It may not make the sensation “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” did when it was first released in 1926, but MysteryNet president Steve Schaffer expects a Web site dedicated to Agatha Christie to make a killing on the Internet anyway.
The site (www.mysterynet.com/agathachristie/) is set to launch this fall. In addition to online adaptations of her works featuring Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot, the site will have background information about Christie and her characters; online reading groups; message boards; and an e-commerce area where visitors can buy books, puzzles, videos and other official merchandise endorsed by Agatha Christie Ltd., MysteryNet’s partner in crime for this venture.
Given that Christie’s are the most published works after the Bible and Shakespeare’s, motive, means and opportunity are not in question here. And Schaffer is not exactly the least likely suspect to create the site.
He founded MysteryNet in 1995 and built it into a leading publisher and producer of online mysteries and mystery Web sites. His other “name” mystery site is dedicated to Nancy Drew. Although he describes Drew and Christie as the two biggest brands in mystery fiction, Schaffer confesses to having been an Encyclopedia Brown aficionado himself when he was young.
Schaffer also favors calling mystery a special interest rather than a genre, which he feels is too literary. Some 70% of visitors to his sites are female, between 24 and 49 years old – what he terms “the heart of the women’s audience.”
With about 300,000 unique visits a month to his existing sites, success is not a surprise ending.
The twist comes in Schaffer’s main site, TheCase.com, which features characters and stories created for the site. A mix of mystery and soap opera written by noted writer Henry Slesar, it’s become “a destination for everyone who likes a mystery,” Schaffer claims.
It doesn’t take any little gray cells to figure out who profits there.
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