A television production company will be on the West Coast later this month as part of a new documentary retracing Agatha Christie's 1922 world tour - which included a little-known visit to the Coast.
Outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare, British crime writer Dame Agatha Christie was on the verge of international fame when she visited the West Coast on an around-the-world promotional tour for the British Empire Exhibition.
A five-part British TV series, Travels with Agatha, is following her journeys. It will be presented by Sir David Suchet, who played Christie's iconic Belgian detective Hercule Poirot for almost 25 years.
Filming is under way and expected to air on Britain's Channel 4 later this year. It is understood filming on the West Coast is imminent.
During her time in New Zealand, Christie wrote countless letters she wrote home to her family, as well as photographs she captured on the voyage.
Grandson Mathew Prichard pulled it all together in his 2012 book The Grand Tour.
Christie arrived in New Zealand aboard the steamer Manuka and set out for Westport on July 10 in 1922.
Letters in The Grand Tour show it poured with rain and there was thick mist in the Buller Gorge.
It was still raining the next day when they visited Denniston and met with the manager's wife, while Christie's husband Archie went underground in the coalmine.
The following day they left in the wind and rain for Greymouth and on to Reefton to catch the train.
On July 13 they went to Punakaiki.
"There are wonderful nikau palms... it looks far more like tropical scenery than South Africa," Christie wrote.
Then it was south to Hokitika with the "most lovely view of the Southern Alps and Mount Cook in the distance, really beautiful".
They saw a gold dredge at work, then met "a funny old lady like a dilapidated hen".
Christie was stunned by Lake Kaniere, which she described as "one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen".
On July 15 the party walked 11 miles (17km) up the Otira Gorge - a year before the tunnel opened.
Although her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, had already been published when she came to New Zealand - and was in libraries here - her fame was yet to come.
On her return, she published Poirot Investigates.
Christie never returned to New Zealand.
