Carolyn G Hart (she also publishes under the variant name Carolyn Hart) is an award winning American author of mystery and suspense novels. Through the course of a long writing career, she has written more than 63 books and has won multiple awards, including nine nominations and three wins of the Agatha Award. Of particular interest to Agatha Christie fans is her "Death on Demand" series, a series of mystery novels about a female sleuth and which contain multiple references and easter eggs about Agatha Christie and her works.
The Death on Demand series[]
Begun in 1987 with Death on Demand, the series was Hart's first commercial success. By 2017 series had reached 26 titles. The main protagonist is Annie Laurance, the owner of a mystery bookstore "Death on Demand" located on a fictional island resort off the coast of South Carolina. Annie is a avid Agatha Christie fan. She owns (so she says) a complete collection of her works on a shelf in her house and has a whole bookcase devoted to Christie titles in her shop. She also has a cat named Agatha and a boyfriend, later husband, named Max. Needless to say Annie runs up against mysteries and crimes which she has to solve.
The setting of a bookstore allows Annie and her customers to make references to many real-world mystery authors and their books. Agatha Christie and her works are mentioned many times, in almost every novel. Sometimes this would be a simple mention of the title. More frequently, plot elements, characters or tropes from Christie's works are compared with the persons, situations or crimes that Annie finds herself involved in. Another ongoing theme in the books are the competitions which Annie organises. Typically these would comprise a series of paintings depicting scenes in the novels of real-world authors. Annie's customers (and Hart's readers) are challenged to decipher which books the paintings represent. Again, Christie's works feature frequently as the subject of these competitions.
List of Titles in the Death on Demand series[]
Significant Agatha Christie references and easter eggs are listed in the remarks column. However this table does not include all the brief references to Agatha Christie, her works, characters and plots as there are far too many. A comprehensive list of all the references to Agatha Christie (and other myster writers) can be found at the Better Than Fiction website here
# | Year | Title | Remarks |
---|---|---|---|
1 | 1987 | Death on Demand | Agatha Christie's works are the subject of the 5 paintings in the competition. There is a mistaken reference to Hercule Poirot being in Towards Zero. Denouement uses the trope (attributed to Hercule Poirot) that one should focus on the victim, not the killer. The character of the victim reveals the identity of the killer. One of the paintings in the puzzle inspire Annie to deduce the killer |
2 | 1988 | Design for Murder | |
3 | 1988 | Something Wicked | |
4 | 1989 | Honeymoon With Murder | |
5 | 1989 | A Little Class on Murder | |
6 | 1990 | Deadly Valentine | |
7 | 1991 | The Christie Caper | |
8 | 1992 | Southern Ghost | |
9 | 1995 | Mint Julep Murder | |
10 | 1998 | Yankee Doodle Dead | |
11 | 1999 | White Elephant Dead | |
12 | 2000 | Sugarplum Dead | |
13 | 2002 | April Fool Dead | |
14 | 2003 | Engaged to Die | |
15 | 2004 | Murder Walks the Plank | |
16 | 2005 | Death of the Party | |
17 | 2006 | Dead Days of Summer | |
18 | 2008 | Death Walked In | |
19 | 2009 | Dare to Die | |
20 | 2010 | Laughed ’til He Died | |
21 | 2011 | Dead by Midnight | |
22 | 2012 | Death Comes Silently | |
23 | 2013 | Dead White and Blue | |
24 | 2014 | Death at the Door | |
25 | 2015 | Don't Go Home | |
26 | 2017 | Walking on My Grave |
External links[]
- Carolyn Hart's website
- Judith Watt, "Hart of the Mystery", Sooner Magazine, Winter 2007. URL