by C. A. Larmer
Kirsten smiled politely, exchanged glances with another club member—they had exchanged those kinds of glances before—and shook her head, no. Her black bob did not budge.
“Why not?” Alicia persisted and Kirsten looked slightly taken aback.
“It’s just not what we do... here.” She fumbled for her sheet of questions. “Okay then, if we can return to the subject at hand. Where were we exactly? I think we were up to question four? Yes, style of writing. Have you got anything to say about that, Wilfred?”
She stared pointedly at a large man with a shaggy beard and gold-rimmed glasses who was slouched in an armchair across from Alicia. He pushed the glasses back into position and then slid one hand down to his beard and began caressing it lovingly. He’d been waiting for this.
“Right. Well, I have to say I’ve never been a big fan of Carey. I think he tries very hard but I’m not quite sure he’s pulling it off. His writing, well, it leaves a lot to be desired don’t you think?”
A few murmurs of agreement broke out around the lounge room where the meeting was being held and, encouraged, he launched into his trademark sermon on the fallibilities of the modern author. There wasn’t a decent writer left in the world, apparently; not since Hemingway and Salinger had a good book been published. Alicia couldn’t help wondering what a microbiologist would know about that but pushed the thought away and let out a long, soft sigh instead.
Why hadn’t she noticed it earlier? Why had it taken four sessions and a forbidden bottle of wine to make her see what was probably blatantly obvious to everyone else in the room from day one?
She just didn’t fit in here.
The truth is, Alicia Finlay couldn’t care less about literature. She just wished she did, the same way a woman who guiltily watches Desperate Housewives on TV wishes she could find the strength to switch over to that really important current affairs program on the public broadcaster. She just didn’t care enough.
Alicia’s mind wandered now to her own bookshelf in the cluttered, semi-detached terrace house she shared with her sister, Lynette, and their black Labrador, Max. The shelf was huge, took up an entire wall and tipped ever so precariously to the right. It was bursting with well-thumbed paperbacks, mostly crime novels, and mostly by British author Agatha Christie. Alicia smiled. What really woke her up in the morning and saw her drift off to sleep at night was an old-fashioned whodunit. And if it happened to be penned by the Queen of Crime herself, all the better.
She suppressed a giggle. Imagine if she suggested Murder on the Orient Express for the next book club! Wilfred would have a fit. Kirsten would choke on her chamomile tea. And I’d be in book heaven, she thought.
That’s it. Enough’s enough.
She stood up. She walked across to the side table. She picked up the bottle of red and poured herself half a glass. As she did so, the room fell silent behind her and she could feel their eyes boring into her back. She wondered if Kirsten would tackle her to the ground and wrench the glass out of her hands screaming, “But it’s not drink time yet!”
She turned around slowly and tried for her bravest smile. Kirsten’s eyes were abnormally wide. Verity looked nervous, glancing between Alicia and Kirsten. And Wilfred had stopped stroking his beard.
“What are you doing, Alicia?” Kirsten asked.
“Just helping myself, before I head off,” she replied.
She finished the drink in one large gulp, placed the glass down and reached for her handbag.
“But... but where are you going?”
She took a deep breath. “Look, I’m really sorry, guys, I gave it a go, but this club is clearly not right for me.”
They all looked stunned, as if it hadn’t even dawned on them, and Alicia realised then that it probably hadn’t. They were so self-absorbed they hadn’t noticed the elephant in the room. A wistful look crossed Verity’s face and for a moment Alicia thought she might leap to her feet and follow her out.
“But... but what about your book?” Kirsten demanded, grabbing Alicia’s pristine copy of Oscar and Lucinda from the antique coffee table and thrusting it towards her.
“Oh no thanks, Kirsten, you’re welcome to it. I’ve got much better things to read at home.”
And with that Alicia Finlay walked out on the Monday Night Book Club, their suffocating rules and their tediously dull literature, and she returned to her inner city home where her sister was just starting work on a crispy duck stir-fry, her dog was wagging his tail maniacally, and her latest Agatha Christie novel, a well-thumbed copy of Murder At The Vicarage, was waiting, temptingly, by her bedside.
Chapter 2
“You should start a book club,” Lynette announced between mouthfuls of dripping duck and broccoli.
Alicia scoffed and Max pricked up his ears hoping the conversation had something to do with food and his mouth.
“Um, I don’t think you’ve been listening to me, Lynny, I hated the book club. I’m never going back. Why would I subject myself to a whole new one? It’s masochistic.”
“No, not that kind of book club, silly. Start your own. One totally devoted to what you like.”
“Well, that would be crime fiction and last time I looked, you don’t have book clubs about that.”
She scooped a chunk of duck from her bowl and dropped it into Max’s waiting mouth. He slunk back under the table, satisfied.
Lynette frowned at her but let it pass. “Why not?” she said instead.
Alicia sat back and stared at her sister. Of the two, Lynette had always been the fearless one, ready to dive head first into life, never considering the consequences or looking back. Alicia, on the other hand, over-thought everything. In fact, her imagination was so ripe it would often throw in an axe-wilding psychopath and a tsunami for good measure.
It surprised no one, therefore, when Alicia chose to study journalism at university with a major in creative writing. Now 30 and a magazine editor, she was four years older than her sister but a good deal shorter with shaggy blond hair, a petite build and wide brown, enquiring eyes. Like her imagination, her job was all-consuming and she was almost always late home from work, especially during deadlines when she could be found at her desk, slumped over copy until the wee hours of the morning.
Lynette, on the other hand, was usually home well before dark, her long legs tucked under a stool at the kitchen bench, her flowing blonde locks swept up into an impromptu bun, and her emerald green eyes scanning the many cookbooks she had collected like artefacts over the years. She was a budding chef who worked most days waiting tables at Mario’s restaurant on busy Oxford Street in Paddington, and most nights honing her culinary skills in their small but surprisingly well-equipped kitchen. This suited Alicia (who hated to cook) and Max (who loved to eat) just fine. Lyn’s creations were usually delicious but occasionally there was a catastrophe—an overly salted broth, a too-tart dessert—that would see Lynette swearing like Gordon Ramsay and Max happily gulping down the remains. Alicia was always ready with a comforting hug and a few steely words of advice, most of which Lynette ignored.
“You could do that cooking course I spotted in the paper the other day,” Alicia suggested recently but Lynette shook her head emphatically. She was Generation Y. That meant bottomless aspirations and the patience of a toddler.
“I’ve decided to apply for MasterChef Australia,” she had declared instead, and Alicia tried not to frown.
“The TV reality show? That’s a rather roundabout way of getting into the industry. You’d have more luck knocking on restaurant doors.”
“Thanks for your positive vibes, Lis’.”
“Sorry, but you know how hard it is.”
“Hell, if a pimply faced kid can win it, I can’t see why I’m not in the running.”
Alicia had let it drop. Looking through to the kitchen now at the smudged cookbooks and endless scraps of paper with her sister’s latest creations scribbled down, she wondered if Lynette would ever crack the big time. Or was she destined to a lifetime
of experimenting on her grateful family?
She shrugged the thought away and considered Lyn’s question. She was right, of course. Why couldn’t you start a book club devoted to crime?
“Seems to me,” Lynette continued, “that plenty of other people love crime fiction, too. You’re hardly alone.”
“Hell, more people read crime fiction than snooty prize-winning tomes of trite. Just look at the Millennium trilogy.”
“Exactly! So, it won’t be hard to get a group together. Just ask around. Or get on Twitter. You’ll be inundated. But if you’re not, I’m happy to plump up the numbers. I’ve always had a soft spot for Miss Marple, you know that.”
In fact both sisters had been Agatha Christie devotees since childhood, a legacy passed down from their mother, Amelia, who possessed almost every book in existence and read and re-read them regularly. Their father, Tom, and brother, Monty (named after Agatha’s own brother no less), were less enamoured of the Queen of Crime and preferred a modern thriller complete with rogue CIA agents and at least one missing nuclear bomb.
Alicia put her fork down. She could hear her heart beating suddenly, as though it had only just come to life.
“I’m not sure how it’d work,” continued Lynette but Alicia was way ahead of her now.
“I know how it’d work! Oh, it’d be great. We’d all choose our favourite crime novel and focus on a different one each month... no, fortnight. They don’t take long to read, why wait a whole month? I’d start with Evil Under the Sun and then...” She stopped, darted her eyes from left to right. “No, no, forget that. We could all choose our favourite Agatha Christie novel! It would be an Agatha Christie book club!”
Lynette frowned slightly and took a gulp of her white wine. “Well, that might be taking things a bit far. I mean, are there enough books to sustain it?”
“Enough books? It would take us years to get through them all, Lynny. The woman was prolific. She wrote more than 50 books in 35 years.”
Lynette looked impressed. “There you go then.”
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, this is the best idea you ever had!”
“I thought my duck creation—I’m calling it Lucky Duck by the way—was the best idea I ever had.”
“Nah, that comes a distant second. Good name by the way.”
Alicia began to contemplate the club and her heartbeat continued to accelerate. She hadn’t been so excited by anything in such a long time, not since Ginny, the receptionist at work, had convinced her to take over her seat at the Monday Night Book Club.
Her heart skipped a beat. She knew how that had turned out. She slumped over her bowl. “You really think it’ll work?”
Her sister winked. “’Course it will! You just have to get the right people together this time. Set up a Facebook account or start tweeting every one you know.”
“And you don’t think it’s a little, well, macabre?”
“What do you mean?”
Alicia shifted in her seat. “You know, devoting a book club to crime and death and that kinda stuff?”
Lynette laughed. “For you, not at all. But don’t forget, Alicia, it’s just make-believe. Fiction, remember? It’s not like you’re dealing with real life murder, after all.”
Alicia laughed and crunched down on a snow pea. “You’re right, Lynette. It’s an innocent book club, what could possibly go wrong?”
If you enjoyed this excerpt, look for The Agatha Christie Book Club
by C.A. Larmer
Other books by C.A. Larmer:
Killer Twist
A Plot to Die For
Last Writes
An Island Lost
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
About the Author
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