I’m attending an event this weekend with my cozy mystery writer friend, sponsored by Murder On Ice, a chapter of Sisters in Crime, a group of dedicated mystery writers. The event features two workshops by writer and professor Jessica Lourey, one about mixing humor and suspense in writing (should be good) and the other is a how-to…how to write a novel in 7 steps — and 6 months — (should be real good!). Looking forward to it and in the spirit of the day… did you know.. 

When Agatha Christie killed him off, Hercule Poirot was given a full front-page obituary in the New York Times. Christie disliked Hercule Poirot, calling him ‘a detestable, bombastic, tiresome, egocentric little creep’. Much like Arthur Conan Doyle with his famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, Christie tired of her creation and actually planned to kill him off as early as the 1940s, when she wrote Curtain, the novel in which Poirot meets his end. The novel would not be published – and Poirot not finally killed off – until 1975, a year before Christie herself died. Hercule Poirot’s surname, by the way, comes from the French poireau, meaning ‘leek’.