(typewriter tapping) (bell dinging) (typewriter carriage return) - [Marie] Hi, I'm Marie Benedict and this is The Mystery of Mrs. Christie.

On the evening of December 3rd, 1926 a young mother and wife of a World War 1 pilot hero disappeared in mysterious circumstances.

That woman was Agatha Christie and The Mystery of Mrs. Christie offers a fictional resolution for that disappearance.

- [J.T.]

So how much of the story is true, verifiable fact?

And where do you slide information in that's your interpretation of it?

- I drew very heavily on her autobiography, which if you're an Agatha Christie fan, I highly recommend, it's fantastic.

But of course, Agatha is her own unreliable narrator because in her own autobiography she not once mentioned her disappearance.

So you kind of have to take her recounting of her history with a grain of salt, verify things.

And that's kind of how it works with most of my books, you know, the research guides you but then it always leaves black holes for you to fill in.

(mysterious music) - [J.T.]

What do you think it is about Agatha Christie that we find so appealing?

- [Marie] I think first, just the intellectual puzzle of her stories is fascinating unto itself.

You know, she doesn't play any games or tricks.

It's not like supernatural beings come in and fix everything in the end.

The answers are all there but you have to be able to figure them out.

- Tell me a little bit about how you choose your extraordinary women to write about.

- Well, the funny thing about finding them is that I literally find them everywhere.

You know, I feel like once I, you know, I was a lawyer in an old life and really always loved history and never really thought of myself as a writer.

But once I committed to that path I feel like I developed almost like a sense for them.

- [J.T.]

For more of my conversation with Marie Benedict please visit awordonwords.org.

I'm J.T.

Ellison, keep reading.

(bell dinging) - [Marie] When I think back on my kind of past and how I ended up here it actually goes all the way back to middle school.

And I think girls, especially, but all people, it's almost like who you were and what you were passionate about when you were in those middle school years before society kind of came in and told you who and what you should be, I think that's a really important time.