“Well, the timing is extremely convenient, and she did publish a short story under the pen name of Mary Westmacott in the Sovereign Magazine in January 1926.” “Might Christie have also read or been aware of the Riverton story?” asked Moffatt. In the same letter, she said her brother-in-law, James, had come up with the same ruse. In later life, Christie wrote to thank Lord Mountbatten for suggesting she make the storyteller the culprit in her next book. There are already two acknowledged sources of inspiration for Roger Ackroyd. Sven Elvestad, who published crime fiction under the pen name of Stein Riverton. “We do not claim this is conclusive proof that Christie ‘borrowed’ the idea for Roger Ackroyd,” said a spokesperson from Lightning Books, the publisher of Moffatt’s recent translation, adding that Christie herself was always suspicious of coincidences. Now Moffatt sees a clear chain of probability linking Christie with The Iron Chariot. “My contact there, Brian Sherwood, was able to tell me that the April 1924 edition of Tip Top Stories contained a translation of the Riverton story.”
“They obviously like a good mystery too,” said Moffatt. It ran for just six months between 19 before it merged with the Sovereign Magazine, but Moffatt tracked down a rare copy in the British Library.
In fact, Riverton’s book was not available in English until 2005, and Christie did not read Norwegian.Ĭase closed then, if Moffatt had not remembered an online reference to the one-off publication of Riverton’s story in a British crime magazine of the era: Tip Top Stories of Adventure and Mystery. Until now, though, the matching plots looked like mere coincidence, as Riverton’s book did not come out in Britain until after the publication of Roger Ackroyd. First published in Norway in 1909, Jernvognen has since been voted the greatest Norwegian crime novel by the Norwegian Crime Novelists Association.
The key similarity between the Norwegian tale and Christie’s was clear to Moffatt when she began her own translation of Riverton’s work. Jernvognen (The Iron Chariot) by Stein Riverton.
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