It’s been a good week for ... whodunits
There has been a mystery unfolding deep within the vaults of a Dundee book depository. Was there a dark secret lurking among the shadowy shelves of Charleston Community Library? Librarian Georgia Grainger turned sleuth after she uncovered a "secret code" hidden in a series of books when she began working at the library six weeks ago. Was there a spy ring operating in the heart of Charleston? Worse ... was there a serial killer at large?
Grainger discovered that multiple books from the same wartime romance series had the page seven underlined in pen.
As Agatha Christie and Mills and Boon collided, Grainger sought online help in solving the case.
She shared The Mystery Of The Page 7 Vandal on Twitter and the case went viral.
With 9,000 retweets and more then 25,000 likes, surely the perpetrator(s) would soon be foiled.
One of the key clues in unlocking the mystery was the genre of book targeted.
Grainger explained: "They were all what we affectionately call 'wee auld women books', romances set in World War Two Britain that are very popular amongst our older patrons.”
And soon the case was cracked ...
The intrepid librarian discovered that many older visitors would make a small personal mark inside a book to remind them they have read them, a method for people to keep track before libraries had computer systems to keep a record of borrowing.
So – an open-and-shut case, and the elderly romantics of Charleston have been brought to book.
It’s been a bad week for ... whodunits
The eagerly anticipated adaptation of Agatha Christie's Ordeal By Innocence is dying a slow and painful death after losing 1.4 million viewers after the first episode amid complaints about a script littered with bad language.
The three-parter peaked at 5.2m during its first episode on Easter Sunday but has since seen audience figures slip below four million.
After the latest episode, viewers took to social media to fume at how the 1958 book has been adapted by writer Sarah Phelps, criticising the decision to use expletives that Christie didn't write.
In what seems to have been something of an ordeal by interference, Phelps also decided to change the identity of the killer, which meant she had to rewrite some of the story’s characters and subplots.
She has even changed the name of the family at the centre of the narrative from Argyle to Argyll.
Murder most foul indeed.
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