In 1926 Christie was already deeply affected by the death of her mother earlier in the year and the breakdown of her marriage to Archibald Christie. Her brother-in-law, Campbell Christie, suggested compiling the "Sketch" stories into one novel, rather than undergo the strain of composing a completely new novel, and helped her revise them into a more coherent form for book publication. His assistance mainly took the form of revising the beginnings and ends of the stories to make them flow better into a novel – the substance of each story remains the same between the short story version and the novel version. Unlike the later "Partners in Crime" (1929), the order of the stories was retained.