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How to write, according to the bestselling novelist of all time
Everyone has a book inside them, or so the saying goes. In
this day and age, those who want help coaxing the story out
can receive instruction online from some of the world’s most
popular authors. Lee Child and Harlan Coben, who have sold
hundreds of millions of books between them, teach thriller
writing; Jojo Moyes offers tips on romance yarns. And now
Agatha Christie, the world’s bestselling writer of fiction, with
more than 2 bn copies sold, is instructing viewers in the art of
the whodunnit—even though she died in 1976.
Christie’s course is the result not of recently unearthed
archival footage, but artificial intelligence. BBC Maestro, an
online education platform, brought the idea to the Christie
family, which still controls 36% of Agatha Christie Ltd (AMC
Networks, an entertainment giant, owns the rest). They
consented to bring the “Queen of Crime” back to life, to teach
the mysterious flair of her style.
A team of almost 100—including Christie scholars as well
as AI specialists—worked on the project. Vivien Keene, an
actor, provided a stand-in for the author; Christie’s face was
mapped on top. Crucially, Ms Keene’s eerily credible
performance employs only Christie’s words: a tapestry of
extracts from her own writings, notebooks and interviews.
In this way, the creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple
shares handy writing tips, such as the neatest ways to dispatch
fictional victims. Firearms bring ballistic complications. Be
wary of poisons, as each works in a unique way. Novice
authors can “always rely on a dull blow to the head”.
Many of Christie’s writing rules concern playing fair. She
practiced misdirection and laid “false clues” alongside true
ones, but insisted that her plots do not cheat or hide key
evidence: “I never deceive my readers.” In sections devoted
to plot and setting, she explains how to plant key clues “in plain
sight” and plan events with detailed “maps and diagrams”. She
advises viewers to watch and listen to strangers on buses or in
shops and to spice up motives for murder with a love triangle.
Some of the most engaging sections come from “An
Autobiography”, published posthumously in 1977: Poirot’s
origins among the Belgian refugees who reached Devon
during the First World War, or fond memories of her
charismatic, feckless brother Monty, who had “broken the laws
of a lot of countries” and provided the inspiration for many of
Christie’s “wayward young male figures”.
By relying on Christie’s own words, BBC Maestro hopes to
avoid charges of creepy pedagogical deepfakery. At the same
time, it is that focus on quotation which limits the course’s value
as a creative-writing toolbox. The woman born Agatha Miller in
1890 speaks from her own time and place. She tells wannabe
writers to use snowstorms to isolate murder scenes (as they
bring down telephone wires) and cites the clue-generating
value of railway timetables, ink stains and cut-up newspapers.
These charming details are irrelevant to modern scribblers.
Yet anachronism is not the course’s biggest flaw: it is that it
lacks vitality. Christie enjoyed a richer life than learners will
glean from this prim phantom: she was a wartime nurse (hence
her deep knowledge of toxins), thwarted opera singer, keen
surfer and archaeological expert who joined her second
husband on digs in Iraq.Furthermore, her juiciest mysteries
smash crime-writing rules. The narrator does it; the detective
does it; all the suspects do it. Sometimes there’s no detective:
in “The Hollow” (1946) Christie regretted that Poirot appeared
at all. With its working-class antihero and gothic darkness,
“Endless Night” (1967) shatters every Christie cliché. This
high-tech, retrofitted version of the author feels smaller and
flatter than the ingenious original.
The Economist, May, 8th, 2025
