This is only the second novel that Agatha Christie wrote after her divorce from her first husband, Archie, and she commented ?I was gaining confidence over my writing now. I felt that I would have no difficulty in producing a book every year, and possibly a few short stories as well.? She found "light-hearted thriller type" novels easy to write as they didn't require too much plotting or planning compared to say her previous book The Mystery of the Blue Train. With The Seven Dials Mystery, Christie looked back to her earliest writing and revived the popular Lady "Bundle" Brent and her associates from The Secret of Chimneys.