“Agatha and the Truth of Murder” is a film that provides a pretty implausible but entertaining explanation for the eleven days in which famous mystery writer Agatha Christie had disappeared in 1926. Ruth Bradley plays the embattled Christie who is facing divorce and the sense of predictability in her writing. Pippa Haywood, Bebe Cave, and Ralph Ineson are also included in the cast. Tom Dalton wrote the script, which was then directed by Terry Loane.
Agatha is approached by a woman wanting some help with solving the murder of her partner which occurred on a train six years prior. Agatha is reluctant at first since she was merely a writer and not an actual detective. She finally agrees to take on the challenge and adopts the guise of a legal representative named Mary Westmacott. Fans would recognize this as a writing pseudonym as well. Anyway, she gathers the five people who would make plausible suspects who believe some inheritance is up for grabs. Of course, another murder occurs, and Agatha starts to feel a bit out of her depth.
I am not sure how close Bradley was in her actual depiction of Agatha Christie, however I still found her performance pretty enjoyable. It ended up being the basic British setup of a group of people in a remote mansion with a killer among them. Of course, the whole thing of Christie’s eleven day disappearance has been fodder for various writers and filmmakers periodically for decades.
This film may not be the most original and creative cinematic endeavor, but it was still pretty enjoyable, especially if one is an enthusiast for Agatha Christie and the era of mystery writing in which she ruled.
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