The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie

Since Wade has a bad habit of oversleeping, the others play a joke on him by placing eight alarm clocks in his room and timing them to go off at intervals.

The guest list includes Gerry Wade, Jimmy Thesiger, Ronny Devereux, Bill Eversleigh, and Rupert “Pongo” Bateman. Sir Oswald and Lady Coote host a party at the stately home Chimneys, which they have rented for the season. She compared this period favourably with the time at which she wrote these comments (1950s to 1960s) when she was plagued with income tax problems which lasted for some twenty years and ate up most of what people presumed was a large fortune. She called this era her “plutocratic” period in that she was starting to receive sums for American serialisation rights which both exceeded what she earned in the UK for such rights and was, at this time, free of income tax. She went on to say that they were always easy to write as they didn’t require too much plotting or planning, presumably in contrast to the very-tightly planned detective stories. In her autobiography, Christie states that this book was what she called “the light-hearted thriller type”. In this novel, Christie brings back the characters from an earlier novel, The Secret of Chimneys: Lady Eileen (Bundle) Brent, Lord Caterham, Bill Eversleigh, George Lomax, Tredwell, and Superintendent Battle. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence and the US edition at $2.00. The Seven Dials Mystery is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons on 24 January 1929 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year.

The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie