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Top Ten Books

Over the course of six novels, the writer Christopher Bollen has demonstrated a knack for writing moody, intelligent mysteries that never sacrifice character development on the altar of thrills (though thrills there are aplenty). “You want life to mean something, and you want it to hurt when someone dies and you want to feel the loss of their life,” he says on our podcast Shelf Life. Hurt it often does. When a major character is killed off in his 2015 novel, Orient, it catches in your throat, feels personal. In his sixth novel, the critical darling Havoc, what initially seems like a twisted version of Agatha Christie's Jane Marple becomes a study of a deteriorating, dangerous mind as 81-year old Maggie Burkhardt meets her match in an 8-year-old rival, Otto. As the two engage in battle, anyone and everyone around them becomes collateral damage. A diehard fan of Agatha Christie, one of several touchstones for his own writing career, we invited Bollen to identify ten of his favorite Christie novels for One Grand Books, something of a daunting task given Christie’s output: 66 novels and countless short stories. Below are Christopher Bollen's favorite Agatha Christie books, available to purchase individually or as a set. See the full list...