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Did I Solve A Mystery?

© Copyright 1997, Jim Loy

When Agatha Christie was alive, she was once (maybe many times) asked what she would do if she ever ran out of ideas for murder mysteries. She said that she would just rewrite one of her earlier stories. She said that she could disguise it so well that no one would ever realize that they were the same story.

Well, I took that as a clue that Dame Agatha had already rewritten one of her earlier stories (maybe not because she had run out of ideas). I read all of the stories (a lot of books). And I tried to pay attention to whether the current story reminded me of any earlier story. And, there is a very obvious case of two stories being very similar. I read the novel, Evil Under The Sun more than once, and saw the movie. Then I read Triangle At Rhodes, which is a short story. They are the same story.

Before I pat myself on the back (too late), I must point out that this coincidence is much too obvious. Triangle At Rhodes is ruined if you have read Evil Under The Sun (and probably vice versa), it gives away the guilty party(s) early in the story. And other people have noticed the coincidence, too (Nancy Blue Wynne, in An Agatha Christie Chronology, which mentions The Bloodstained Pavement as also being similar).

I'm sure that other pairs of stories are similar to each other.


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