Agatha Christie exhibition opens at Neston Library

If you have a soft spot for a good whodunnit, Neston Library is about to become the place to be. 'Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery' opens there on Friday 30 October, and it is the first stop of a tour that will take the exhibition to four more Cheshire West and Chester libraries in 2027: Great Boughton, Little Sutton, Chester and Winsford. The display is part of a Living Knowledge Network celebration of Christie's life and work, marking 50 years since her death on 12 January 1976, and Neston is one of 33 library services across the UK taking part.

The exhibition itself looks at the origins of her most famous characters, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and how her childhood, travels and experiences fed into her stories. It is a chance to see the woman behind the books: Agatha Mary Clarissa Mallowan, born Miller in 1890 in Torquay and known to the world as Dame Agatha Christie, who wrote 66 detective novels and 14 collections of short stories over her lifetime. Her books have sold more than 100 million copies in English and have been translated into around 100 languages, and she is still widely regarded as the best novelist of all time, with more than 2,000 million books sold across her entire body of work.

The exhibition is only the start. A borough-wide programme of events is being built around it, and the opening night is a big one: on Wednesday 4 November at 7pm, Neston Library hosts a special launch for a new mystery story by Ann Cleeves, 'A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy', written specifically for Cheshire West and Chester Libraries. It is a new spin on her 1992 Inspector Ramsay novel of the same name, and the library is calling it a world debut. The evening is set up as an interactive mystery, with the audience listening to the suspects, questioning their motives and making its own accusation. Tickets are £10 and need to be booked through the libraries' TicketSource page, and there is a cash-only bar and the Curious Cat Bookshop on the night.

Beyond that, the programme keeps going with author talks from the likes of Kelly Mullen, Sophie Hannah, Jo Cunningham and Katy Watson, a concert of classical music that inspired Christie and appears in her novels, a talk on poisons and remedies, and events on the history of crime and justice across Cheshire West. There are interactive mystery-solving activities for younger visitors too, and a national British Library initiative that lets local artists design new covers for Christie novels. Two of the other author events worth noting are 'A Murder in Eight Cocktails with Kelly Mullen' at Frodsham Library on Thursday 19 November at 7pm, £8, and 'An Evening with Sophie Hannah' at Sandiway Library on Thursday 26 November at 7pm, £10; Hannah is the author commissioned to write the new Hercule Poirot novels for the Christie estate.

A bit of practical info before you go: Neston Library is on Parkgate Road, on the left-hand side after the shops on the way out of town, with Neston railway station and the bus stops both about a five-minute walk away. There is a small car park at the rear and some on-road parking at the front. Opening hours are Monday, Wednesday and Thursday 9am to 5pm; Tuesday and Friday 9am to 7pm; and Saturday 9.30am to 1pm, closed on Sundays. Membership is free, and you can borrow and return books at any library in the borough, so it is an easy place to pick up a Christie and start your own investigation.