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Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is the world’s best-known mystery writer. Her books
have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another
billion in over 45 foreign languages. She is outsold only by the Bible
and Shakespeare.
Agatha Christie was born in 1890 in Torquay in England. Her father was
called Frederick Miller so she was born as Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller.
She was educated at home and studied singing and piano in Paris. In 1914
she married Archibald Christie, but then World War I had broken out.
Agatha worked as a nurse in a Red Cross hospital in Torquay at that time
and that experience was useful later on.
Her first book was published in 1920, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
There, readers met Hercules Poirot, the eccentric Belgian detective with
the funny-looking moustache. But Agatha’s books first attracted
attention in 1926 when she published The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
Agatha made news herself when she disappeared for a few days after her
husband wanted a divorce. She was soon found to be staying in a hotel
under an alias. Her disappearance is still a mystery! She and Archibald
divorced in 1928 (he died in 1962). When she was around 40 years old she
went on a holiday and visited e.g. Iraq where she met young
archaeologist Max Mallowan, who was 14 years younger. They married in
1930 and Agatha Christie became Agatha Christie Mallowan. During World
War II Agatha worked in the dispensary of University College Hospital in
London. She often assisted her husband on excavations, e.g. in Iraq and
Syria.
Agatha Christie wrote nearly seventy novels in her career and more than
a hundred short stories. Her most famous characters are Hercules Poirot
and Miss Marple, and the latter one was her personal favourite. She also
wrote a few books about Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, and in some books
there was no particular main character, e.g. in Ten Little Niggers.
Agatha Christie also wrote six romantic novels under the name Mary
Westmacott. Agatha’s plays have also made her famous and her best known
play, The Mousetrap, is most likely the best known mystery play in the
world.
Agatha was the president of the Detection Club. She became Dame Agatha
in 1971.
She is best known for her detective stories, largely centred around two
detectives; the elderly Miss Marples and the pompous Poirot. Apart from
her plots, today it is the period detail of her books that fascinates;
the English village, the spa hotel, the country house and the
cruise-ship. She chronicles a vanished pre- WW2 upper middle class
Britain which enhances the staginess of her characters and plots.
Agatha Christie was sure the world’s best selling crime writer.
Moreover, she was an immensely prolific writer. 79 shot stories, 4
non-fiction ones and 19 plays were written by that strange woman. They
were translated into 136 languages. Over 3 billion books by Agatha
Christie were sold worldwide. She is popular for ingenuity of plots,
which are classical murder mysteries: marooned places and a
well-mannered murderer. Her way to present the stories was quite
definite from that of her colleagues. At first her stories appealed to
the readers’ detective inside, so you can’t find much blood and violence
in her stories.
Agatha Christie created two major characters for her stories. Hercule
Poirot, a Belgian, used to work in the Police, but by the time of the
action he was already retired. He can be described as a funny little man
taken by many readers as a comic. He had luxurious moustaches and he was
really proud of them.
Miss Marple was absolutely opposite to Poirot. She wasn’t a professional
and had never been one. She was just an old spinster, very modest but
perceptive and not a flamboyant personality, who acted as a detective
just by virtue of taking thought.
Agatha Christie’s favourite way of murdering was by poisoning. She
accurately described the process because she had learned a lot about
poisons and other chemicals during World War II, while working in a
hospital.
The reader has to solve the mystery and decide who the murderer is
hand-in-hand with the author. Most of the crimes were committed in some
closed surroundings with a limited number of people to suspect. Finally
the identity of the murderer is revealed and a hooked reader starts
looking for another book by Agatha Christie.
Agatha Christie lived between 1890 and 1976. She started writing stories
at a very early age, at first to entertain herself. However, she managed
to become famous. Not many people know that she used to write under a
pen-name of Mary Westmacott. Later, already being a world-known writer,
she tried to avoid publicity and stayed out of public eye.
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