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Fact and fiction blend in Dimond book

Book Review

It’s the quintessential mystery — a mystery writer goes missing for 11 days.

All of England searches for author Agatha Christie, the creator of such characters as detective Hercule Poirot and sleuthing Miss Marple. Christie’s disappearance in 1926 is fact, not fiction, and it’s been the subject of speculation ever since. Pender Harbour author Roy Dimond blends fact and fiction in his latest novel, Silence and Circumstance.

When Christie’s car was found abandoned by a pond, the search cranked up.

“This story dominated the news at the time,” Dimond said. “Thousands of people and police were out looking for her.”

It’s a fact that her colleagues in writing, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and Dorothy Sayers, mystery writer, were among those who searched. But it’s at this point that Dimond turns to fiction and begins a lively romp through the literary salons of the day as told through the eyes of Christie’s governess.

The witty Dorothy Parker from America joins Sayers, Sir Arthur, a young John Steinbeck and baseball player Mo Berg in puzzling the clues left by Christie as to the whereabouts of her diary. The trail leads them to Berlin where Adolf Hitler is already stirring up hate. Sir Arthur and a young Ian Fleming (prior to his fame as the James Bond novelist) travel on the Orient Express together, stopping in Monaco to meet Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso.

All these celebrities were contemporaries, but the idea that they all hung together in 1926 to deter the forces of fascism comes from Dimond’s vivid imagination. In real life Christie was found after 11 days at a spa in Yorkshire, but she offered no explanation for her disappearance. Could she have worked for a spy agency? It’s possible. 

This book is entertaining as Dimond intended it, though the editing by Untreed Reads Publishing could have been more rigorous. Dimond is concerned that through the humour we understand the overall message.

“We cannot let the tyrants rule us,” Dimond said, “the tyrants of the one per cent, the tyrants of religion.”

In the book, Sir Arthur speaks for the writers of the world, urging them to be involved for their freedom’s sake. “The first line of defense is words,” he tells his literary colleagues. 

Dimond is the author of The Singing Bowl, an epic journey by a Tibetan monk that ends with the monk finding his bliss on the hills of Pender Harbour, much like Dimond and his wife, who have lived in Garden Bay for the last 15 years.

“I honestly think this is a healing place,” he said, looking from the view window of their log cabin toward Pender Hill. It was where he wrote The Rubicon Effect, a Dan Brown-style thriller, and then collaborated with author Jeff Leitch to write a non-fiction book, Saving our Pennys, that draws from his career as a youth counsellor in schools. It speaks to the heart of every teacher who has ever questioned their efforts to help a student.

The prolific Dimond has other books on the go — one of them is a sequel that involves Agatha in Egypt. Silence and Circumstance is available on the Coast at Talewind Books and EarthFair Books.