Читать книгу Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making - Includes Two Unpublished Poirot Stories - John Curran - Страница 21

It could reasonably be supposed that each Agatha Christie title has its own Notebook. This is emphatically not the case. In only five instances is a Notebook devoted to a single title. Notebooks 26 and 42 are entirely dedicated to Third Girl; Notebook 68 concerns only Peril at End House; Notebook 2 is A Caribbean Mystery; Notebook 46 contains nothing but extensive historical background and a rough outline for Death Comes as the End. Otherwise, every Notebook is a fascinating record of a productive brain and an industrious professional. Some examples should make this clear.

Notebook 53 contains:

Fifty pages of detailed notes for After the Funeral and A Pocket Full of Rye alternating with each other every few pages

Rough notes for Destination Unknown

A short outline of an unwritten novel

Three separate and different attempts at the radio play Personal Call

Notes for a new Mary Westmacott

Preliminary notes for Witness for the Prosecution and The Unexpected Guest

An outline for an unpublished and unperformed play, Miss Perry

Some poetry

Notebook 13 contains:

Death Comes as the End—38 pages

Taken at the Flood—20 pages

Sparkling Cyanide—20 pages

Mary Westmacott—6 pages

Foreign Travel Diary—30 pages

The Hollow, Curtain, N or M?—4 pages each

Notebook 35 contains:

Five Little Pigs—75 pages

One, Two, Buckle my Shoe—75 pages

N or M?—8 pages

The Body in the Library—4 pages

25 pages of ideas