an elaborate and rather rickety-looking contraption, which ferries people back and forth. However, the storm meant that the sea tractor would be unsafe, so it was essential to get there in time for luggage etc to be taken across the sand before the water came in.

In order to break the journey, I stayed overnight in Somerset. A good idea in theory,but it proved disastrous in practice, as the hotel's breakfast cafetiere exploded, showering me in hot coffee, an incident that led to my being covered by ice packs for an hour. However, I hated the idea of giving up on Burgh, and it was actually easier to soldier on and drive there than go all the way home. And am I glad I took that decision!

The island was wonderful, and so was the hotel - my room was one used for filming Evil Under the Sun, which was a real bonus. Truly a glimpse into how the other half live. The storm didn't really materialise, but a fantastic rainbow decorated the early evening sky, and the next morning was brilliantly sunny. Mind you, fellow guests may have been rather spooked by the sight of a mysterious disfigured stranger at dinner. Never mind. It was a truly unforgettable occasion, for all sorts of reasons, most of them very pleasurable indeed..

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What Santa Brought

I had a lovely Christmas Day and I do hope you did too. Amongst other pleasures, I was lucky that Santa recognised my continuing fascination with crime fiction, and delivered many good things that will keep me occupied for a long time to come. They will also, no doubt, provide plenty of material for future blog posts.

I’ve already dipped into a lavishly illustrated guide, Agatha Christie’s Devon, by Bret Hawthorne, and read the chapter about Burgh Island, which provided the setting for And Then There Were None, and Evil Under the Sun. I do love islands, and it is a place I am really keen to visit one day.

I also received four audio books on CD featuring Francis Durbridge’s most famous creation, Paul Temple. I’ve enjoyed a good many of the Temple audio books – they are fun to listen to whilst commuting, and the new ones will definitely improve my tedious journey to and from work.

Among the new DVDs, there’s an absolute gem – The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. I received the anthology which inspired the TV series as a Christmas present when I was a teenager, and not long afterwards, I watched some of the episodes on the box. I look forward to seeing the rest of them, at long last, during the course of 2010.

Christie, Christie, everywhere

Wherever you have turned lately, it has seemed impossible to escape Agatha Christie. But that’s all right by me, as reading Christie remains one of my favourite forms of escapism, and my complaint about the latest episode of Marple was simply its lack of fidelity to the Queen of Crime’s original plot.

I’m eagerly looking forward to a chance to read Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks, the book by John Curran which has attracted so much attention. Curran is a real Christie buff, and I liked his list of top ten Christies. It was especially good to see the inclusion of Curtain, which is so often under-estimated. My own list wouldn’t be very different.

I think I would, however, probably substitute The Mysterious Affair at Styles for Crooked House, despite the daring nature of the solution in the latter. Styles is a terrific novel for a debut whodunit writer, remarkably intricate and assured.

But wait a minute. What about Cards on the Table, with its focus on just four suspects? Very clever. Or Towards Zero, in which murder comes at the end, not the beginning – a dazzling concept, executed in gripping style.

Wait a moment. I’ve forgotten Evil Under the Sun, a classic Poirot with a memorable island setting and cunning misdirection. And I couldn’t overlook The Pale Horse, which supposedly inspired a real-life killer. And then there is…

No, the problem with these lists is that, despite occasional misfires, some dodgy thrillers and the tired late novels, Christie wrote a startling number of ground-breaking stories. It is no accident that she has become a legend. As a crime writer, she is unique.