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I know. Most writing authorities say write what you know. Yet the greatest mystery writer of all time wrote about a subject she wasn’t a firsthand expert on. Agatha Christie wrote about murder like she had done it herself a hundred times. Wrote about the intricacies of the mind behind murderers.

Then There was None is perhaps the greatest selling book in history. It is an incredible whodunit. Something she had trouble topping. I don’t think she topped this work, but she created many works equal to it. Murder on the Orient Express is just one example. 

The books top the movies in this respect. I recommend any writer who hasn’t read Agatha Christie’s work do so. Her work should be required reading for writers. Any writer. Her use of language, her ability to capture the essence of tension and build it to a boiling point is exquisite. Her ability to think like a killer is even more worthy of respect.

Ms. Christie grew up in a wealthy family and was home schooled. It was the way back in her day. She didn’t suffer traumas or was exposed to the crimes she writes about so eloquently. Her traumas were the death of her mother and her divorces. Standard stuff nowadays. 

I am an ardent admirer. Christie shows you an impossible situation at the beginning of her books and then methodically takes you through it until the big reveal at the end. I love the big reveals. It may be cliché these days, but they still get me. Especially if I didn’t figure it out. Think about the movie Sixth Sense.

I still wonder where she learned how to think like a killer to craft her situations. To think like a detective. Like the two famous detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Detectives who think outside the box and possess unique personalities. Detectives she created.

Was this what she was like in real like? Not particularly. Christie disappeared once when her husband wanted a divorce to marry another woman but when you look at it, all she did was hide from life for a while. 

Agatha Christie possessed the incredible ability to take places she knew, professions she understood, and twist them into plots about subjects she had no background in. Sure, she knew about poisons thanks to her time serving in two world wars as a nurse. She studied pharmacology in the first world war and used this background to create the poisons she used in her stories. 

In fact, there is a famous story about a woman who saved a person dying because she recognized the symptoms of the poison from an Agatha Christie novel. Incredible. 

Yet, I state this again. Nowhere in her personal history or background was there any involvement with law enforcement, crimes, murders, or mystery. She crafted everything from whole cloth. Virgin territory, if you will. Ms. Christie had to think like someone she wasn’t in order to write such compelling mysteries. She did so sixty-six times and is still selling books long after her death. 

Can you do this? Can you set aside your upbringing, your history, your point of view and craft situations completely foreign to you. Can you pull yourself out of your comfort zone and enter the mind of a killer you create? Can you craft a crime no one can solve? Can you stump even yourself? 

If you can then perhaps you can write on the level of Ms. Christie. Until then, I recommend you grab one of her books and begin your education on how to write from a point of view completely foreign to you.

I’m Ross, The Editor-in-Chief at The Pyrateheart Press and I’m out.