The queen of crime

Agatha Christie was probably the most successful writer in history. She wrote 78 crime novels, 6 romantic novels, 150 short stories, and 19 plays. That represents two billion books sold: more than William Shakespeare! Her books have been translated into 103 languages, and her two most famous creations, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, solved hundreds of crimes. One of her plays, The Mousetrap, started showing in London in November 1952, and it has never stopped! It is the longest-running play in history.

Agatha Christie became a writer by accident. She was bored when her first husband was away in the First World War. Agatha was working in a hospital as a nurse. (It is there that she learned all the information about poisons that she used in her books.) She decided to write a novel to pass the time. She chose a detective novel because she loved reading them.

Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was an instant success. Like many of Christie’s stories, it has one murder victim and many possible murderers. Emily Inglethorp is a rich old lady. When she is murdered, all the people with motives to kill her have alibis. So who did it? The police have no idea, but the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot finds the murderer.

Hercule Poirot became one of the most popular private detectives since Sherlock Holmes. He is the hero of 43 Christie’s crime stories. This eccentric man with the egg-shaped head and the passion for order amazes everyone by his powerful intellect and his brilliant solutions to the most complicated crimes. He is small and round and is always elegantly dressed. As Sherlock Holmes has Watson, in the early stories, Poirot has his assistant Captain Hastings. Of course, he is not as intelligent as Poirot, who is always encouraging Hastings to use his ‘little grey cells’. Christie soon became bored with Poirot, but she had to continue writing stories about him because her readers loved him. So, during the Second World War, she wrote a book called Curtain, in which Poirot dies. But she didn’t publish it until 1975.

Miss Jane Marple is another Agatha Christie’s creation. She is the heroine of 18 of the novelist’s later books. Miss Marple is quite old, unmarried and lives in the typical English village of St Mary Mead. One thing which isn’t typical about the village is the number of murders! When there is a murder, Miss Marple investigates. She is not a professional detective, but she has a wonderful power of observation. As she says, no one thinks an old woman is important, so she often hears information that no one tells the police.

Each Agatha Christie’s book had a new and ingenious plot. Readers loved the books, particularly because Christie always gave the readers all the information they needed to find the solution. But they had to read very carefully to find it.

One day Agatha Christie mysteriously disappeared. It happened in 1926, when her husband wanted a divorce so that he could marry another woman. Agatha told her secretary that she was going for a motor drive, that she wouldn’t return home that night, and that she would ‘ring up’ when she reached her destination. The next day the police found her car in a ditch with its lights on. There was no trace of Agatha. The police became suspicious. Was the husband hiding anything? Did he decide to get rid of his wife?

A nation-wide search for the missing writer was started. Newspapers published wild stories about her disappearance – that she had been kidnapped, that she had been murdered, that she had run away with a secret lover…

Eleven days later the mystery was solved. Agatha Christie was found alive in a health spa in Yorkshire… But to this day, nobody knows what really happened in December, 1926.

Agatha Christie loved traveling. When she became rich, she could go all over the world. She used the travels in her writing. Many of her later books have exotic titles like Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express. Christie first took the Orient Express with her second husband, Max Mallowan. He was an archeologist, and the couple lived in the desert for several months each year. Agatha took her typewriter with her and wrote the books her readers were waiting for.

Agatha Christie died in 1976, but her stories are still immensely popular. Many have been adapted for film or television. When someone sits down to watch or read an Agatha Christie, they always have the same challenge: try to find out who the murderer is before the detective does!

Discussion questions:

1. Why do people like to read detective stories?

2. Why do you think it is so interesting to read Agatha Christie’s books?

3. What is your idea of a typical private detective?

4. What qualities should a good detective possess?

5. When you are reading a detective story, do you try to guess who the criminal is? Are you always right?