Read receipts: Growing up with Christie

{ CONFESSIONS OF A MYSTERY BUFF } WRITE OF PASSAGE

- K Narayanan

You often remember the first book you read by an author. The Guns of Navarone was my first Alistair Maclean. Hotel, my first Arthur Hailey.

I don't remember the first Agatha Christie I read. I remember being resistant to the idea. As a nine-year-old who had just discovered Sherlock Holmes, the idea that a woman could write a good murder mystery seemed far-fetched.

I said as much to a friend of mine. He had just recommended Mario Puzo's The Godfather to me, which I had read with a horrified relish.

He was a few years older, and I still remember his amused smile as we stood at his front door, the sounds of his father's veena lessons filtering through the twilight. "Don't be a fool," he said.

So I read Christie. I may have started with Dumb Witness. I remember thinking it was a striking title. A murder is committed by the simple expedient of a string tied across the top of the stairs. I remember examining the stairs at our house with a new, macabre fascination.