Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie, known as the Queen of Crime, was a renowned English writer who wrote over 66 detective
novels. Educated at home by her mother, Christie began writing detective fiction while working as a nurse
during World War I. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), introduced Hercule Poirot, her
eccentric and egotistic Belgian detective; Poirot reappeared in about 25 novels and many short stories before
returning to Styles, where, in Curtain (1975), he died. The elderly spinster Miss Jane Marple, her other
principal detective figure, first appeared in Murder at the Vicarage (1930).
Poirot is retired, but he is willing, occasionally, to interest himself in a case.
Poirot’s most obvious characteristic is his dandyism. He dyes his hair; he
smokes thin, black Russian cigarettes, often regarded with alarm by those to
whom he offers them; he wears pointy patent-leather shoes ill-suited to walking
the grounds of the country houses where he must often do his sleuthing. He
deplores the English preference for fresh air, thin women, and tea. Poirot says
that, in interrogations, he always exaggerates his foreignness. The person being
questioned then takes him less seriously, and in consequence tells him more.
His Franglais is a treat. “I speak the English very well,” he says proudly.
Miss Marple is the opposite of Poirot. She comes from a sleepy village, St.
Mary Mead, and she seems a “sweetly bewildered old lady.” She has china-
blue eyes; she knits constantly; nobody thinks anything of her. They should,
because she is a steely-minded detective. When she is on a case, she says, she makes it a rule to believe the
worst of everyone—in her words, she has a mind “like a sink”—and she reports with regret that experience
has confirmed her in this point of view.
She also wrote the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End
since 1952, as well as six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame
(DBE) for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction
writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies. According to Index Translationum, she
remains the most-translated individual author. Her books have been translated into 103 different languages.
In 1946, Christie said of herself: "My chief dislikes are crowds, loud noises, gramophones and cinemas. I
dislike the taste of alcohol and do not like smoking. I do like sun, sea, flowers, travelling, strange foods,
sports, concerts, theatres, pianos, and doing embroidery."
Christie died peacefully on 12 January 1976 at age 85 from natural causes at her home at Winterbrook House.
[75][76] When her death was announced, two West End theatres – the St. Martin's, where The Mousetrap was
playing, and the Savoy, which was home to a revival of Murder at the Vicarage – dimmed their outside lights
in her honour.[29]: 373 She was buried in the nearby churchyard of St Mary's, Cholsey, in a plot she had
chosen with her husband 10 years before. The simple funeral service was attended by about 20 newspaper and
TV reporters, some having travelled from as far away as South America. 30 wreaths adorned Christie's grave,
including one from the cast of her long-running play The Mousetrap and one sent "on behalf of the multitude
of grateful readers" by the Ulverscroft Large Print Book Publishers.
Famously, Miss Marple was based on Christie’s grandmother. Hercule Poirot, too, may have been based on a
real life Belgian policeman. But Christie’s propensity for cribbing personalities from real life often had more
to do with her own frustrations than anything else. To wit, in Murder in Mesopotamia, the murder victim is
based on one of the leaders on an archaeological expedition who refused to let her stay with her husband on
the campsite. After the war, her novel N or M (1941) featured a Major Bletchley who was in possession of
government secrets. Since Christie was known to be acquainted with one of the famous codebreakers at
Bletchley Park, the character-name combination caused MI-5 to launch an investigation into the possibility
that real military secrets had been contained within the book. It turned out the deeply unlovable character was
named after Bletchley Park, but only because Christie had been inconveniently stuck there during a train
journey from Oxford to London.
