Agatha Christie Books

Agatha Christie published first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920 and introduced the detective Hercule Poirot. Poirot became a long-running character in Christie’s works, appearing in 33 novels and 54 short stories.

Miss Jane Marple, introduced in the short-story collection The Thirteen Problems in 1927, was based on Christie’s grandmother.

Christie built these tropes into what is now considered classic mystery structure: a murder is committed, there are multiple suspects who are all concealing secrets, and the detective gradually uncovers these secrets over the course of the story, discovering the most shocking twists towards the end.

Culprits in Christie’s mysteries have included children, policemen, narrators, already deceased individuals, and sometimes comprise no known suspects (And Then There Were None) or all of the suspects (Murder on the Orient Express).

Agatha Christie Novels

Her reputation rests on 66 detective novels and 14 short-story collections that have sold over two billion copies.

Her works contain several regular characters with whom the public became familiar, including Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Parker Pyne and Harley Quin.

In September 2015, a public vote identified book, And Then There Were None as the public’s favourite Christie novel. The writer found it one most difficult to write.

Agatha Christie Biography

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on 15 September 1890 into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon. She was the youngest of three children born to Frederick Alvah Miller, an affluent American stockbroker, and his British-born wife Clara Miller née Boehmer.

Before marrying and starting a family in London, she had served in a Devon hospital during the First World War, tending to troops coming back from the trenches.

She was initially an unsuccessful writer. She got six consecutive rejections, but in 1920 this changed when The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring Hercule Poirot.

During the Second World War, she worked as a pharmacy assistant at University College Hospital, London, acquiring a good knowledge of poisons which feature in many of her novels.

Christie wrote more than 30 novels featuring Poirot. Among the most popular were The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), and Death on the Nile (1937).

In December 1926, she disappeared for several days, causing quite a storm in the press.

Police found her car in a chalk pit. Journalist eventually found her staying at a hotel in Harrogate. She claimed to have suffered amnesia due to a nervous breakdown following the death of her mother and her husband’s infidelity.

At the height of her career, Christie wrote two novels that she intended to be published after her death. They were the last cases of her two great detectives, Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple – respectively, Curtain and Sleeping Murder.

When she wrote the novels, Christie had not thought that she would live so long. Following the success of the film version of Murder on the Orient Express in 1974, Christie authorised the release of Curtain, in which Poirot is killed.

As Margery Allingham said: Christie has “entertained more people for more hours at a time than any other writer of her generation.”

Agatha Christie breathed her last on January 12, 1976, at the age of 85 from natural causes, Wallingford, Oxford shire. His family buried her at St. Mary’s.

Agatha Christie Quotes

A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity. It dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.

If you place your head in a lion’s mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.

Agatha Christie the Mousetrap

The Mousetrap is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. The Mousetrap opened in London’s West End in 1952, and has been running continuously since then.

The longest running West End show, it has by far the longest initial run of any play in history, with its 25,000th performance taking place on 18 November 2012.

The play has a twist ending, which the audience are traditionally asked not to reveal after leaving the theatre.

Agatha Christie Top Books

THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD
MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE
THE A. B. C. MURDERS

Agatha Christie TV Series

Poirot (also known as Agatha Christie’s Poirot) is a British mystery drama television series that aired on ITV from 8 January 1989 to 13 November 2013.

The programme ran for 13 series and 70 episodes in total. Each episode was adapted from a novel or short story by Christie that featured Poirot.

Consequently in each episode Poirot is both the main detective in charge of the investigation of a crime (usually murder) and the protagonist who is at the centre of most of the episode’s action.