Lucy Foley went 'method' to revive Agatha Christie's Miss Marple after 50 years - USA Today

I was on the subway reading “Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel” by Lucy Foley and Agatha Christie when a stranger stopped me to ask, with knitted eyebrows, how it was. 

She was a hardcore Christie fan and had heard about Foley’s collaboration with the late mystery author’s estate to release the first authorized Marple novel in 50 years. Foley is a mystery and historical fiction author, having written bestselling novels including "The Guest List" (2020) and "The Paris Apartment" (2022).

But my subway companion worried about someone else picking up Christie’s pen. She at least found comfort in the fact that Foley, like Christie, is British.

“Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel” (out Sept. 22 from William Morrow) is a brand new Miss Marple mystery set in the Swiss Alps in 1950, where the geriatric amateur detective is vacationing with her close friend Dolly Bantry. But after a body is found and all the hotel residents are snowbound due to a blizzard, Miss Marple is back on the case.

When James Prichard, Christie’s great-grandson, got his hands on Foley’s draft, he read it in 24 hours.

As the chairman and CEO of Agatha Christie Ltd., Prichard has produced the Kenneth Branagh-led films “Murder on the Orient Express,” “Death on the Nile” and “A Haunting in Venice.” But amid these Poirot adaptations, he feels a “slight guilt” that he hasn’t done more with Miss Marple, another flagship Christie character.

“There has never been as much interest in my great-grandmother as there is now,” Prichard says. “I think she has spent a lot of time underestimated, partially potentially because she was a woman, partially potentially because genre fiction doesn't get the credit it deserves. But I do believe she is beginning to get much more of the credit she deserves. I hope that this is another way of adding to that. I hope we get a lot of readers who read this, enjoy this and then find their way to other Christies.”

In 2022, he gathered 12 authors for a new short story collection. Foley wrote the first one, “Evil in Small Places.” He was “surprised and delighted” that Foley was up to the task of a full-length novel too. From the outset, he was clear he didn’t want an Agatha Christie novel. He wanted a Lucy Foley Miss Marple novel. 

But both names do appear on the cover, and anyone who was (god forbid) unaware of Christie might assume “Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel” had a pair of co-authors. It isn’t your typical posthumous publishing case because Christie didn’t write any of it, so it has some hardcore fans skeptical. It’s also not the first time the estate has done this – author Sophie Hannah has written a handful of Poirot continuation novels.

“There was only one Agatha Christie,” Foley tells USA TODAY. “As a Christie fan, (trying to be her) would always be more troubling because it would feel like an act of forgery or passing off. It's never going to be as good as the original, so it had to be something new that was in conversation with the originals.”

Prichard isn’t worried about disappointing the “very passionate, very knowledgeable fan base” of purists.

“I count myself as a fan. I have deep respect for my great-grandmother and her work," Prichard says. “It's not trying to write as Agatha Christie wrote. This is Lucy Foley taking one of my great-grandmother's characters and writing a book about them. I think that's a very different thing. If you don't want to read it, don't read it. That's fine. But there are billions of people out there who I think will want to read it, not least of which because they love Lucy Foley's books.”

Though Prichard gave her free rein with the novel, Foley did remember a few key “Marple constitution” rules from the short story collection. Don’t make Miss Marple young. Don’t give her a love interest. Don’t introduce Poirot (“The whole universe might explode,” Foley says). Don’t make her the murderer. 

At first, Foley thought she might set the novel in a little English village like the one she lives in, which feels straight out of a Christie novel. But no, that’s already been done “so brilliantly and so comprehensively” by Christie herself. 

“It has to have a reason for being this new thing as well, otherwise, there are lots of Christie books to read, go and read them,” she says.

When she found out that Christie originally envisioned Marple for “Death on the Nile,” she thought she might take her on a vacation. After so much murder and mayhem, the woman deserves as much. How about a wintery getaway? And after Prichard found a photo of his great-grandmother skiing in the ‘30s, it felt right.

“Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel” is about murder, yes, but it also comments on post-war sentiments, PTSD, class, deception and sexism. It’s an homage to the way Christie’s books “chart social change in Britain,” Foley says. 

When it came to research, Foley went “sort of method for it.” Not only did she read nearly a hundred Christie books, but she also only read books from that period. She pulled from Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe and Ava Gardner to craft a glamorous, tortured actress. She watched Alfred Hitchcock movies. She listened to a “dark and moody” Miles Davis soundtrack while she wrote.

There was also, of course, Miss Marple to get right. 

“I obsessed over that, her patterns of speech, I'd mark them up as ‘Marplisms’ in books,” Foley says. “I always think it's fascinating as well how Christie plays with how the other characters see her and what that tells you about them. There's a lot of ageism and sexism, and that tells you much more about the characters than it does about Marple.”

Foley considers herself a “pantser” more than a “plotter” (writer slang for creating a story “by flying by the seat of your pants”). But she learned a great deal from Christie when she was writing “Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel.”  

She wanted to nail “that kind of Swiss watch perfection of the plotting as closely as I could to the great Christie. So I obsessed over that and went almost quite scientific on it,” Foley says. “Then I felt that the elements of myself I could introduce or my own kind of style with a multi POV thing, having multiple narrators, which actually I felt there was scope for in the original book.”

When he read it, Prichard said he thought he'd figured out the mystery halfway through. He thought it was clever, but felt disappointed he got it so soon.

But as he reached the end, Prichard realized he was completely wrong. Just like a bona fide Christie novel, the book’s twisty revelations took him by surprise.

Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, covering buzzy releases, chatting with authors and diving into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at cmulroy@usatoday.com.