{"id":2329,"date":"2026-01-03T22:23:33","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T22:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/clues-to-christie-christie-agatha\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T22:23:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T22:23:33","slug":"clues-to-christie-christie-agatha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/clues-to-christie-christie-agatha\/","title":{"rendered":"Clues to Christie – Christie, Agatha"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Book Preview<\/h3>\n
\n
\n

Agatha Christie:<\/p>\n

An
\n\t\t\t\t\tIntroduction <\/p>\n

JOHN <\/span>CURRAN<\/span><\/p>\n

W<\/span>ho is
\n\t\t\t\t\tknown as the Queen of Crime, the Mistress of Mystery, the Duchess of Death? Who
\n\t\t\t\t\tis the world\u2019s most translated writer? Who is the biggest-selling writer in the
\n\t\t\t\t\tworld, with only Shakespeare and the Bible selling more copies? Who wrote the
\n\t\t\t\t\tlongest-running stage play\u2014almost sixty years\u2014in the history of the theater? The
\n\t\t\t\t\tanswer: Agatha Christie.<\/p>\n

In a career spanning over fifty years, Agatha
\n\t\t\t\t\tChristie transformed detective fiction both on the page and, later, on the
\n\t\t\t\t\tstage. Through the creation of a gallery of immortal characters\u2014Hercule Poirot,
\n\t\t\t\t\tMiss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford\u2014she sold more books in more parts of
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe globe than any crime writer before or since. Almost forty years after her
\n\t\t\t\t\tdeath, her entire output is still available in bookstores and seen in theaters
\n\t\t\t\t\taround the world. How did she do it? A look at her life may provide some clues.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.<\/p>\n

Life<\/p>\n

The youngest of three children of an
\n\t\t\t\t\tAmerican father and English mother, Agatha Miller was born in Torquay, England,
\n\t\t\t\t\ton September 15, 1890. Her family home, Ashfield, was a large, comfortable house
\n\t\t\t\t\tand her childhood was a very happy one. Although she never went to school, the
\n\t\t\t\t\tyoung Agatha devoured books, many of which\u2014The Three
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMusketeers, Vanity Fair, Bleak House<\/span>\u2014are mentioned in her Autobiography<\/span> and can be seen to this day on the
\n\t\t\t\t\tshelves of her last home, Greenway House.<\/p>\n

Her father died unexpectedly when Agatha was eleven
\n\t\t\t\t\tand it was subsequently discovered that his investments, the only source of
\n\t\t\t\t\tincome for the family, were not as gilt-edged as previously supposed. Some
\n\t\t\t\t\teconomies were necessary, but the young Agatha continued to enjoy a carefree
\n\t\t\t\t\texistence, participating in full in the social life of turn-of-the-century
\n\t\t\t\t\tTorquay, attending concerts and dances and amateur dramatics, roller-skating on
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe pier; and eventually travelling to Paris to study music. Luckily for the
\n\t\t\t\t\tworld of crime fiction, she was too nervous to perform professionally. She
\n\t\t\t\t\tretained a love of music, especially the operas of Wagner, throughout her life.
\n\t\t\t\t\tA trip to Egypt with her mother, in 1910, provided her with the background for
\n\t\t\t\t\ther still-unpublished novel Snow upon the Desert<\/span>.
\n\t\t\t\t\t(Twenty years later, in Death on the Nile,<\/span> novelist
\n\t\t\t\t\tSalome Otterbourne describes her novel, Snow on the
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tDesert\u2019s Face<\/span>: Powerful\u2014suggestive. Snow\u2014on the
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tdesert\u2014melted in the first flaming breath of passion<\/span>!)<\/p>\n

Although she received more than one offer of
\n\t\t\t\t\tmarriage, Agatha eventually settled on Archie Christie, a dashing member of the
\n\t\t\t\t\tRoyal Flying Corps. They married on Christmas Eve 1914 and, after a very brief
\n\t\t\t\t\thoneymoon at The Grand Hotel in Torquay, Archie returned to his flying duties in
\n\t\t\t\t\tWorld War I. Agatha also volunteered and, after a brief stint as a nurse, moved
\n\t\t\t\t\tto the dispensary of the local hospital, eventually becoming a qualified
\n\t\t\t\t\tdispenser. This gave her a professional knowledge of poisons, which she was to
\n\t\t\t\t\tput to good use in her literary career.<\/p>\n

As she explains in her Autobiography<\/span>, during this time she read Sherlock Holmes and The Mystery of the Yellow Room<\/span> by Gaston Leroux (later
\n\t\t\t\t\tto achieve immortality as the author of The Phantom of the
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tOpera<\/span>) and Anna Katherine Green\u2019s The
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tLeavenworth Case<\/span>. In the course of a conversation with her sister
\n\t\t\t\t\tMadge, she accepted a challenge to write her own detective story. Further
\n\t\t\t\t\tencouraged by her mother, Agatha worked on her novel, eventually taking herself
\n\t\t\t\t\toff to a hotel on Dartmoor for an undisturbed period of intense writing.
\n\t\t\t\t\tAlthough she began The Mysterious Affair at Styles<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\tin 1916, it was not published until the end of 1920 in the United States and in
\n\t\t\t\t\tearly 1921 in the United Kingdom. By then, she was the mother of her only child,
\n\t\t\t\t\tRosalind, born in 1919. Although already working on her third novel (The Secret Adversary<\/span>, her second novel, had been
\n\t\t\t\t\tnearly finished before The Mysterious Affair at
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tStyles<\/span> was published), Agatha enjoyed homemaking in post-WWI
\n\t\t\t\t\tLondon.<\/p>\n

In 1921, Archie\u2019s boss, Major Belcher, asked him to
\n\t\t\t\t\tparticipate in a business trip to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada,
\n\t\t\t\t\tand the United States, Belcher also arranged for Agatha to join the party and
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe trio set off on January 20, 1922. This exotic once-in-a-lifetime adventure
\n\t\t\t\t\tcemented Agatha\u2019s love of travel; her letters and photos from every stage of the
\n\t\t\t\t\ttrip confirm this; it also provided her the background for her fourth novel,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Man in the Brown Suit<\/span>, much of which was
\n\t\t\t\t\twritten during the long sea journeys involved in such a trip. The couple arrived
\n\t\t\t\t\thome in November 1922 and shortly afterward set up home in Sunningdale,
\n\t\t\t\t\tBerkshire, in a house they called Styles, in honor of the success of Agatha\u2019s
\n\t\t\t\t\tfirst novel. The dream of happy wife and mother and successful author was not to
\n\t\t\t\t\tlast.<\/p>\n

The first blow was the death, in 1926, of Agatha\u2019s
\n\t\t\t\t\tbeloved mother, and the consequent dismantling of Agatha\u2019s idyllic childhood
\n\t\t\t\t\thome. Worse was to follow when, shortly after, Archie asked for a divorce in
\n\t\t\t\t\torder to marry his sometime golf partner, Nancy Neele. Within a short time, two
\n\t\t\t\t\tof the people Agatha most adored in the world had deserted her, and this
\n\t\t\t\t\tcombination of emotional shocks precipitated her famous disappearance in
\n\t\t\t\t\tDecember 1926. Although for the rest of her life she never discussed this, there
\n\t\t\t\t\tseems little doubt that a breakdown of some sort, coupled with a desire for some
\n\t\t\t\t\ttime to herself, was the sole motivation behind the bizarre episode, although
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe newspapers of the time and books and documentaries ever since would lead us
\n\t\t\t\t\tto believe otherwise. Agatha was identified in a hotel in Harrogate ten days
\n\t\t\t\t\tafter leaving home; she immediately retired to Abney Hall, the home of her
\n\t\t\t\t\tsister Madge and brother-in-law James Watts, to recover from the ordeal. Her
\n\t\t\t\t\tlifelong aversion to the press, and publicity of almost any kind, probably stems
\n\t\t\t\t\tfrom this unhappy experience.<\/p>\n

Agatha produced an episodic novel, The Big Four,<\/span> in 1927, with the help of Campbell
\n\t\t\t\t\tChristie, her brother-in-law. She used these previously published short-story
\n\t\t\t\t\tadventures featuring Hercule Poirot to keep her publishers Collins and her
\n\t\t\t\t\tpublic happy until a new Poirot case, The Mystery of the
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBlue Train, <\/span>appeared in 1928. Agatha wrote most of this novel while
\n\t\t\t\t\tin the Canary Islands, with Rosalind and her faithful secretary, Carlo, during
\n\t\t\t\t\t1927.<\/p>\n

In 1930, Collins inaugurated the Crime Club; Agatha
\n\t\t\t\t\tChristie would be a prolific contributor to this imprint for the rest of her
\n\t\t\t\t\tlife. The first Christie title to feature the now-famous hooded gunman logo on
\n\t\t\t\t\tits cover was also Miss Marple\u2019s first book-length case, The Murder at the Vicarage<\/span>. Thus began Agatha Christie\u2019s golden age,
\n\t\t\t\t\tin terms of both productivity and ingenuity. For almost the next twenty years
\n\t\t\t\t\tshe published two novels a year, at least; 1934 saw the publication of five.
\n\t\t\t\t\tMost of her classic titles appeared during this period, including Lord Edgware Dies<\/span>, The A.B.C.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMurders, Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Hercule Poirot\u2019s
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tChristmas, And Then There Were None, The Body in the Library, The Labors of
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tHercules, <\/span>and Crooked House. <\/span>Dominating
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe world of detective fiction with enviable ease, she became a favorite not
\n\t\t\t\t\tonly of magazine editors, but critics, as well as her insatiable public.<\/p>\n

In 1930, Agatha married archaeologist Max Mallowan,
\n\t\t\t\t\ta man fourteen years her junior, whom she had met while visiting her friends the
\n\t\t\t\t\tWoolleys on a dig in southeastern Iraq. Although on the face of it an unlikely
\n\t\t\t\t\talliance, they remained happily married for the next fifty years; for most of
\n\t\t\t\t\tthat time Agatha accompanied Max every year on his digs, where she lived in a
\n\t\t\t\t\ttent, happily cleaning, cataloguing, and photographing the finds. Always one to
\n\t\t\t\t\tput an experience to good literary use, she adopted the background for some of
\n\t\t\t\t\ther best books\u2014Murder in Mesopotamia<\/span> (1936), Death on the Nile<\/span> (1937), and Appointment with Death<\/span> (1938)\u2014as well as the memoir Come Tell Me How You Live<\/span>. To produce her novels while
\n\t\t\t\t\ton a dig, all she needed was a typewriter and a steady table.<\/p>\n

Agatha bought Winterbrook House in Wallingford,
\n\t\t\t\t\tOxfordshire, in 1934; this she always considered to be Max\u2019s house. In 1938, she
\n\t\t\t\t\tbought Greenway House, a Georgian mansion on thirty acres of woodland garden
\n\t\t\t\t\twith stunning views over the river Dart which lay just outside her birthplace,
\n\t\t\t\t\tTorquay. She had known of this house since childhood and, when it came on the
\n\t\t\t\t\tmarket she viewed it and fell under its spell. It became her holiday home for
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe rest of her life. Here she entertained family and friends, played tennis and
\n\t\t\t\t\tswam in the river, enjoyed afternoon tea on the lawn and sumptuous dinners in
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe dining room, played the piano in the drawing room, and read her
\n\t\t\t\t\twork-in-progress to her family to get their reactions. The US Navy requisitioned
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe house in 1942, and she was forced to store the furniture and abandon
\n\t\t\t\t\tGreenway for the remainder of the war. When she regained possession, life
\n\t\t\t\t\tresumed its contented pattern: enjoying long, lazy weeks in the summer, with
\n\t\t\t\t\tshorter breaks throughout the year; entertaining her friends and family; her
\n\t\t\t\t\tgardener winning prizes at the flower show; her butler serving the delicious
\n\t\t\t\t\tproduce from her garden; and making occasional forays to London to enjoy the
\n\t\t\t\t\ttheater and opera.<\/p>\n

In 1956, in recognition of her unique contribution
\n\t\t\t\t\tto literature and drama, Agatha Christie received a C.B.E. (Commander of the
\n\t\t\t\t\tBritish Empire) from Queen Elizabeth. In 1961, she was declared by UNESCO the
\n\t\t\t\t\tworld\u2019s most translated writer. She published her eightieth title, Passenger to Frankfurt<\/span>, in 1970. The following year she
\n\t\t\t\t\twas created a Dame of the British Empire. The stage adaption of her short story,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\u201cThree Blind Mice,\u201d called The Mousetrap<\/span>, which
\n\t\t\t\t\topened in 1952, continued to break every known theatrical record. Through all
\n\t\t\t\t\tthis, Agatha Christie continued to produce her annual novel to the delight of
\n\t\t\t\t\tmillions of readers the world over. In 1974, the phenomenally successful film
\n\t\t\t\t\tversion of one of her greatest titles, Murder on the Orient
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tExpress<\/span>, was released to worldwide acclaim. Agatha\u2019s last public
\n\t\t\t\t\tappearance was its London premiere that November.<\/p>\n

The following year, Sir William Collins, correctly
\n\t\t\t\t\tassuming that the now-frail Dame Agatha would be unable to provide a new book,
\n\t\t\t\t\tpersuaded her to release Curtain: Poirot\u2019s Last
\n\t\t\t\t\tCase<\/span>, which had been written thirty-five years earlier during her time in
\n\t\t\t\t\tLondon during the Blitz. It had been stored ever since in a bank vault. Heralded
\n\t\t\t\t\tby a front-page obituary in the New York Times<\/span>,
\n\t\t\t\t\tHercule Poirot, to the chagrin of his legions of fans, had died, but not before
\n\t\t\t\t\tsolving his most ingenious and shocking case. It was set in Styles Court, the
\n\t\t\t\t\tscene of his first triumph over fifty years earlier. Three months later, on
\n\t\t\t\t\tJanuary 12, 1976, his creator joined her most famous character; and the world
\n\t\t\t\t\tmourned.<\/p>\n

In the course of a fifty-year career Agatha
\n\t\t\t\t\tChristie created many memorable characters, but the most popular were the
\n\t\t\t\t\tfollowing.<\/p>\n

Hercule Poirot<\/p>\n

When she created Hercule Poirot in 1916,
\n\t\t\t\t\tAgatha Christie made only one serious mistake\u2014 she made him a retired member of
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe Belgian police force. This meant that when he died almost sixty years later
\n\t\t\t\t\tin Curtain: Poirot\u2019s Last Case<\/span> (1975), even a
\n\t\t\t\t\tconservative estimate must have put his age at 120. Little did she realize, when
\n\t\t\t\t\tshe wrote in chapter two of The Mysterious Affair at
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tStyles, \u201c<\/span>As I came out again, I cannoned into a little man who was
\n\t\t\t\t\tjust entering. I drew aside and apologised, when suddenly with a loud
\n\t\t\t\t\texclamation, he clasped me in his arms and kissed me warmly. \u2018Mon ami Hastings!\u2019
\n\t\t\t\t\the cried. \u2018It is indeed mon ami Hastings,\u2019 \u201d that Hercule Poirot would be with
\n\t\t\t\t\ther for the rest of her life. He would become one of the most famous Belgians in
\n\t\t\t\t\thistory, and the second most famous detective (after Sherlock Holmes) in the
\n\t\t\t\t\tworld; he would appear in thirty-three novels and over fifty short stories and
\n\t\t\t\t\tspawn almost one hundred movies and TV films; or that he would appear on stamps
\n\t\t\t\t\tin Nicaragua and Dominica. Captain Hastings, Poirot\u2019s faithful partner in crime
\n\t\t\t\t\tfor many of his early cases, narrated their first adventure together, then met
\n\t\t\t\t\this wife in the course of The Murder on the Links<\/span>,
\n\t\t\t\t\teventually departing to live in Argentina after Dumb
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWitness<\/span> (1937), and returning only for Curtain<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Poirot owes his nationality to the presence of
\n\t\t\t\t\tBelgian refugees in Torquay during World War I. Christie also endowed him with
\n\t\t\t\t\tan overweening vanity and a neurotic precision, as well as magnificent
\n\t\t\t\t\tmoustaches and his famous little grey cells. If she could have known at the time
\n\t\t\t\t\thow he would come to dominate her life, she might well have amended some of
\n\t\t\t\t\tthese characteristics. But he, and she, embarked on a career of singular success
\n\t\t\t\t\twith little idea that almost a century later the investigations of the little
\n\t\t\t\t\tBelgian would still be read in every language in the world.<\/p>\n

While he waited for his first full-length case to
\n\t\t\t\t\tfollow The Mysterious Affair at Styles,<\/span> Poirot
\n\t\t\t\t\tsolved a series of short investigations in The
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSketch<\/span> magazine throughout 1923 and much of 1924. In 1926, he
\n\t\t\t\t\tappeared in what was to become his most famous (some might say infamous) case,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Murder of Roger Ackroyd<\/span> (1926). In many ways
\n\t\t\t\t\ta typical detective story of the time\u2014small village, wealthy landowner found
\n\t\t\t\t\tdead in his study, a mysterious butler, a house full of suspects, an incompetent
\n\t\t\t\t\tpolice investigation, all explained satisfactorily in the last chapter\u2014this
\n\t\t\t\t\tnovel transformed the careers of Christie and Poirot beyond recognition.
\n\t\t\t\t\tConsidered by many to be the most brilliant detective novel ever written and
\n\t\t\t\t\tdecried by others as a shameless cheat, The Murder of Roger
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAckroyd<\/span> has divided opinion ever since its first appearance in May
\n\t\t\t\t\t1926. Its stunning last-chapter revelation was a unique and daring masterstroke
\n\t\t\t\t\twhich shot Christie straight into the upper echelon of crime writing, where she
\n\t\t\t\t\tremained for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n

For the next fifty years, Poirot solved cases
\n\t\t\t\t\tthroughout England, in France in The Murder on the
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tLinks<\/span> (1923), in Yugoslavia in Murder on the
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tOrient Express<\/span> (1934), in Iraq in Murder in
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMesopotamia<\/span> (1936), in Egypt in Death on the
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNile<\/span> (1937), and, in the course of The Labors of
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tHercules<\/span> (1947), in Ireland, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria. The
\n\t\t\t\t\tlittle Belgian is the most famous export of that country and, thanks to a
\n\t\t\t\t\tbrilliant television portrayal by David Suchet, is now firmly fixed in the
\n\t\t\t\t\tpublic consciousness and affection for all time.<\/p>\n

Miss Marple<\/p>\n

Jane Marple made an inauspicious debut in
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe short story \u201cThe Tuesday Night Club,\u201d published in December 1927. There, she
\n\t\t\t\t\tis described as dressed completely in black and having \u201cfaded blue eyes,
\n\t\t\t\t\tbenignant and kindly\u201d and she is knitting \u201csomething white and soft and fleecy.\u201d
\n\t\t\t\t\tDespite being overlooked by the armchair detectives gathered together in her
\n\t\t\t\t\thouse in St. Mary Mead to discuss unsolved mysteries, she is shown to be the
\n\t\t\t\t\tmost acute and observant of them all. Her unorthodox style of detection is based
\n\t\t\t\t\ton her village parallels, small and seemingly insignificant events familiar to
\n\t\t\t\t\ther from a lifetime of village living, which she adopts as a basis for
\n\t\t\t\t\tcomparison when faced with more sinister events.<\/p>\n

Although her detective career is less extensive
\n\t\t\t\t\tthan Poirot, covering twelve novels and twenty short stories, Miss Marple\u2019s
\n\t\t\t\t\tstatus as the most famous female detective in literature is assured. There was a
\n\t\t\t\t\ttwelve-year gap, from 1930 to 1942, between her first and second book-length
\n\t\t\t\t\tinvestigations, The Murder at the Vicarage<\/span> and The Body in the Library<\/span>. Her greatest case, A Murder Is Announced<\/span>, was Agatha Christie\u2019s fiftieth
\n\t\t\t\t\ttitle and the occasion of a celebratory party at the Savoy Hotel in London in
\n\t\t\t\t\tJune 1950. Miss Marple travelled to the West Indies for her only foreign case,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tA Caribbean Mystery<\/span>, in 1964, and to London to
\n\t\t\t\t\tsolve a murder At Bertram\u2019s Hotel<\/span> (1965).<\/p>\n

Unlike Poirot, the last glimpse we have of the
\n\t\t\t\t\telderly sleuth is of her alive and well, sitting on the terrace of Torquay\u2019s
\n\t\t\t\t\tImperial Hotel at the conclusion of Sleeping Murder<\/span>,
\n\t\t\t\t\texplaining, for the last time, the intricacies of murder.<\/p>\n

Tommy and Tuppence<\/p>\n

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are the only
\n\t\t\t\t\tChristie characters to age gradually, as they did between their first appearance
\n\t\t\t\t\tin 1922, in Christie\u2019s second published novel, to their last adventure in 1973.
\n\t\t\t\t\tBeginning as bright young things in the aftermath of World War I, they track
\n\t\t\t\t\tdown The Secret Adversary<\/span> (1922) before marrying and
\n\t\t\t\t\topening a detective agency in the short story collection Partners in Crime<\/span> (1929), in which they investigate crimes in the
\n\t\t\t\t\tmanner of famous detectives such as Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown. Their
\n\t\t\t\t\tfinal investigation, \u201cThe Man Who Was No. 16,\u201d is, in a nice example of
\n\t\t\t\t\tself-parody, solved in the style of that famous Belgian sleuth, Monsieur Hercule
\n\t\t\t\t\tPoirot!<\/p>\n

By the time of the WWII thriller, N or M?<\/span> (1941), Tommy and Tuppence are the parents of
\n\t\t\t\t\ttwins (and also adopt a baby at the end of that novel), and as By the Pricking of My Thumbs<\/span> (1968) opens they are a
\n\t\t\t\t\tmiddle-aged couple reminiscing about their adventurous youth and investigating a
\n\t\t\t\t\tsinister retirement home. Finally, we meet them as a retired couple moving into
\n\t\t\t\t\ta new house with a mysterious past in Postern of Fate
\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>(1973), the last novel Christie wrote.<\/p>\n

Stand-alone titles<\/p>\n

Although she achieved her greatest fame as
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, some of Agatha Christie\u2019s best
\n\t\t\t\t\tbooks are to be found among her stand-alone titles. These included traditional
\n\t\t\t\t\twhodunits, domestic and international thrillers, and a few unclassifiable items.
\n\t\t\t\t\tThrough her life she experimented with the crime novel and, as Ellery Queen once
\n\t\t\t\t\twrote of her, \u201cthe only thing you can expect from Agatha Christie is the
\n\t\t\t\t\tunexpected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without doubt her most famous title, and the
\n\t\t\t\t\tbestselling crime novel of all time, is And Then There Were
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNone<\/span> (1939). Part detective story and part thriller, this novel first
\n\t\t\t\t\tappeared in print in the Saturday Evening Post<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\tbeginning at the end of May 1939. It received rapturous reviews on both sides of
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe Atlantic when it was published in book form at the end of that year. The
\n\t\t\t\t\tmuch-copied plot concerns the fate of ten characters invited to an island off
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe coast of southern England, where, over the course of a weekend, they are all
\n\t\t\t\t\tsystematically killed in line with the macabre nursery rhyme that hangs in each
\n\t\t\t\t\tof their bedrooms. The Christie twist is that the killer is one of the ten. It
\n\t\t\t\t\thas been brought to the screen countless times, the best version being the
\n\t\t\t\t\tfamous 1945 Rene Clair film.<\/p>\n

Years before the historical murder mystery became
\n\t\t\t\t\tpopular, Christie published Death Comes as the End
\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>(1945), a domestic murder mystery set in Egypt in 2000 B.C. This
\n\t\t\t\t\tfascinating novel of mass murder in a family consumed with greed and jealousy,
\n\t\t\t\t\tliving on the banks of the Nile, was written at the suggestion of an
\n\t\t\t\t\tarchaeologist friend of her husband Max Mallowan. In 1949, she published Crooked House<\/span>, very much a typical Christie\u2014large
\n\t\t\t\t\tfamily living in a rambling house with a poisoner at work\u2014until the last
\n\t\t\t\t\tchapter, which propounded such a shocking solution that her publishers asked her
\n\t\t\t\t\tto change it; she refused and it remains one the Christie classics. Two of her
\n\t\t\t\t\tstrongest and most unexpected titles appeared in the last chapter of her writing
\n\t\t\t\t\tlife: The Pale Horse<\/span> (1961) concerns a
\n\t\t\t\t\tmurder-to-order venture with suggestions of black magic, while Endless Night<\/span> (1967), with its stunning surprise in
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe last chapter, is often considered her last great novel.<\/p>\n

Thrillers, both international\u2014The Man in the Brown Suit<\/span> (1924), They Came to
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBaghdad<\/span> (1951), Destination Unknown<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t(1954), Passenger to Frankfurt<\/span> (1970)\u2014and
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tdomestic\u2014The Secret of Chimneys <\/span>(1925), The Seven Dials Mystery<\/span> (1929), The Boomerang Clue<\/span> (1934)\u2014appeared periodically throughout her
\n\t\t\t\t\twriting life and Christie considered these a holiday from the clues-and-alibis
\n\t\t\t\t\tplotting of her detective fiction. With an emphasis on physical rather than
\n\t\t\t\t\tcerebral activity, these thrillers all show the Christie magic at work. Stolen
\n\t\t\t\t\tjewels, missing state papers, unidentified spies, and criminal masterminds
\n\t\t\t\t\tjostle for attention in plots involving organized anarchy and international
\n\t\t\t\t\tterrorism. Almost all of these titles feature young women\u2014Lady Eileen (Bundle)
\n\t\t\t\t\tBrent, Lady Frances (Frankie) Derwent, Anne Beddingfeld, Victoria Jones\u2014who are
\n\t\t\t\t\tin the mold of Tuppence Beresford: brave, resourceful, enterprising, and
\n\t\t\t\t\tincurably inquisitive.<\/p>\n

Dotted throughout her classic period Christie also
\n\t\t\t\t\twrote, with enviable ease, non-Poirot and non-Marple whodunits. The Sittaford Mystery<\/span> (1931) begins with a s\u00e9ance
\n\t\t\t\t\taccurately foretelling a murder; Murder Is Easy<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t(1939) is regular Christie territory\u2014a country village with a suspiciously high
\n\t\t\t\t\tnumber of unexplained deaths; Sparkling Cyanide<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t(1945) features subtle characterization with the personal reminiscences of the
\n\t\t\t\t\tsuspects involved in a poisoning drama at a fashionable nightclub. One of her
\n\t\t\t\t\tmost intriguing titles is Towards Zero<\/span> (1944), where
\n\t\t\t\t\twe are introduced to a collection of characters months before the approaching
\n\t\t\t\t\tzero hour of the inevitable murder. Ordeal by
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tInnocence<\/span> (1958) is both a deeply felt exploration of the
\n\t\t\t\t\tconsequences of a possible miscarriage of justice and a clever whodunit.<\/p>\n

Christie also wrote a number of short stories that
\n\t\t\t\t\tachieved fame in their own right, including \u201cWitness for the Prosecution.\u201d First
\n\t\t\t\t\tpublished in 1925 under the title \u201cTraitor Hands,\u201d almost thirty years later it
\n\t\t\t\t\tbecame not just Christie\u2019s best stage play, but also one of the best courtroom
\n\t\t\t\t\tdramas ever. \u201cPhilomel Cottage,\u201d also a short story from the 1920s, became the
\n\t\t\t\t\tstage play and film Love from a Stranger<\/span>. And, of
\n\t\t\t\t\tcourse, before its incarnation as a play, The
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMousetrap<\/span> had been a short story, \u201cThree Blind Mice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christie the Dramatist<\/p>\n

Agatha Christie is still the only crime
\n\t\t\t\t\tnovelist to achieve equal fame as a crime dramatist. The first stage play based
\n\t\t\t\t\ton her writing was Alibi<\/span>, an adaptation, but not by
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe author herself, of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd<\/span>,
\n\t\t\t\t\twhich opened in London in 1928. That year she also adapted her 1925 novel, The Secret of Chimneys<\/span>, as a three-act play but failed
\n\t\t\t\t\tto have it staged. She then wrote an original script, Black
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tCoffee<\/span> (1930), in which Poirot is summoned to find a missing document
\n\t\t\t\t\tvital to the country\u2019s security, but finds himself investigating a murder at the
\n\t\t\t\t\thome of Sir Claud Amory. A further adaptation of Peril at
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tEnd House<\/span> followed in 1940, but Christie was disappointed with
\n\t\t\t\t\tadaptations of her stories by other hands. So she adapted her own novel And Then There Were None<\/span> in 1943 and it had a
\n\t\t\t\t\tsuccessful run of almost a year in London\u2019s West End, despite the destruction of
\n\t\t\t\t\tits theatrical home during the height of the Blitz, and a transfer to
\n\t\t\t\t\tanother.<\/p>\n

Spurred on by this success, she adapted Appointment with Death<\/span> and Murder
\n\t\t\t\t\t\ton the Nile<\/span> in 1945 and 1946. Miss Marple made her stage debut in
\n\t\t\t\t\t1949 in Murder at the Vicarage.<\/span> The 1950s was
\n\t\t\t\t\tChristie\u2019s golden age of theater. Beginning with The Hollow
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>(1951), <\/span>and followed by Witness for the Prosecution<\/span> (1953), Spider\u2019s Web <\/span>(1954), Towards Zero
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>(1956), Verdict <\/span>(1958),<\/span> and The Unexpected Guest
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>(1958), <\/span>this impressive roster of dramas
\n\t\t\t\t\tcontributed to her unique theatrical success. To this day, she is the only
\n\t\t\t\t\tfemale playwright to have had three plays running simultaneously in the West
\n\t\t\t\t\tEnd.<\/p>\n

In 1952, the most famous stage play in the world,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Mousetrap<\/span>, began its inexorable advance to
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe status of national institution. Originally written as a radio play to
\n\t\t\t\t\tcelebrate the eightieth birthday of Queen Mary, it was subsequently adapted as a
\n\t\t\t\t\tnovella and, finally, as the stage play that is now older than most of the UK
\n\t\t\t\t\tpopulation. This theatrical landmark celebrates its sixtieth birthday in
\n\t\t\t\t\t2012.<\/p>\n

In 1962, another experiment, Rule of Three,<\/span> debuted on the London stage. Although not well
\n\t\t\t\t\treceived by the critics, it remains fascinating to fans as each of the three
\n\t\t\t\t\tone-act plays, totally different in style and plot, display aspects of Christie
\n\t\t\t\t\tnot hitherto seen on the stage. The Rats<\/span> is a
\n\t\t\t\t\tclaustrophobic will-they-get-away-with-it? play; Afternoon
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tat the Seaside<\/span> is a very funny sketch involving missing jewelry with
\n\t\t\t\t\ta surprise revelation in the last moments; and The
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tPatient<\/span> is an ingenious whodunit with an artfully concealed central
\n\t\t\t\t\tclue. As late as 1972, Christie\u2019s love of the theater is evident in Fiddlers Five<\/span>, or, as it later became, Fiddlers Three<\/span>. Although it did not receive a West End
\n\t\t\t\t\tproduction and, compared to her earlier theatrical hits, is, despite its many
\n\t\t\t\t\tclever ideas, disappointing, it is clear that her love of playwriting remained
\n\t\t\t\t\twith Christie until the end of her life.<\/p>\n

Other Works<\/p>\n

Interspersed with her detective fiction,
\n\t\t\t\t\tChristie also experimented with noncrime material, showing an aspect of her
\n\t\t\t\t\timagination not obvious from her crime fiction alone. In 1924, she published
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tRoad of Dreams,<\/span> a poetry collection, and six
\n\t\t\t\t\tyears later published Giant\u2019s Bread,<\/span> the first of
\n\t\t\t\t\tsix Mary Westmacott novels to appear over the next thirty years. Best described
\n\t\t\t\t\tas bittersweet love stories, these titles show glimpses of the real Agatha
\n\t\t\t\t\tChristie and mirror many situations in her own life. Giant\u2019s Bread<\/span> centers on the composer Vernon Deyre and reveals
\n\t\t\t\t\tChristie\u2019s lifelong love of music; two years later, Unfinished Portrait<\/span> contains, consciously or otherwise, many
\n\t\t\t\t\telements from Christie\u2019s own life, including a marriage, idyllic at the start
\n\t\t\t\t\tbut later ruined by infidelity, culminating in divorce; an unhappy wife who
\n\t\t\t\t\ttakes up writing; and a subsequent mother\/daughter relationship. A similar theme
\n\t\t\t\t\tis also explored, even more devastatingly, in the 1952 novel, A Daughter\u2019s a Daughter. <\/span>In her
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAutobiography<\/span>, Christie describes how she wrote
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAbsent in the Spring<\/span> (1934) over a single weekend; in it, Joan
\n\t\t\t\t\tScudamore, trapped by bad weather in a remote area of Turkey, spends four days
\n\t\t\t\t\texamining her life and conscience before resolving to transform herself. The
\n\t\t\t\t\tWestmacott pseudonym remained a secret for many years and Christie was always
\n\t\t\t\t\tvery pleased that the books were accepted for publication and reviewed on their
\n\t\t\t\t\tmerits alone, not because they were written by a famous crime writer. The final
\n\t\t\t\t\tWestmacott, The Burden<\/span> (1956), explores the love
\n\t\t\t\t\tbetween two sisters.<\/p>\n

In 1946, she published Come
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tTell Me How You Live<\/span>, a rambling memoir of day-to-day life on an
\n\t\t\t\t\tarchaeological dig written to answer the innumerable questions of friends and
\n\t\t\t\t\tacquaintances. Although her publishers would have preferred a whodunit, her love
\n\t\t\t\t\tof this life shines through every page of the book. In 1937, she wrote Akhnaton<\/span>, a play based on the life of the doomed
\n\t\t\t\t\tEgyptian king. Although it has never received a professional performance, the
\n\t\t\t\t\tscript was published in 1973 and proved to be a well-researched and poignant
\n\t\t\t\t\tplay; although essentially a noncrime title, it does feature a poisoning and the
\n\t\t\t\t\tunmasking of a killer in the final scene. Star Over
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBethlehem<\/span> (1965) is, as the name suggests, a religious-themed
\n\t\t\t\t\tcollection of very short stories and poems.<\/p>\n

Finally, the year after her death, An<\/span>
\nAutobiography<\/span> was published. Christie had worked on
\n\t\t\t\t\tthis for over fifteen years, beginning in Baghdad in 1950 where, she explains in
\n\t\t\t\t\tthe foreword, she was suddenly overtaken by the urge to write down the story of
\n\t\t\t\t\ther life. After her death, it fell to her daughter and an editor at Collins to
\n\t\t\t\t\treduce the vast amount of material to a manageable size, and the book was
\n\t\t\t\t\tpublished in October 1977 to international acclaim. As easily readable as all of
\n\t\t\t\t\ther writing, An Autobiography<\/span> is a fascinating look
\n\t\t\t\t\tat the woman who wrote the world\u2019s bestselling books, but there is little in the
\n\t\t\t\t\tway of solid information about the creation of any particular title. She does
\n\t\t\t\t\tgive an account of the creation of Hercule Poirot and a less detailed one for
\n\t\t\t\t\tMiss Marple, but the genesis of most of her books remains as mysteriously
\n\t\t\t\t\telusive as the books themselves.<\/p>\n

The Legacy<\/p>\n

Almost forty years after her death, Agatha
\n\t\t\t\t\tChristie\u2019s name is still synonymous with the very best detective fiction. She
\n\t\t\t\t\trefined an already existing template, and for over a half-century, she expanded
\n\t\t\t\t\tand experimented with it to produce a body of work that continues to transcend
\n\t\t\t\t\tevery known border of age, sex, race, background, and level of education. Her
\n\t\t\t\t\tentire output is still available in every language and she is read avidly from
\n\t\t\t\t\tMelbourne to Moscow, from Iceland to India. She is enjoyed by teenagers and
\n\t\t\t\t\tpensioners; she is studied by academics and linguists and social historians. Her
\n\t\t\t\t\twork provides a regular source for film and TV adapters, for computer game
\n\t\t\t\t\tdevelopers, for animators, and graphic-novel artists. Quite simply, in the field
\n\t\t\t\t\tof detective fiction no other writer ever did it as often, as well, or for as
\n\t\t\t\t\tlong. Agatha Christie remains unique and, thus far, immortal.<\/p>\n

John Curran is the
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAgatha, Anthony, and Macavity award-winning author of <\/span>Agatha
\n\t\t\t\t\tChristie\u2019s Secret Notebooks and <\/span>Agatha Christie:
\n\t\t\t\t\tMurder in the Making. A recognized expert on the life and
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tworks of Agatha Christie, he is a frequent speaker and contributor to
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tprograms about her. He lives in Dublin, where he is writing a doctoral
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tthesis on Christie.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Read the full book by downloading it below.<\/p>\n

DOWNLOAD EPUB<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book Preview Agatha Christie: An Introduction JOHN CURRAN Who is known as the Queen of Crime, the Mistress of Mystery, the Duchess of Death? Who is the world\u2019s most translated writer? Who is the biggest-selling writer in the world, with only Shakespeare and the Bible selling more copies? Who wrote the longest-running stage play\u2014almost sixty … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[142],"class_list":["post-2329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agatha-christie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}