To tell Greenway’s war story, I had to learn about the war, about England, about England’s experience of the war versus that of Americans, about English phrasing, slang, and regional dialects, about nursing. When I learned that Greenway had been used in World War II to harbor children evacuated from the Blitz, I immediately imagined a crime story featuring those harbored under Greenway’s flat Georgian roof. It must have been a glorious place to restore one’s nerves before going once more into the breach of another novel. It is situated on more than 30 acres of lush, verdant land criss-crossed by paths down to a boathouse on the River Dart and back up to a hilltop from which one can see, on a clear day, the estuary all the way to Dartmouth and the English Channel. Greenway is, in Christie’s words, a perfect house, a dream house. Once drafts were turned in and contract obligations were met, Christie happily retreated from vocation, withdrawing to her beloved holiday home, Greenway, in an area known as the English Riviera. But she never would have written a craft book-not about writing, which she considered a job, one at which she worked hard but put away gladly. As the greatest-selling author of all time, in line behind only Shakespeare and the bible, Agatha Christie undoubtedly has a good deal to teach writers of mystery and suspense.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |