Tom Adams' Archives Uncovered (Part 3)

This is Part 3 in a 3-Part Series.

Tom Adams: The Art of the Artist. An original retrospective into Tom Adams' iconic Agatha Christie book covers was presented on Thursday September 18th, 2025 at the International Agatha Christie Festival in Torquay, Devon. The talk focused on my findings from researching within his personal archives. It was accompanied by an exhibition at Torre Abbey museum titled Tom Adams & Agatha Christie: Partners in Crime. In addition to giving the presentation, I assisted with the curation of the exhibition which was designed to present many of the items I discussed in the talk. Because of the length of the talk and number of images to share, I am breaking it into several instalments. I've edited the content be more suitable for those reading online versus an in-person talk. In addition, I am sharing the actual slides used, so they are likely best viewed on a computer rather than a phone.

To read Tom Adams' Archives Uncovered - Part 1: (link)

To read Tom Adams' Archives Uncovered - Part 2: (link)

To read the review of the Exhibition: (link)

The Presentation (Part 3).

Faces & Figures.

Let’s shift now to another learning from Tom’s archives – and that is his eye for faces that were unique enough to cover a Christie mystery. Some were clearly just memorable – but some were even famous. Let’s start with the second cover he created for Destination Unknown in 1975 – with the rather scary character – not the toad – on the cover.

While I don’t know the specifics behind the image, given Tom’s attention to detail it is likely a North African woman. Not only did the face speak to Tom, but we also see how he used white paint to mask out her surroundings to allow him to better utilize the image. This painting is a great example of Tom’s ability to integrate the abstract into his art. While he was excellent at trompe l’oeil painting, especially glass, his family shared with me that it was important to him that he be recognized for his much broader skill set as an artist.

Here’s another face that clearly spoke to Tom – and he used it as the dominant image on the second cover he created for Appointment with Death and it’s certainly one of his most disturbing and sinister – perfect for this novel.

I’ve not been able to determine who this woman was to have her image in a magazine – whether appearing as herself or a model – but I do wonder if she ever recognized herself on the cover of this book!

Another example of a unique face that Tom used where an archival image was found includes The Sittaford Mystery (1971). The lady’s face on the cover had an archival image, but the man in the bottom right corner lacks a source image, but we’ll see him again in the next cover.

Below is the American Pocket Books printing of A Murder is Announced (1972) with the same man who we just saw on The Sittaford Mystery… and no there isn’t a character who appears in both books!

While these covers were created a year apart, clearly the man’s face highly appealed to Tom for inclusion in both. As we see, the lady on the cover was originally holding an old style movie camera that Tom removed while preserving her unique look and posture.

By default famous people have their images in newspapers and magazines more often that we would – so it’s understandable that some of the faces that inspired Tom were of known individuals. For example, here on the US printing of The Pale Horsei (1972), the lady on the bottom right of the cover is of a famous Polish stage actress and director.

Tom’s archive shows us that she’s Ida Kaminska – known as ‘The Mother of the Jewish Stage’. Certainly, a highly theatrical face which certainly appealed to Tom the artist.

On the American printing of Murder on the Orient Express (1971) while I’ve been unable to identify the lady on the front cover – the one on the rear cover used the image of a famous Danish author for inspiration.

That’s the image of Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa. Perhaps not the most flattering of images and one she likely never saw since it was published in the States.

But my last face to share is another full cover image like the earlier Appointment with Death. For the 1972 cover of Hickory Dickory Dock Tom effectively integrates green ink, and a large gemstone – both relevant to the novel – along with the title character of the nursery rhyme – the mouse – I was quite surprised to learn what the actual gem was in this picture and whose eyes they are.

Well in Tom’s archive I found this image of Elizabeth Taylor and the Krupp Diamond – the engagement ring given to her by Richard Burton in 1968. Once you know this, you can’t but not recognize her, and it’s something you’ll always think of every time you see this cover.

Creative or Imaginative Art.

I have just two more themes of creativity I want to share with you. The first I’m calling ‘Creative or Imaginative Art’ as there are examples in Tom’s archives where he appears to have created the artwork from his mind without any significant use of source material or studio photography.

I’m going to share with you 3 phases of Tom’s process. The first relates to the After the Funeral and how it evolved from its British cover – shown here – into the American cover. This British cover below was published in 1969. As the archives show, it was created through a blend of studio photography – with his glass dome placed over an axe – and a media image as inspiration for the nun.

Three years later the American version of this novel – titled Funerals are Fatal – was published. You can see some of the imagery remained, but the landscape format of the covers allowed Tom to restructure these core components. Below we see the first step in his process – how he reframed the picture and created a rough outline of the image.

This rough reminds me of a comment Tom’s son, Mark, shared with me – and that is that Tom really thought about the formation and structure of the image and that this was influenced by his architectural background and discipline – and these were traits that clearly ran in the family given Tom’s father was a town planner and his grandfather was an architect.

Next is the American printing of Peril at End House (1971) for which his archives revealed the second step in his creative process – a rough monotone painting of the design. On the rear of this rough painting Tom wrote:“Against Cornish Coast of rocks and sea - old house and trees – frightened girl’s head and black crows – small running figure amongst trees.”

I’ve put a circle around the small figure which made it into the final cover. As you’ll see in a later cover, he periodically planted these details that one has to look closely for.

Also, you can easily tell this is an early proof or rough design as the location of the house was moved for the final artwork – as were several other key elements.

The third and final step in his creative art process is illustrated by the archive material for the American cover for The Mirror Crack’d (1971). Shown below is the final proof design for the core part of the image – but without the expansion elements of the staircase or ceiling. Now fully painted, Tom’s artwork captures that key moment from the book exceptionally well.

Collectively these three phases of the creative design process shows us that progression from sketch, to rough, to proof.

Complex Collaging.

The last theme to discuss is what I’m calling Complex Collaging – which captures Tom’s ability to meld all of his techniques together and is fully illustrated when his archival material related to a certain title is more complete.

Below is the 1970 cover for Dead Man’s Folly showing how Tom repurposed the image of a girl being rescued by the fire department into his victim.

But the archival material for his American cover two years later is much more complete – and yes, he kept the same girl’s face as the victim, but changed the clothing and the body.

We can see how Tom traced the merged image and reversed it. His notes state ‘Dead girl and shadowy figure in foliage’ – a figure that I think many people may miss noticing – I put a black oval around him in the top left of the cover. We also found the boat, lake and water lily images that he used. By collaging all these images together, Tom was able to create the design he sought.

Another good example of the complexity in cover design is for the American cover of Ordeal by Innocence (1972). There are actually two known versions of this cover image – the one shown below from the book, and a slightly different one that you can see in the book Tom Adams Uncovered. In the archives, we found numerous components for this image. In the top right, we have a newspaper clipping with the actor Peter Sellers in the role of Dr. Strangelove who Tom uses for the character Philip Durrant. In the bottom right, an unidentified newspaper clipping gave us the woman’s face – perhaps Tina Durrant. On the left, we have a newspaper clipping of a scene from the 1966 film of Alice in Wonderland that provided the hallway, and above that a few studio photographs providing images for the billowing curtains and the character in the hallway. A traced image of the dove rounds out the scene. All of these components were then collaged together to create the scene Tom sought.

The Last Paperback Covers.

Next I want to look at the last paperback covers he created. The last paperback created for the American market was Evil Under the Sun, in 1973. While the archives provide us the magazine pages that provided the silhouette of the cliffs, Tom had painted his wife – Georgie – for this cover and the driftwood was one of the first gifts Georgie gave Tom after they first met.

The last cover Tom created for Fontana was Miss Marple’s Final Cases (1980). This is the scarcest cover of Tom’s for collectors to find as Fontana only used it on the ‘Continental Edition’ – an English-language printing that was sold in Europe.

In the archives we have a couple of images used as source material. The lady in the lace clothing was sourced from an article about historical fashion being shown at the V&A museum. The other image is of Caroline Maria Lupton, known professionally as Marie Studholme, who was an English actress and singer from the Victorian and Edwardian eras who was also one of the popular postcard beauties of her day.

An Expert Veteran At His Craft.

At this point in the presentation Georgie Adams joined me on stage to discuss the last covers Tom did for a couple of Agatha Christie hardback books, that were created in the 2010s. First, we discussed the commemorative box set of The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain – published in 2016. In the archives were numerous source images of candles and butterflies that were used in the paintings.

As he did often, rough paintings were created for both. Tom had a bit of fun with this rough painting for Styles as he added the Fontana logo making it appear like one of his paperbacks. Sadly, Tom was never able to create actual covers for Christie’s first 6 books as the publishing rights were controlled by The Bodley Head initially and in the 60s and 70s only Pan Books could produce them.

Let’s shift now to the final cover – Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly - which was released two years earlier as a small hardback with a wrap-around dust jacket. Tom really enjoyed the research that went into creating this cover as it included a day spent at Greenway with Agatha's grandson, Mathew Prichard.

Below we see a number of the items we found in his archive, including many of the photographs he took while on that visit to Greenway.

Now I’ve arranged a number of this images as Tom would have to build up his collage….

And here you can see the cover design really take shape as he traced all of those items and formed the image. This tracing was fixed with a varnish as discussed earlier.

From this final design, he then painted the cover which was shown earlier. Tom’s son, Jon, told me that Tom always thought of himself as a painter and artist who also illustrated books. This image proves that beyond any doubt – this is clearly a work of art that a book was fortunate to have as its cover.

Before we end, I think it’s important to also note that in Tom’s archives was a letter from Agatha Christie, replying to Tom’s inquiry about whether he could paint her portrait from real life – something that sadly never happened. But Agatha did say she was well aware of Tom’s art work on her books and that she could not pick a favourite as she liked so many of them.

Note: For those who have the ability to travel to Devon, the exhibit related to this talk is on exhibition until December 21st, 2025. Link for details.

Input.

Comments are most welcome - either by adding them at the foot of this article or by email at: collectchristie@gmail.com . It would be great to hear what you've enjoyed learning about or seeing in this article. Also, if there are any specific covers you have questions about do let me know. Many were not covered in the presentation due to time constraints.

Subscribe & the Socials.

 If you are not a subscriber to my website, please consider subscribing here: link. This ensures you receive an email any time I write and post an article. Re: Social Media accounts - do consider following me on X (formerly Twitter) @collectchristie , on BlueSky @collectchristie.bsky.social  and on Facebook. The content on X and BlueSky is usually identical, but will vary on Facebook. I am also now on Instagram.  All should be of interest for any fan of Agatha Christie.

Happy Collecting!