“Perhaps Bristow and Manning’s greatest contribution to the mystery field, during those few years when they dabbled in crime fiction, was creating the work which may well have inspired what is quite possibly the greatest mystery novel of all time.Death comes to Devon in Agatha Christie’s controversial but popular murder mystery, And Then There Were None. Where The Invisible Host is a well-written, clever and exciting (if wildly improbable) mystery, And Then There Were None is a work of sheer genius,” admits Evans in the introduction.
“Unquestionably the Queen of Crime brought her own inimitable ingenuity and flair to Bristow and Manning’s original plot. The Invisible Host will be published in October by Dean Street Press, which described it as an “innovative and most unusual mystery from the golden age of crime fiction”, which “established one of the best-loved and most durable forms in classic mystery fiction”. But it’s always fun to look at these coincidences – it does happen that people can be in the same mental place and coming up with similar ideas.” And I also think Christie being the person she was, if there had been a link she would have acknowledged it. “The Invisible Host does have similarities,” said Hervé, “but I don’t think anyone’s been able to find a connection. It was clear, straightforward, baffling, and yet had a perfectly reasonable explanation.” “I was pleased with what I had made of it. “Ten people had to die without it becoming ridiculous or the murderer being obvious,” wrote the novelist. She defines the genre, but she also took it to a new level, like with Roger Ackroyd or Murder on the Orient Express.”Ĭhristie herself said that it took a “tremendous amount of planning” to write the novel, and that she took on the challenge “because it was so difficult to do that the idea had fascinated me”. You’ve got a woman who was at the absolute peak of her powers, and I’m sure she sat down and said, there’s this fashion for locked-room murders, I’m going to do the best possible one. “There was a real fashion in the 1930s for locked-room mysteries, and The Invisible Host is a good example of one of those, but there is no evidence that Christie was aware of it. “It’s always possible she heard something in passing,” said Hervé. “Is it so implausible to imagine that, at the very least, Christie saw the film and unconsciously drew on it four or five years later when she came to write her brilliant landmark mystery?”Īnna Hervé, editorial director for literary estates at Christie’s publisher HarperCollins, said that although there are “similarities” between the novels, there was “no obvious link” between them. “Christie need never have heard of, nor much less have read, The Invisible Host to have been influenced by it,” writes the historian. Each novel opens with them reading or thinking over their invitations … to the penthouse/island from their anonymous host,” points out Evans, adding that while the novel was not published in England, its 1934 film adaptation played there. “In general both books are about people entrapped within sealed locations … who are methodically ‘executed,’ as it were, by a seemingly omnipotent unknown assailant who never appears as such but rather speaks to them through mechanical means … All of the people … hide guilty secrets. “Do not doubt me, my friends you shall all be dead before morning.” Published in the US in 1930, and adapted for the stage that year, it went on to be filmed as The Ninth Guest.Ĭrime fiction historian Curtis Evans, in an introduction to the forthcoming UK edition of The Invisible Host, cites the “astonishing likeness” between the two novels, saying that it is “not just a matter of similar elements being in play: the entire basic plot idea is the same, the admittedly ingenious variations which Christie played upon it notwithstanding”. It begins with eight guests invited to a penthouse by telegram, where they are then told over the radio that they will all soon be dead. Husband and wife Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning were newspaper journalists in New Orleans when they co-wrote their first mystery novel, The Invisible Host. Bruce Manning and Gwen Bristow Composite: Dean Street Press
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