Agatha Christie, murder and mystery at Singapore Writers Festival 2026

[SINGAPORE] Agatha Christie has been dead for half a century, but murder mysteries remain very much alive.

At this year’s Singapore Writers Festival (SWF), the Queen of Crime gets a session devoted to her enduring influence, alongside conversations about serial killers, locked-room mysteries and murder weapons.

Crime and mystery form one of the defining threads of the festival’s 29th edition, which runs from Nov 13 to 22, with more than 300 writers, speakers and moderators featuring in over 200 programmes.

They include celebrated writers such as Amitav Ghosh (Sea of Poppies), Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexican Gothic), Tan Twan Eng (The Garden of Evening Mists) and Jemimah Wei (The Original Daughter).

But with SWF 2026 themed Hidden In Plain Sight, crime fiction seems almost purpose-built for the occasion.

Even festival director Yong Shu Hoong was struck by just how extensive the genre’s reach has become in books, film and the endless procession of murders, detectives and unsolved cases on streaming television.

“I think this genre might even be more popular than science fiction,” he says. Science fiction was the festival genre spotlight in 2025.

Yet, despite crime fiction’s long inventory of corpses, detectives and familiar twists, he sees little danger of it running out of possibilities: “I don’t think the genre can really be exhausted. Good writers always find ways to reinvigorate it.”

Its appeal, however, may have less to do with murder than with what happens afterwards.

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Chan Cheow Thia, a National University of Singapore lecturer who teaches crime fiction and is guest curator of SWF, points to the genre’s classic promise – that eventually, somebody will make sense of the mess.

“The appeal is the restoration of order,” he says. “Crime creates a rupture in society. Then the detective, the judicial process and the forces of law resolve the crime, heal that rupture and restore order. In this day and age, that’s reassuring because everything is so uncertain.”

Increasingly, however, contemporary crime writers have complicated that bargain, turning tropes on their heads.

Among the festival guests is Irish mystery writer Louise Hegarty, whose novel Fair Play borrows the locked-room mystery only to turn its mechanics towards grief. 

Also a guest is Chinese writer Shuang Xuetao, who uses the architecture of crime and thrillers to examine memory and moral ambiguity, rather than to simply identify a culprit. 

Meanwhile, Singapore’s own mystery queen Ovidia Yu has worked in two very different modes: the contemporary cosy mysteries of her Aunty Lee series and the historical Crown Colony mysteries, which send a 1930s sleuth through the social fault lines of colonial Singapore.

Taken together, they prove there is still plenty of life in murder.

The festival’s crime and mystery highlights

Still Killing It: Agatha Christie’s Enduring Legacy: Mystery writers Louise Hegarty and Robin Stevens revisit Christie 50 years after her death to ask what she got right, what still feels startlingly modern and what the Queen of Crime herself might be reading today. Nov 22, 11 am, Victoria Theatre.

The Making of a Serial Killer: Korean crime writer Seo Mi-ae joins Singapore’s Jocelyn Suarez and Malaysia’s Rueben Dass to discuss the strange discipline of getting inside a killer’s head without losing one’s own. Nov 14, 3.30 pm, Victoria Theatre.

How 2: Solve a Bad Case of Poisoning: A toxicologist and a crime writer, whose identities remain secret until the session begins, separate fictional poisons from the genuinely lethal stuff. Nov 21, 3.15 pm, The Arts House.

Old Crimes, Fresh Takes: Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jean Tay and Ovidia Yu raid history for material, from 1950s Mexico to colonial Singapore and a real 1965 Singapore murder. Nov 22, 3 pm, Victoria Theatre.

Crime, Memory and Moral Ambiguity: Shuang Xuetao and translator Jeremy Tiang consider what happens when crime fiction stops promising neat solutions and becomes a way of writing about instability itself. Nov 22, 4 pm, National Gallery Singapore.

Accuse You, Excuse Me: Table-Top Murder Mystery Game: A role-playing game in which participants become characters, acquire secrets and motives, and attempt to prevent an innocent person from taking the fall. Sessions run on Nov 14 and 21 at The Arts House.

Not Your Typical Sleuth: Robin Stevens, Ning Cai and Shamini Flint examine detectives who fall outside the traditional Sherlock mould – and why being underestimated can itself be an investigative advantage. Nov 22, 5.30 pm, The Arts House.