I can see why this book is so popular with young people.

Pippa is a charming protagonist. So sincere and energetic.

You can’t help but cheer for her and potential love interest Ravi.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is a young adult mystery debut novel by Holly Jackson. The novel is the first in a series of three …

… 17-year old true crime enthusiast Pippa “Pip” Fitz-Amobi, a high school student in the fictional town of Little Kilton, Buckinghamshire (or Fairview, Connecticut in the US version).

In the novel, Pip plans to investigate a five-year-old murder-suicide case involving the murder of popular student Andrea “Andie” Bell and the suicide of her perpetrator Salil “Sal” Singh under the guise of a school project.

Her objectives are to exonerate Sal, whom she is convinced was falsely accused of killing Andie Bell, and to uncover the true perpetrator, whom Pip believes is still at large. …

I appreciate the plot based so much on smart phones and technology. It feels very contemporary.

 BBC Three commissioned a TV adaptation.

Foundation is not must-watch TV.

BUT season 2 was better than season 1. The story much easier to follow.

The ending clearly sets up season 3. The Mule is coming.

Lee Pace is particularly good as Brother Day. I’d watch the show simply for his performance as the egomaniac dictator of the universe.

The rest of the cast is strong, as well.

Visuals and cinematography are first class, of course.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

This may have been the first Agatha Christie I ever read.

As a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book back when I was a kid.

Quite groundbreaking as one of the first serial killer stories.

10 people on an island. No way to leave.

One by one they are murdered in this spooky house.

Like most upper middle class Brits of her age, Agatha was somewhat racist. And even more antisemitic.

She got better over the decades, eventually casting homosexuals in positive roles. Surprisingly, the famously conservative old lady even voted to join the EU.

It was first published in the United Kingdom in 1939, as Ten Little Niggers,^[3] after an 1869 minstrel song which serves as a major plot element. The US edition was released i 1940 with the title And Then There Were None, taken from the last five words of the song.

The book is the world’s best-selling mystery, and with over 100 million copies sold is one of the best-selling books of all time. 

While reading the book, I simultaneously watched the 2015 mystery thriller television serial that was first broadcast on BBC One ➙ And Then There Were None.

Quite good.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I enjoyed the 2023 biography of Agatha Christie.

A surprising life story for such a successful author.

Enter historian Lucy Worsley, whose declared intention is to rescue Christie, who died in 1976 at the age of 85, from the misperceptions that cling to her life and her works of fiction. …

… she revisits the most notorious episode of Christie’s life: her disappearance for 11 days in December 1926 …

Her gift for dialogue and for manipulating social stereotypes, as Worsley demonstrates, was formidable, keenly attuned to the proliferating class anxieties of the 20th century; numerous characters are, interestingly, transitional or dispossessed in some way …

Guardian Review

Over the past few years I’ve been reading her 70+ books. Many are very good.

Despite the books, magazines, TV adaptations, movies — Agatha had money troubles most of her life.

When asked “occupation“, Agatha stated “House Wife” her entire life.

She loved buying and maintaining homes. Loved shopping. Did have a social life.

Yet she was incredibly prolific and productive as a writer. Her plots she jotted down in notebooks.

One of the things I like best about Agatha are her books in exotic settings. She loved to travel. And her second husband was an archeologist. Agatha spent a lot of time with him on his digs in the Middle East.

Click PLAY or see a preview on YouTube.