Are YOU This Week's Winner? + How the Book Club Came To Be

AS YOU KNOW to celebrate the launch of my latest cozy mystery, I've been selecting a subscriber each week to win an earlier book in the series (or any of my eBooks if you've read them all). And this week I'll get straight to it. Drum roll please…

THE WINNER IS:

Elaine Hall

Woohoo! Congratulations Elaine. I'll be in touch with you shortly to claim your prize.

Everyone else, you can download the Agatha Christie Book Club series here, or pre-order the new instalment at the links below. Until then, here's a preview…

AND THEN THERE WERE 9

REMOTE LYLE'S LODGE: Deep in isolated rainforest, the Agatha Christie Book Club gathers to meet four new members, each one hiding a secret from the group…

ONE IS AN IMPOSTER.
ONE HAS BEEN HERE BEFORE.
ONE IS HUNTING FOR SOMETHING.
AND ONE WANTS REVENGE.

With membership now at nine, the club settles in to discuss Christie’s best-selling mystery—the one about the madman bumping off his isolated guests.

VERY SOON, LIFE BEGINS TO IMITATE THE BOOK.

First one person is murdered, then another, and then a mighty bushfire ignites in the forest below, cutting them off with their own "madman" on the loose. Employing the wisdom of Poirot and a trusty bushfire survival plan, they must unravel each new member's secret to unmask the real killer and survive the book club from hell.

But this time not all of them will get out alive.

@AMAZON       kobo  

Apple iBooks   B+N nook     

How & Why I Started this Series

(an excerpt from Book 3)

"IT WILL COME AS no surprise to hear that I have been an Agatha Christie fan since I can remember (no, really), and yet I feel the need to mention it as I am often asked how I came up with the idea of the Agatha Christie Book Club series. Did a marketing dynamo whisper it in my ear? Am I just riding on Dame Agatha’s tails? Who do I think I am?

So let me answer the question once and for all.

Yes, I adore Agatha Christie, but it goes deeper and farther than that—all the way, in fact, to a secluded island in remotest Papua New Guinea. 

I was holidaying with my family. I was not yet ten. There was no television, no radio, nothing to tempt a bored tweenie at night but a termite-infested bookshelf bursting with pulp fiction and Agatha Christie novels.

I scooped one out. I dusted it off. I opened the pages… You know the rest.

It was that first book—Evil Under the Sun, as it turns out—that planted the seed that eventually grew into a love of mysteries and a flourishing writing career.

This series is my homage to the greatest mystery writer of them all.

Each and every book is in honour of Ms Christie, and yet I’m not trying to write an Agatha Christie novel—I wouldn’t dare. Nor am I trying to recreate her extraordinary characters in my own. Instead, I’m simply extending the joy to a new group of fans, my book club friends, and exploring what happens when you take a bunch of amateur sleuths, plonk a complex puzzle in their laps, and let the words of Miss Marple and Monsieur Poirot guide them home.

I hope you enjoy these modern adventures as much as I have enjoyed writing them, and I hope they renew your love for all things Agatha Christie. "

Happy reading, everyone.

xo Christina

4 Reasons Miss Marple is THE Queen of Amateur Sleuths

A few weeks ago I did a survey…

Sure, it wasn't exactly scientific, but after more than 100 responses to my question "Who's your favourite amateur sleuth?", I think we can safely say that Miss Marple is Queen of the Quizzes, Master of All Mysteries and the least amateur of all amateur sleuths.

And I'm not surprised.

Agatha Christie had already penned the perfect professional detective in Hercule Poirot (who appeared in her first book The Mysterious Affair at Styles), so it's no surprise that she got her amateur sleuth so spot-on. So how did she do it?

They're in it for love (not money)

There are a few core ingredients to a good amateur sleuth (AS). For starters, they really do need to be an amateur. They can't be a police officer or a detective or even a private eye (which is why Poirot does not make the list). They must be a layperson, someone incidental, someone who just happens upon mysteries and can't help but use their natural instinct for intrigue to get involved. But it must also be justifiable, reasonable, logical that they would get involved. Otherwise it's all a bit of a stretch.

That's why so many amateur sleuths are priests and doctors—people who naturally interact with the public and come across suspicious corpses.

Miss Marple is neither of these yet she ticks all the boxes, which brings me to another core ingredient:

They're nosey parkers

The best AS's are naturally nosey and Miss Marple is your classic nosey neighbour, the 'little ole biddy' next door who peeks through curtains and eavesdrops on gossip. It's no surprise she spots criminals sneaking about and overhears death plots. She's got a constant ear to the ground and knows everybody's business whether they know it or not. Which brings me to the next ingredient of a good AS.

They're invisible!

Well, perhaps not literally but it's hard to poke about when you're the centre of attention, which is why women of a certain age make terrific AS's (Jessica Fletcher anyone?). Invisible Woman Syndrome really does exist—just ask any woman (and some men, for that matter) over the age of 50 who have ever applied for a job or tried to order a drink at a busy bar. It's like you're not there! Which can be so frustrating—unless, of course, you're trying to solve a murder. Then you can use it to your advantage (mwahaha). 

They're disarming

Even when she does get noticed, Miss Marple comes across as sweet, harmless, even a little slow-witted. She's an 'elderly spinster' after all! Few people take her seriously and that is her superpower. Both cops and bad guys underestimate her, letting clues slip and being disarmed in her presence. Yet she's whip smart and playing them all! (It's a trick that works for pros like Vera Stanhope, Columbo and Monk.)  

And while there are plenty of AS's who disprove the rule—there's nothing invisible about Phryne Fisher, while Nancy Drew uses youth to her advantage—I still believe nobody does it better than Jane Marple. 

And, it seems, most of you do, too.

Meet MY Bookish Sleuths!

My Agatha Christie Book Club series features a club full of passionate amateur sleuths who clearly love a good mystery—hence the reason they've joined this particular book club—and each bring their own ingredients to the mix. 

Club founder Alicia Finlay has a rather eerie way of looking at the world, seeing the worst in everything and suspicious of everyone, which really helps when it comes to crime, while her stunning sister Lynette and classy club member Claire have a splash of Miss Fisher about them. They often use their 'feminine wiles' to flirt their way to the truth. 

Yet it's probably librarian Missy who most resembles Miss Marple. Missy might be young but she does waffle on, and can seem ditzy and airheaded. The truth is she's as switched on as Miss Marple and people underestimate her at their peril.

There's also a fastidious Poirot-style character in Perry and, one of Christie's achetypes, a dashing doctor with a penchant for poison—Anders.

Want to meet the whole gang and see how they got together? You can grab the first eBook and paperback in the series now from any good online bookstore, or at Amazon here.

Happy reading, everyone, and happy amateur sleuthing, too. Because when you think about it, we're ALL amateur sleuths!

xo Christina

Love Agatha Christie and Cozies? Love My Discounted Series!

Join My Book Club as They Channel Miss Marple in Their 1st Cozy Mystery — Book 1: Just 99c (one week only!)

Agatha Christie isn't just the Queen of Crime, she practically invented the Cozy Mystery genre, which is now one of the most popular crime genres in the world, and certainly my favourite (in case you hadn't worked that out).

In an effort to pay homage to the great Dame Agatha, and to provide my readers with fun cozy mysteries, I wrote my first Agatha Christie Book Club back in 2012—and it has gone on to be my best-selling book, out-selling my Ghostwriter Mystery Series two books to one!

Now Let me Make This Clear...

NO ONE can replace the Great Agatha Christie, certainly not author Sophie Hannah (who tried several times) and certainly not me.

And that was never my intention with this series.

Instead, my books take a fresh and contemporary approach; 'fanzines' if you like. In this series I've gathered a group of Agatha Christie devotees together, thrown a baffling mystery at them, then sat back and watched as the book club friends consider what Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple would do to sift through the clues, recognise the red herrings, and work out whodunnit. 

It's been a lot of fun to write and I hope you find it a fun read. I've since released a second adventure in the series: Murder on the Orient (SS) and have a third book due out for Christmas. 

If you haven't had a chance to read one, get in fast. Thanks to BookBub and Amazon, I'm discounting the first in the series—down from $3.99 to just 99c.

The offer starts on October 19 and runs until October 26. To grab your discounted copy, go straight to your fave e-store, to Amazon, or for BookBub subscribers in the UK, Australia, Canada or India, click here. 

Happy (cozy) reading everyone.

xo Christina (C.A.) Larmer

A Killer Giveaway (or 3)

My regular readers will know I've been dead quiet lately. Apologies for that. It's been a mammoth month with a lot of writing - but mostly other people's. 

As you may also know, my day job involves constructive editing for other authors and I've had the privilege of doing just that recently, editing first a memoir from the 1970s, and then a 'single woman's guide to real estate' (my working title, not hers, but I'm sure I can convince her).

Editing other people's words really is a privilege; I don't use that term lightly. As the author of 11 books, myself, I know the hurdles writers have to overcome to simply put pen to paper, let alone finish a manuscript and THEN have the courage to hand it to someone else to 'critique', so I thank those authors for their bravery and belief in me. It really has been fun.

Of course that doesn't help you, now, does it? All this editing means I have had to put my own writing on the back burner. Bummer. So, to make it up to my loyal readers, I will be running a series of sales that I might just call my 'Suck Up Sales', for obvious reasons.

And here they are:



• Suck Up Sale #1: It all starts with my current discount for my latest book Do Not Go Gentle.

The story of a dead woman's quest to solve her own murder before the granny-beckoning light whooshes her off to eternity, this is a fun, light read with a lot of dark humour. Actually, make that black humour! It's my darkest book yet, but there really is a lot of light and it's not all coming from the tunnel, I can assure you.

You can grab a copy of that NOW for just 99c.

• Suck Up Sale #2: From June 20, I will be running a fortnight-long sale of the second book in the popular Agatha Christie Book Club series: Murder on the Orient (SS).

This one features a real steamship, brought back to life in my imagination, just for the purposes of baffling my fabulous book club friends. Several passengers meet a grim end on the ship—as you'd expect—but it's the ending that will take you by surprise. So far, no one I know has worked out whodunnit! Can you?

That cozy mystery will be available for 99c from June 20.

• Suck Up Sale #3: And later in the month, I will do a flash sale of the first—and most popular—book that started the series: The Agatha Christie Book Club. That one will also drop to 99c, so keep an eye out for that (and for a loony husband who may or may not have murdered one of the book club wives).


Phew. I think that should cover my proverbial you-know-what, until I find time to get a new book out.

Until then, happy (discount) reading everyone!
xo Christina

Agatha Christie Book Club on sale

Just a quick heads up for new readers and old—I've discounted my best-selling cozy mystery, The Agatha Christie Book Club, to just 99c, for one week more.

A quick, fun read for Agatha Christie devotees or those who love book clubs and/or murder mysteries, The Agatha Christie Book Club tells the story of a group of Dame Christie fans who must channel their inner-Miss Marple to solve the mysterious disappearance of a fellow book club member. Did the hubby do away with her? Or is someone from the book club hiding a deadly secret?

Get your sale copy at Amazon, Apple, Nook or Kobo. Or head to Smashwords for other e-readers.

Happy (discount!) reading, everyone.

xo Christina

20 FREE copies of new e-book to giveaway!

With the launch of my new Agatha Christie Book Club—Murder on the Orient (SS)—I'm giving my devoted blog readers a chance to win one of 20 free copies of the e-book!

That's right, baby, TWENTY!!

All you have to do—and it's uber easy—is jot down the name of your favourite Agatha Christie Book. I mean, really? Could it be an easier?

Do you adore Murder on the Orient Express, as I do? Is Evil Under the Sun a smarter choice? What about something more cryptic like The ABC Murders or Peril at End House?

Dame Christie wrote around 82 detective novels, so you've got plenty of books to choose from.

Just jot the title in the comment box below or, if you'd like more privacy, via a direct email to me, and I'll get back to you if you're one of the first 20: christina.larmer@gmail.com

That's right—there is no right or wrong answer. Just get in quick!

I promise NOT to use your name and email for any other purpose so please don't worry about that. I just want to share my story with other Christie fanatics, and I want to do it fast.

So, let's recap…

Six Steps to Success

Step 1: Stop screaming at this wondrous opportunity and get a grip!
Step 2: Think about all of the Dame's many fantastic whodunnits and decide which one takes the cake. Can't recall them all? Try: the Agatha Christie website or Wikipedia.
Step 3: Write down the name of that chosen book in the comment box below, or via email to me.
Step 4: Sit back, take a breath and wait to hear if you're the lucky winner. (Gasp.)
Step 5: If you ARE the lucky winner, just let me know which format you prefer (for Kindle, iPad etc) and wait for it to be emailed directly to you.
Step 6: Download the book then sit back, take a breath, and enjoy the read :-)

Good luck everyone and thanks, once again, for all your support! I couldn't have done it without you.

xo Christina

The true story behind the real SS Orient

“The SS Orient, kiddoes! It’s a sign from Dame Christie herself!”

Missy Corner, Murder on the Orient (SS)

At last, here it is... 

If you enjoyed the first book or are just looking for a classic whodunnit, the Agatha Christie Book Club is back, this time on a nautical adventure called Murder on the Orient (SS), now available for pre-order at Amazon.

Murder on the Orient (SS) follows our beloved book lovers as they embark on a "quiet cruise" (cough, cough) between Sydney, Australia and Auckland in New Zealand.

Naturally, the first dead body shows up within 24 hours, but it's not really until a second body goes missing—this time with a loud squeal and an ominous splash overboard in the dead of night—that the club decides to pull on their Poirot mo' and investigate.

Based on a real ship

Like all my mysteries, this one was a lot of fun to write, but it was even more fun to research. Anyone who knows me, knows I love to sink my teeth into crusty old documents, dusty old reference books, and pages and pages of web material to get at the truth.

I'm a research junkie with no desire to kick the habit.

And this book was research (Acapulco) gold. The SS Orient really does exist. Or it did, back in 1879 when it was first built. And while the steamship only sailed a mere 30 years or so, mostly between London and "the colonies", it was also literary gold as far as I was concerned.

I quickly created a modern-day replica of the SS Orient and lured my book club aboard.

Not only does the ship have the perfect name—“The SS Orient, kiddoes! It’s a sign from Dame Christie herself!”—it was the ideal setting for an old-fashioned style whodunnit, the kind of ship Dame Christie (Miss Marple or Poirot) might have voyaged on had the opportunity come up.

It's elegantly designed and decorated and has few mod cons like CCTV and WiFi to get in the way of a good story. After all, there's no chance of sneaking into someone's cabin to bump them off on the Pacific Princess what with all those pesky cameras catching your every move.

Based on a favourite story

Now that I had the setting I just needed a great plot and I may—or may not—have borrowed from the Queen of Crime. I wanted there to be echoes of the original Murder on the Orient Express without being a carbon copy. Some elements are similar, some are wildly different, and Agatha Christie aficionados will enjoy a little trainspotting as the story progresses.

Just don't expect it to be handed to you on a silver platter. Like Christie's books, I provide a stack of clues and some fishy red herrings to keep you guessing right until the 'great reveal' at the end.

Or at least that's the plan.

I'd love to hear your thoughts once you've read the book. For now, jot me a line and let me know what you think of the cover, the setting and the basic premise of the story. Or simply sign up for your early copy at Amazon here.

Murder on the Orient (SS) will be officially launched on Friday, May 13. Yep, that's black Friday.

Unlucky for some.

If you haven't read the first in the series, The Agatha Christie Book Club, grab a copy now or look out for future discounts. There'll be plenty of those.

Until then, happy (retro) reading, everyone!
xo Christina