Even now, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t squeeze in a Poirot or two. We soon fell into the habit of watching her adaptations together. I think my dad was actually glad I’d discovered crime. My parents never curtailed my reading, unsuitable though it might’ve been. Agatha Christie became my gateway drug to Sherlock Holmes, Bram Stoker, Emily Brontë and Stephen King. Six months later I read And Then There Were None. Overnight I transitioned from Nancy Drew (who dabbled in robberies and the odd kidnapping) to Agatha Christie (who liked to murder liberally). It was clever, vicious and, most importantly, not meant for children. Having devoured all the books in the children’s section of Ballymena library, I wandered into crime and picked up Murder in the Clouds. I first encountered Christie at the unlikely age of eight. I’ve been modelling myself on her for years.
If I’m being entirely honest, the writer who has most shaped me is the late, great Agatha Christie. But the truth is I came relatively late to the kind of books you’re supposed to read. As a lapsed Presbyterian magic realist, I’m the love child this pair would never have had. When asked which writers have influenced me, I usually say Flannery O’Connor and Gabriel García Márquez.
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