A forgotten play by one of the world's best known murder mystery writers has come to light more than 70 years after it was written. Agatha Christie--the creator

of fictional Belgian detective Hercule Poirot--penned several plays including the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap.

But The Secret of Chimneys, a spy thriller Christie wrote in 1925,

has lain forgotten in the vaults of the British Library and has only just been uncovered. The play, a spy thriller set around European politics in the 1930s, is now set to premiere in October in Canada.

Mathew Prichard, Christie's only grandson, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "A producer in Calgary in Canada wrote us a letter saying he understood there was this unperformed play. We said we knew nothing about it.." He asked The British Library, which is obliged to keep a copy of every play ever registered, to look for it. "Sure enough, [it] turned up with a copy of Chimneys, " said Mr Prichard.

Having read the play, Mr Prichard told Today: . "Once my grandmother began to write whodunit plays like The Mousetrap and Witness of the Prosecution, those were the sort of plays that the public expected to see from her. "I think even if they had known of its existence they probably would still have gone on doing the whodunits."

Source: Internet

PHOTO: AFP

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