Agatha Christie has experience with conflicts and ferocious competition.
The author is now embroiled in a drama befitting one of her own stories, 46 years after her death, as her estate has threatened crime novelist Val McDermid with legal action in a dispute over who is the real “Queen of Crime.”
The 67-year-old Scottish author Miss McDermid claimed she recently got a letter requesting that she stop using the pseudonym she uses on her website because Agatha Christie Ltd. owns the rights to it.
The author, who is referred to as the Queen of Crime on her website and has sold more than 17 million copies of her novels, also claimed to have received communication from Mrs. Christie’s great-grandson James Prichard, the CEO of Agatha Christie Ltd, who expressed his “horror” at seeing the moniker.
Agatha Christie has experience with conflicts and ferocious competition. The author is now embroiled in a drama befitting one of her own stories, however, 46 years after her death, as her estate has threatened crime novelist Val McDermid with legal action over who is the real “Queen of Crime.”
The 67-year-old Scottish author Miss McDermid said she got a letter requesting that she stop using the pseudonym because Agatha Christie Ltd. owns the rights to it.
The Agatha Christie estate wrote: “You must quit and desist referring to Val McDermid as the Queen of Crime,” Miss McDermid said at the Edinburgh Book Festival. We’ve registered this phrase as a trademark.
You will violate copyright and this trademark if you refer to Val McDermid as the “Queen of Crime.”
You can only imagine my horror when my train arrived at Waverley Station in Edinburgh and a sign said, “New from the Queen of Crime,” the man added.
You must realize that nothing about this is personal, but we must preserve my great-heritage. grandmother’s It is just very sad.
The author, who is referred to as the Queen of Crime on her website and has sold more than 17 million copies of her novels, also claimed to have received communication from Mrs. Christie’s great-grandson James Prichard, the CEO of Agatha Christie Ltd, who expressed his “horror” at seeing the moniker.
When she was a young girl, Miss McDermid said that she fell in love with mystery fiction after reading about Miss Marple in The Murder At The Vicarage.
We’ve been in touch with Miss McDermid’s publisher and the Agatha Christie estate for comments.
Mrs. Christie, who was born in Torquay in 1890, is most known for her 66 mystery novels and The Mousetrap, the world’s longest-running play.
The Wire In The Blood series by Miss McDermid, which stars clinical psychologist Dr. Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan and was dramatized for television with Robson Green and Hermione Norris, is possibly her most well-known work.