You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide—From Another Mystery Writer
          Did you know that Sherlock Holmes’ creator Arthur Conan Doyle based many of his Holmes’ stories on actual occurrences? Consider Agatha Christie’s mysterious disappearance in 1926. She drove away from her home one morning. Later that day, her locked car was found in a ditch with the motor still running. Ten days later she was discovered in a hotel at the Harrogate Spa in Northern England. A journalist named Ritchie-Calder believed that Christie had planned to commit suicide, staging the incident to appear as if her husband and his mistress had murdered Agatha.
         Years earlier, Conan Doyle had been knighted and appointed deputy-lieutenant of Surrey. Although he retired in 1921, he was called in as a consultant on the Christie case. In turn he consulted a medium who told him that Christie was alive and would surface on the following Wednesday. The prediction came true. This incident resembles Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story “The Problem of Thor Bridge.”
         Excerpt from my The Sherlock Holmes Triviography and Quiz Book.