BBC confirms new Agatha Christie thriller The Pale Horse

Phelps, the screenwriter behind The ABC Murders, Ordeal by Innocence, The Witness for the Prosecution and And Then There Were None, previously told RadioTimes.com she had always intended to bring five of Christie's books to TV.

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The Pale Horse was first published in 1961 and centres around the character of Mark Easterbrook, a man whose name appears on a mysterious list found inside the shoe of a dead woman.

Easterbrook begins an investigation into how and why his name came to appear on the list and is drawn to The Pale Horse, the home of three rumoured witches in a tiny village called Much Deeping.

People say the witches can get rid of wealthy relatives using dark arts, but as the body count rises, Easterbrook becomes more and more determined to find a logical explanation, and figure out who could possibly want him dead.

"When I was working on And Then There Were None [in 2015], there was a little voice in my head saying that I could write a quintet and cover 50 years of the tumultuous blood-soaked 20th century within the genre of the murder mystery," Phelps previously told RadioTimes.com,

“Having now done the 1920s, the beginning and end of the '30s, as well as the 1950s, the next one is going to be set in the 1960s."

Casting for the two-part BBC1 drama will be announced at a later date.

The Pale Horse will be directed by Leonora Lonsdale (Beast) and produced by Ado Yoshizaki Cassuto (City of Tiny Lights).