When Agatha Christie, the so-called 'Queen of Crime', disappeared from her home in Sunningdale in Berkshire for eleven days on 3 December 1926, the whole nation held its breath. The following day, when her car was found abandoned 14 miles away at Newlands Corner in Surrey, a nationwide search was instigated.
From a painstaking reconstruction of Agatha's movements and behaviour during those eleven days, Dr Andrew Norman is able to shed new light on what, in many ways, has remained a baffling mystery about the most successful crime writer of all time.
In Agatha Christie: The Finished Portrait, Dr Andrew Norman delves deep into the crime writer's past to discover the desperate insecurity that sparked her disappearence in 1926. Agatha Christie suffered from recurrent nightmares where she was petrified that one or other of her family would be replaced by a terrifying figure called the 'Gunman' and lost to her forever. She was reminded of this figure both when her father died, and when her husband Archie demanded a divorce.
This event precipitated such a crisis in Agatha's mind that she became temporarily unhinged. She lost her memory and assumed a new identity: that of her husband's mistress. Only now, thirty years after Agatha's death, is it possible to explain fully, in the light of scientific knowledge, her behaviour during her troubled disappearence, when she lived incognito in a Harrogate hotel.
Dr Andrew Norman graduated in animal physiology from St Edmund Hall, Oxford before qualifying in medicine from the Radcliffe Infirmary. He worked as a GP until 1983, and is now an established writer. He is the author of several biographies, including Adolf Hitler: The Final Analysis, published by Spellmount. He lives with his wife Rachel in Poole, Dorset.