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It was my belief that changed quite recently, not the copyright status.
(I believed that since Mysterious Affair at Styles was originally published in the US (although I'm not even sure of that, since it was serialised before the book edition), then the rule of the shorter term would apply, and it would take the US copyright term. It turns out, though, that although we now have the shorter term rule, we didn't between 1957 and 1996 and the rule does not retrospectively apply to anything that was renewed then, which would include the Christies. The way the law was changed in the UK always seems to favour the longer term. If the new law gives a longer term, then it is retrospective, if not, then it isn't.)
I can make a reasonable attempt at finding out if a book is in the public domain or not, but I don't really see how I can find out if a publisher has the rights they claim to have.
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