About halfway through my college career, I spent a summer in a house chockablock with Agatha Christie novels. Without access to a library, bookstore, and this being well before the days of ebooks, my voracious need to read was met by the Christie canon.

I have two distinct memories of that binge. First, that I loved Third Girl. Turns out, upon rereading it recently, the book I was remembering was not in fact Third Girl but The Pale Horse, which holds up in quality to memory’s halo. Third Girl doesn’t.

The second memory I have is that Agatha relied on what I termed “the second wife in Dorchester” trope far too often. Secret bigamy felt like a violation of the fair play rules of the classic puzzle mystery. Turns out this memory is also false: I’ve found only three instances in my recent effort to read every single one of her sixty-six novels.

Let us pass over in silence, for now, the anxiety and despair prompted by such false memories, especially (and ironically) where murder and justice are concerned…