Agatha Christie

Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie

DBE

Born

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller

15 September 1890
Torquay, Devon, England

Died

12 January 1976 (aged 85)

Wallingford, Oxfordshire,England

Resting place

Church of St. Mary, Cholsey, Oxfordshire,

England

Pen name

Mary Westmacott
Agatha Christie

Occupation

Novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet

Genre

Murder mystery, thriller, crime

fiction, detective, romance

Literary
movement

Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Notable works

Creation of characters Hercule Poirot and Miss

(Jane) Marple

Spouse

Archibald Christie
(m. 1914; div. 1928)

Sir Max Mallowan

(m. 193076; her death)
Children

Rosalind Hicks (19192004)

Website

www.agathachristie.com

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, DBE (ne Miller; 15 September 1890 12 January
1976) was an English crime novelist, short story writer, andplaywright. She also wrote
six romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best known for the 66 detective
novels and 14 short story collections she wrote under her own name, most of which revolve
around the investigations of such characters as Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Parker Pyne,Harley
Quin/Mr Satterthwaite, and Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. She wrote the world's longestrunning play, The Mousetrap.[1]
Born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon, Christie served in a hospital
during the First World War, before marrying and starting a family in London. She was initially
unsuccessful at getting her work published; but in 1920 The Bodley Head press published her
novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring the character of Hercule Poirot. This launched her
literary career.
The Guinness Book of World Records lists Christie as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her
novels have sold roughly 2 billion copies, and her estate claims that her works come third in the
rankings of the world's most-widely published books,[2] behind Shakespeare's works and
the Bible. According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author
having been translated into at least 103 languages.[3]:201 And Then There Were Noneis Christie's
best-selling novel with 100 million sales to date, making it the world's best-selling mystery ever,
and one of the best-selling books of all time.[4] In 1971, she was made a Dame by Queen
Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.[5]
In 2013, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted the best crime novel ever by 600 fellow writers
of the Crime Writers' Association.[6]
Christie's stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest initial run: it opened at
the Ambassadors Theatre in London on 25 November 1952 and as of 2012 is still running after
more than 25,000 performances.[7] In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers
of America's highest honour, the Grand Master Award, and in the same year Witness for the
Prosecution was given an Edgar Award by the MWA for Best Play. Most of her books and short
stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics, and more than thirty
feature films have been based on her work.
Contents
[hide]

1 Life and career

o

1.1 Childhood: 18901910

1.2 Early literary attempts and the First World War: 19101919

1.3 First novels: 19191923

1.4 Disappearance

1.5 Second marriage and later life

2 Death
2.1 Agatha Christie's estate and subsequent ownership of works

3 Writings
3.1 Fictional writings

3.1.1 Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple

3.1.2 Formula and plot devices

3.1.3 Character stereotypes

3.2 Non-fictional writings

3.3 Critical reception

4 List of writings

5 Interests and influences

o

5.1 Archaeology

5.2 Spirituality

5.3 Use of archaeology and spirituality in her writing

6 Portrayals of Christie

7 Lists of works and adaptations

8 See also

9 Notes

10 References

11 Sources

12 Further reading

12.1 Articles

12.2 Books
13 External links

Life and career[edit]

Childhood: 18901910[edit]
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on 15 September 1890 into a wealthy upper middleclass family in Ashfield,Torquay, Devon in South West England.[8]:1 Her mother, Clara Boehmer,
was an Englishwoman who had been born inBelfast, Ireland (present-day Belfast, Northern
Ireland), in 1854 to Captain Frederick Boehmer and Mary Ann West; the couple's only daughter,
she had four brothers, one of whom died young. Captain Boehmer was killed in a riding accident
while stationed on Jersey in April 1863, leaving Mary Ann to raise her children alone on a meagre
income. Under financial strain, she sent Clara to live with her aunt Margaret Miller (ne West),
who had married a wealthy American, Nathaniel Frary Miller, in 1863. The couple lived in
Prinsted, West Sussex. Clara stayed with Margaret, and there she would meet her future
husband, an American stockbroker named Frederick Alvah Miller, who was the son of Nathaniel.
[8]:24
Frederick was a member of the small and wealthy American upper class, and had been sent
to Europe to gain an education in Switzerland. Considered personable and friendly by those who
knew him, he soon developed a romantic relationship with Clara, and they were married in April
1878.[8]:45 Their first child, Margaret Frary Miller (18791950) was born in Torquay, where the
couple were renting lodgings, while their second, Louis "Monty" Montant (18801929) was born
in the U.S. state of New York, where Frederick was on a business trip. Clara soon purchased a
villa in Torquay, named "Ashfield", in which to raise her family, and it was here that her third and
final child, Agatha, was born.[8]:67

Agatha Christie as a girl, date unknown

Christie would describe her childhood as "very happy", [9]:3 and was surrounded by a series of
strong and independent women from an early age. [8]:14 Her time was spent alternating between
her home in Devon, her step grandmother/aunt's house in Ealing, West London and parts of
Southern Europe, where her family would holiday during the winter.[8]:15, 24 Agatha was raised in a
household with various esoteric beliefs, and like her siblings believed that their mother Clara was
a psychic with the ability of second sight.[8]:13 Her mother insisted that she receive a home
education, and so her parents were responsible for teaching her to read and write, and to be able
to perform basic arithmetic, a subject that she particularly enjoyed. They also taught her about
music, and she learned to play both the piano and the mandolin.[8]:2021A voracious reader from an
early age, among her earliest memories were those of reading the children's books written
by Mrs Molesworth, including The Adventures of Herr Baby (1881),Christmas Tree Land (1897)
and The Magic Nuts (1898). She also read the work of Edith Nesbit, including The Story of the
Treasure Seekers (1899), The Phoenix and the Carpet (1903) and The Railway Children(1906).
When a little older she moved on to reading the surreal verse of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll.
[8]:1819
Much of her childhood was spent largely alone and separate from other children, although
she spent much time with her pets, whom she adored. Eventually making friends with a group of
other girls in Torquay, she noted that "one of the highlights of my existence" was her appearance
with them in a youth production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard, in which she
played the hero, Colonel Fairfax.[8]:2327 This was to be her last operatic role, for as she later wrote,
"an experience that you really enjoyed should never be repeated."[10]:125

Her father was often ill, suffering from a series of heart attacks, and in November 1901 he died,
aged 55. His death left the family devastated, and in an uncertain economic situation. Clara and
Agatha continued to live together in their Torquay home; Madge had moved to the nearby
Cheadle Hall with her new husband and Monty had joined the army and been sent to South
Africa to fight in the Boer War. Agatha would later claim that her father's death, occurring when
she was 11 years old, marked the end of her childhood for her.[8]:3234 In 1902, Agatha would be
sent to receive a formal education at Miss Guyer's Girls School in Torquay, but found it difficult to
adjust to the disciplined atmosphere. In 1905 she was then sent toParis, where she was
educated in three pensions Mademoiselle Cabernet's, Les Marroniers and then Miss Dryden's
the last of which served primarily as a finishing school.[8]:2223, 37

Early literary attempts and the First World War: 19101919 [edit]
Returning to England in 1910, Agatha found that her mother Clara was ill. They decided to spend
time together in the warmer climate of Cairo, then a popular tourist destination for wealthy
Britons; staying for three months at the Gezirah Palace Hotel. Agatha always chaperoned by
her mother attended many social functions in search of a husband. She visited such ancient
Egyptian monuments as the Great Pyramid of Giza, but did not exhibit the great interest in
archaeology and Egyptology that became prominent in her later years. [8]:4041
Returning to Britain, she continued her social activities. Writing and performing in amateur
theatrics, she also helped put on a play called The Blue Beard of Unhappiness with female
friends. Her writing extended to both poetry and music. Some early works saw publication, but
she decided against focusing on either of these as future professions. [8]:4546
While recovering in bed from an undisclosed illness she penned her first short story "The
House of Beauty". This was about 6000 words on the world of "madness and dreams", a subject
of fascination for her. Biographer Janet Morgan later commented that despite "infelicities of
style", the story was nevertheless "compelling".[8]:4849 Other shorts followed, most of them
illustrating her interest in spiritualism and the paranormal. These included "The Call of Wings"
and "The Little Lonely God". Various magazines rejected all her early submissions, made under
pseudonyms, although some were revised and published later, often with new titles. [8]:4950
Christie then set her first novel, Snow Upon the Desert, in Cairo, and drew from her recent
experiences in that city. Under the pseudonym Monosyllaba, she was perturbed when various
publishers all declined.[8]:5051 Clara suggested that her daughter ask for advice from a family friend
and neighbour, the successful writer Eden Philpotts. Philpotts obliged her enquiry, encouraged
her writing, and sent her an introduction to his literary agent, Hughes Massie. However,
he[who?] also rejected Snow Upon the Desert, and suggested a second novel.[8]:5152
Meanwhile, Christie continued searching for a husband, and entered into short-lived relationships
with four separate men and an engagement with another. She then met Archibald Christie (18891962)[11] at a dance given by Lord and Lady Clifford of Chudleigh at Ugbrooke, about 12 miles (19
kilometres) from Torquay. Archie had been born in India, the son of a judge in the Indian Civil
Service. He was an army officer who was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps in April 1913. The
couple quickly fell in love. Upon learning he would be stationed in Farnborough, Archie proposed
marriage, and Agatha accepted.[8]:5463
With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Archie was sent to France to fight the German
forces. While Archie was on home leave, they married on the afternoon of Christmas Eve 1914 at
Emmanuel Church, Clifton, Bristol, which was close to the home of his parents.[12] Rising through
the ranks, he was eventually stationed back to Britain in September 1918 as a colonel in the Air
Ministry.
Agatha involved herself in the war effort, joining the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) in 1914,
and attending to wounded soldiers at a hospital in Torquay.[13] As an unpaid VAD nurse, she was
responsible for aiding the doctors and maintaining morale and she performed 3,400 hours of
unpaid work between October 1914 and December 1916. She qualified as an "apothecaries'
assistant" (or dispenser) in 1917 and, as a dispenser, she earned 16 a year until the end of her
service in September 1918. After the war, the couple settled into a flat at 5 Northwick Terrace
in St. John's Wood, northwest London.[8]:6474

First novels: 19191923[edit]

Christie had long been a fan of detective novels, having enjoyed Wilkie Collins' The Woman in
White and The Moonstoneas well as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's early Sherlock Holmes stories.
She wrote her own detective novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles featuring Hercule Poirot;
portrayed as a former Belgian police officer noted for his twirly large "magnificent moustaches"
and egg-shaped head, who took refuge in Britain after Germany had invaded Belgium. Christie's
inspiration for this stemmed from real Belgian refugees who were living in Torquay.[8]:7579
The Styles manuscript was not accepted by such publishing companies as Hodder and
Stoughton and Methuen. However,John Lane at The Bodley Head kept the submission for
several months, then offered to accept it provided Christie change the ending. She duly did so,
and then signed a contract that she later felt was exploitative.[8]:79, 8182 Christie meanwhile settled
into married life, giving birth to her only child, daughter Rosalind Margaret Christie at Ashfield in
August 1919, where the couple having few friends in London spent much of their time.
[8]:79
Archie left the Air Force at the end of the war and started working in the City financial sector
at a relatively low salary, though they still employed a maid.[8]:8081
Christie's second novel, The Secret Adversary (1922), featured a new detective couple Tommy
and Tuppence. Again published by The Bodley Head, it earned her 50. A third novel again
featured Poirot, Murder on the Links (1923), as did short stories commissioned by Bruce Ingram,
editor of Sketch magazine.[8]:83 In order to tour the world promoting the British Empire
Exhibition the couple left their daughter Rosalind with Agatha's mother and sister then travelled
to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii.[8]:86103 [14] They learned to surf prone in South
Africa, then in Waikiki were among the first Britons to surf standing up.[15]

Disappearance[edit]
In late 1926, Archie asked Agatha for a divorce. He was in love with Nancy Neele, who had been
a friend of Major Belcher, director of the British Empire Mission, on the promotional tour a few
years earlier. On 3 December 1926, the Christies quarrelled, and Archie left their house, Styles,
in Sunningdale, Berkshire, to spend the weekend with his mistress atGodalming, Surrey. That
same evening, around 9:45 pm, Christie disappeared from her home, leaving behind a letter for
her secretary saying that she was going to Yorkshire. Her car, a Morris Cowley, was later found
at Newlands Corner, by a lake near Guildford, with an expired driving licence and clothes.[16]
Her disappearance caused an outcry from the public. The Home Secretary, William JoynsonHicks, pressured police, and a newspaper offered 100 reward. Over a thousand police officers,
15,000 volunteers and several aeroplanes scoured the rural landscape. Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle even gave a spirit medium one of Christie's gloves to find the missing woman.Dorothy L
Sayers visited the house in Surrey, later using the scenario in her book Unnatural Death.[17]
Christie's disappearance featured on the front page of The New York Times. Despite the
extensive manhunt, she was not found for 10 days. [17][18][19][20] On 14 December 1926, she was
found at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel (now the Old Swan Hotel[a]) in Harrogate, Yorkshire,
registered as Mrs Teresa Neele from Cape Town.
Christie's autobiography makes no reference to her disappearance. [10][17] Although two doctors
diagnosed her as suffering from amnesia, opinion remains divided as to why she disappeared.
She was known to be in a depressed state from literary overwork, her mother's death earlier that
year and her husband's infidelity. Public reaction at the time was largely negative, supposing
a publicity stunt or attempt to frame her husband for murder.[21][b]
The 1979 Michael Apted film Agatha features a disclaimer in the opening credits stating that what
follows is an imaginary solution to an authentic mystery. The film starred Vanessa
Redgrave and Timothy Dalton as Agatha and Archie, and depicts Christie planning suicide in
such a way as to frame her husband's mistress for her "murder". An American reporter, played
by Dustin Hoffman, follows her closely and stops the plan. The film outraged Christie's heirs who
fought two unsuccessful lawsuits in the United States to try to prevent the film from being
distributed.[citation needed]

Author Jared Cade interviewed numerous witnesses and relatives for his sympathetic
biography, Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, revised 2011.[22] He provided substantial
evidence to suggest she planned the event to embarrass her husband, never supposing the
resulting escalated melodrama.[23]
The Christies divorced in 1928, and Archie married Nancy Neele. Agatha retained custody of
daughter Rosalind, and the Christie name for her writing. During their marriage, she published six
novels, a collection of short stories, and a number of short stories in magazines. [citation needed]

Second marriage and later life[edit]

Agatha Christie's room at the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, where she wrote Murder on the Orient Express

Blue plaque, 58 Sheffield Terrace, Kensington, London

In 1930, Christie married archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, having met him during an
archaeological dig. Their marriage was happy and lasted until Christie's death in 1976.
[24]
Mallowan introduced her to wine, which she never enjoyed preferring to drink water in
restaurants. She tried unsuccessfully to make herself like cigarettes by smoking one after lunch
and one after dinner every day for six months.[25]
Christie frequently used settings that were familiar to her for her stories. Her travels with
Mallowan contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Other novels
(such as And Then There Were None) were set in and aroundTorquay, where she was raised.
Christie's 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Expresswas written in the Pera Palace Hotel in
Istanbul, Turkey, the southern terminus of the railway. The hotel maintains Christie's room as a
memorial to the author.[26] TheGreenway Estate in Devon, acquired by the couple as a summer
residence in 1938, is now in the care of the National Trust. Christie often stayed at Abney Hall,
Cheshire, owned by her brother-in-law, James Watts, basing at least two stories there: a short
story "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding", in the story collection of the same name, and
the novel After the Funeral. "Abney became Agatha's greatest inspiration for country-house life,
with all its servants and grandeur being woven into her plots. The descriptions of the fictional
Chimneys, Stoneygates, and other houses in her stories are mostly Abney in various forms." [27]
During the Second World War, Christie worked in the pharmacy at University College Hospital,
London, where she acquired a knowledge of poisons that she put to good use in her post-war
crime novels. For example, the use of thallium as a poison was suggested to her by UCH Chief

Pharmacist Harold Davis (later appointed Chief Pharmacist at the UK Ministry of Health), and
in The Pale Horse, published in 1961, she employed it to dispatch a series of victims, the first
clue to the murder method coming from the victims' loss of hair. So accurate was her description
of thallium poisoning that on at least one occasion it helped solve a case that was baffling
doctors.[28][29]
Christie lived in Chelsea, first in Cresswell Place and later in Sheffield Terrace. Both properties
are now marked by blue plaques.
Around 194142, the British intelligence agency MI5 investigated Agatha Christie. A character
called Major Bletchley appeared in her 1941 thriller N or M?, which was about a hunt for a pair of
deadly fifth columnists in wartime England.[30]MI5 was afraid that Christie had a spy in Britain's
top-secret codebreaking centre, Bletchley Park. The agency's fears were allayed when Christie
commented to codebreaker Dilly Knox that Bletchley was simply the name of "one of my least
lovable characters."[30]
To honour her many literary works, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British
Empire (CBE) in the 1956 New Year Honours.[31] The next year, she became the President of
the Detection Club.[32] In the 1971 New Year Honours, she was promoted Dame Commander of
the Order of the British Empire (DBE),[33] three years after her husband had beenknighted for his
archaeological work in 1968.[34] They were one of the few married couples where both partners
were honoured in their own right. From 1968, owing to her husband's knighthood, Christie could
also be styled Lady Mallowan.

Agatha Christie's gravestone in Cholsey

From 1971 to 1974, Christie's health began to fail, although she continued to write. Recently,
using experimental tools of textual analysis, Canadian researchers have suggested that Christie
may have begun to suffer from Alzheimer's disease or other dementia. [35][36][37][38]

Death[edit]
Dame Agatha Christie died on 12 January 1976 at age 85 from natural causes at
herWinterbrook House in the north of Cholsey parish, adjoining Wallingford in Oxfordshire
(formerly part of Berkshire). She is buried in the nearby churchyard of St Mary's, Cholsey. She
was survived by her only child, Rosalind Margaret Hicks.

Agatha Christie's estate and subsequent ownership of works [edit]

During Agatha Christie's life, she had set up a private company, Agatha Christie Limited, to hold
the rights to her works, and around 1959 she had also transferred her 278 acre home,Greenway
Estate, to her daughter Rosalind.[39] In 1968, when Christie was almost 80 years old, she sold a
51% stake in Agatha Christie Limited (and therefore the works it owned) to Booker Books (better
known as Booker Author's Division), a subsidiary of the British food and
transport conglomerate Booker-McConnell (now Booker Group), the founder of theBooker

Prize for literature, which later increased its stake to 64%. [when?] Agatha Christie Limited remains
the owner of the worldwide rights for over 80 of Christie's novels and short stories, 19 plays, and
nearly 40 TV films.[40]
After Christie's death in 1976, her remaining 36% share of the company was inherited by her
daughter, Rosalind Hicks, who passionately preserved her mother's works, image, and legacy
until her own death 28 years later.[39] The family's share of the company allowed them to appoint
50% of the board and the chairman, and thereby to retain a veto over new treatments, updated
versions, and republications, of her works.[39][41]
In 1993, Hicks founded the Agatha Christie Society and became its first president. [39] In 2004
her obituary in The Telegraphcommented that Hicks had been "determined to remain true to her
mother's vision and to protect the integrity of her creations" and disapproved of "merchandising"
activities.[39] Upon Hicks' death, also at age 85 like her mother, on 28 October 2004, both this and
the Greenway Estate passed to Christie's grandson, Matthew Pritchard. In 2000, Pritchard gifted
Greenway - both the house and its contents - to the National Trust.[39][42]
Christie's family and family trusts, including Prichard, continue to own the remaining 36% stake in
Agatha Christie Limited,[40] and remain associated with the company. In particular Prichard
remains as the company's chairman,[40] and also in his own right holds the copyright to some of
his grandmother's later literary works (including The Mousetrap).[43]
In 1998, Booker sold a number of its non-food assets to focus on its core business. [41] As part of
that, its shares in Agatha Christie Limited (at the time earning 2.1m annual revenue [41]) were sold
for 10m to Chorion,[41] a major international media company whose portfolio of well known
authors' works also included the literary estates of Enid Blyton and Dennis Wheatley. However in
February 2012, Chorion found itself in financial difficulties some years after a management buyout, and began to sell off their literary assets on the market, [40] selling their stake in Christies
estate (specifically, their 64% stake in Agatha Christie Limited) to the current owner Acorn Media
UK (part of RLJ Entertainment, Inc. and the RLJ Companies, owned by American
entrepreneur Robert L. Johnson) during that same month.[44]
As of 2014, media reports state that the BBC had acquired the exclusive television rights to
Christie's works in the UK (previously associated with ITV) and plans with Acorn's co-operation to
air new productions for the 125th anniversary of Christie's birth in 2015. [45]

Writings[edit]
Fictional writings[edit]
Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple[edit]
Christie's first book The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published in 1920 and introduced the
detective Hercule Poirot, who became a long-running character in many of Christie's works,
appearing in 33 novels and 54 short stories.
Miss (Jane) Marple was introduced in the short stories The Thirteen Problems in 1927 and was
based on Christie's grandmother and her "Ealing cronies".[46] Both Jane and Gran "always
expected the worst of everyone and everything, and were, with almost frightening accuracy,
usually proved right."[9]:422 Marple appeared in 12 of Christie's novels. During the Second World
War, Christie wrote two novels, Curtain and Sleeping Murder, intended as the last cases of these
two great detectives, Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple. Both books were sealed in a bank vault for
over thirty years and were released for publication by Christie only at the end of her life, when
she realised that she could not write any more novels. These publications came on the heels of
the success of the film version of Murder on the Orient Express in 1974.
Like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with his character Sherlock Holmes, Christie was to become
increasingly tired of her detective Poirot. By the end of the 1930s, Christie wrote in her diary that
she was finding Poirot "insufferable", and by the 1960s she felt that he was "an egocentric
creep". However, unlike Conan Doyle, Christie resisted the temptation to kill her detective off
while he was still popular. She saw herself as an entertainer whose job was to produce what the
public liked, and the public liked Poirot.[47] Feeling tied down, stuck with a love interest, she did

marry off Poirot's companion, Colonel Hastings, in an attempt to trim her cast commitments.
[9]:268
In contrast, Christie was fond of Miss Marple. However, the Belgian detective's titles
outnumber the Marple titles more than two to one. This is largely because Christie wrote
numerous Poirot novels early in her career, while The Murder at the Vicarage remained the sole
Marple novel until the 1940s. Christie never wrote a novel or short story featuring both Poirot and
Miss Marple. In a recording discovered and released in 2008, Christie revealed the reason for
this: "Hercule Poirot, a complete egoist, would not like being taught his business or having
suggestions made to him by an elderly spinster lady".[46]
Poirot is the only fictional character to have been given an obituary in The New York Times,
following the publication ofCurtain. It appeared on the front page of the paper on 6 August 1975.
[48]

Following the great success of Curtain, Christie gave permission for the release of Sleeping
Murder sometime in 1976 but died in January 1976 before the book could be released. This may
explain some of the inconsistencies compared to the rest of the Marple series for example,
Colonel Arthur Bantry, husband of Miss Marple's friend Dolly, is still alive and well in Sleeping
Murder despite the fact he is noted as having died in books published earlier. It may be that
Christie simply did not have time to revise the manuscript before she died. [49] No other detective,
including Miss Marple despite Marple's superannuation, was killed off by Christie.
Formula and plot devices[edit]
Christie's reputation as "The Queen of Crime" was built upon the large number of
classic motifs that she introduced, or for which she provided the most famous example. 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.
At the end, in a Christie hallmark, the detective usually gathers the surviving suspects into one
room, explains the course of his or her deductive reasoning, and reveals the guilty party,
although there are exceptions in which it is left to the guilty party (or parties) to explain all (such
as And Then There Were None and Endless Night, both rather nihilistic in nature).[50][51]
Seven stories are named for, or built around words from, well known children's nursery
rhymes: And Then There Were None (by Ten Little Indians), One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (by One,
Two, Buckle My Shoe), Five Little Pigs (by This Little Piggy), Crooked House (by There Was a
Crooked Man), A Pocket Full of Rye (by Sing a Song of Sixpence), Hickory Dickory
Dock (by Hickory Dickory Dock), and Three Blind Mice (by Three Blind Mice).
Christie allows some culprits to escape earthly justice, i.e. in such cases as The Witness for the
Prosecution, The Man in the Brown Suit, Murder on the Orient Express, Curtain, and The
Unexpected Guest. There are also instances where the killer is not brought to justice in the legal
sense but does die as a direct result of his or her plot, sometimes at the direction or with the
collusion of the detective involved, almost always Hercule Poirot or Harley Quin. This occurs in
such widely varying mysteries as Death on the Nile, Dumb Witness, The Murder of Roger
Ackroyd, Crooked House, The Hollow,Nemesis, Cat Among the Pigeons, The Mirror Crack'd
from Side to Side, Peril at End House, and The Secret Adversary. InThe A.B.C. Murders, Poirot
specifically denies the murderer, who has killed four innocent people and attempted to frame an
unstable man for the crimes, this easy way out, ensuring a trial and hanging. In And Then There
Were None, the killer's own death is intrinsic to the plot; the red herring is when and how the
killer actually died. However, stage, film and television productions of some of these mysteries
were traditionally sanitized with the culprit(s) not evading some form of justice, for a variety of
reasons, i.e. censors, plot clarity, and Christie's own changing tastes. (When Christie
adapted Witness for the Prosecution into a stage play, she lengthened the ending so that the
murderer was also killed; this format was followed in film and television productions, most
famously the Charles Laughton/Marlene Dietrich film.) In Death Comes as the End, set in
ancient Egypt, the culprit is killed in the act before he can claim another victim by one of the few
surviving characters left.
In some stories, the question of whether formal justice will ever be delivered remains unresolved,
such as Five Little Pigs,Endless Night, and Ordeal by Innocence. Christie often made the

unlikeliest character the guilty party. Savvy readers could sometimes identify the culprit by simply
identifying the least likely suspect.[52]
On an edition of Desert Island Discs in 2007, Brian Aldiss claimed that Christie had told him that
she wrote her books up to the last chapter, then decided who the most unlikely suspect was,
after which she would then go back and make the necessary changes to "frame" that person.
[53]
However, John Curran's Agatha Christie: The Secret Notebooks describes different working
methods for every book in Christie's biography, thus contradicting Aldiss's claim. [citation needed]
Character stereotypes[edit]
Christie occasionally inserted stereotyped descriptions of characters into her work, particularly
before the end of the Second World War (when such attitudes were more commonly expressed
publicly), and particularly in regard to Italians, Jews, non-Europeans, and sometimes Americans,
the last usually as impossibly nave or uninformed. For example, in the first editions of the
collection The Mysterious Mr Quin (1930), in the short story "The Soul of the Croupier", she
described "Hebraic men with hook-noses wearing rather flamboyant jewellery"; in later editions
the passage was edited to describe "sallow men" wearing same. In The Hollow, published as late
as 1946, one of the more unsympathetic characters is "a Whitechapel Jewess with dyed hair and
a voice like a corncrake ... a small woman with a thick nose, henna red and a disagreeable
voice". To contrast with the more stereotyped descriptions, Christie sometimes showed
"foreigners" as victims or potential victims at the hands of English malefactors, such as,
respectively, Olga Seminoff (Hallowe'en Party) and Katrina Reiger (in the short story "How Does
Your Garden Grow?"). Regarding Jewish characters, while seen as un-English (such as Oliver
Manders in Three Act Tragedy), they are rarely the culprits.[54]
Often she is lovingly affectionate or teasing with her prejudices. After four years of war-torn
London, UK, Christie hoped to return some day to Syria, which she described as "gentle fertile
country and its simple people, who know how to laugh and how to enjoy life; who are idle and
gay, and who have dignity, good manners, and a great sense of humour, and to whom death is
not terrible."[9]:187
After trouble with an incompetent Swiss French nursery helper (Marcelle) for toddler Rosalind,
she decides "Scottish preferred... good with the young. The French were hopeless disciplinarians
... Germans good and methodical, but it was not German that I really wanted Rosalind to learn.
The Irish were gay but made trouble in the house; the English were of all kinds". [9]:327

Non-fictional writings[edit]
Christie published relatively few nonfiction works.

Come, Tell Me How You Live, about working on an archaeological dig, drawn from her life
with second husband Max Mallowan.

The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery, a collection of
correspondence from her 1922 Grand Tour of the British empire, including South Africa,
Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography was published posthumously in 1977.

Critical reception[edit]
The world's best-selling mystery writer, and often referred to as the "Queen of Crime", Agatha
Christie is considered a master of suspense, plotting, and characterisation. [55][56][57] Some critics
however regarded Christie's plotting abilities as considerably exceeding her literary ones. The
novelist Raymond Chandler criticised her in his essay, "The Simple Art of Murder", and the
American literary critic Edmund Wilson was dismissive of Christie and the detective fiction genre
generally in his New Yorker essay, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?".[58]

List of writings[edit]

Main article: Agatha Christie bibliography

Interests and influences[edit]

Archaeology[edit]
The lure of the past came up to grab me. To see a dagger slowly appearing, with its gold glint, through the sand
was romantic. The carefulness of lifting pots and objects from the soil filled me with a longing to be an
archaeologist myself.
[8]:389[9]
Many years ago, when I was once saying sadly to Max it was a pity I couldn't have taken up archaeology when I
was a girl, so as to be more knowledgeable on the subject, he said, "Don't you realize that at this moment you
know more about prehistoric pottery than any woman in England?"
[8]:546[9]

Christie had a lifelong interest in archaeology. On a trip to the excavation site atUr in 1930, she
met her future husband, Sir Max Mallowan, a distinguished archaeologist, but her fame as an
author far surpassed his fame in archaeology.[59] Prior to meeting Mallowan, Christie had not had
any extensive brushes with archaeology, but once the two married they made sure to only go to
sites where they could work together. While accompanying Mallowan on countless
archaeological trips (spending up to 34 months at a time in Syria andIraq at excavation sites
at Ur, Ninevah, Tell Arpachiyah, Chagar Bazar, Tell Brak, and Nimrud), Christie not only wrote
novels and short stories, but also contributed work to the archaeological sites, more specifically
to the archaeological restoration and labelling of ancient exhibits which includes tasks such as
cleaning and conserving delicate ivory pieces, reconstructing pottery, developing photos from
early excavations which later led to taking photographs of the site and its findings, and taking
field notes.[60]
So as to not influence the funding of the archaeological excavations, Christie would always pay
for her own board and lodging and her travel expenses, and supported excavations as an
anonymous sponsor.[60]
During their time in the Middle East, there was also a large amount of time spent travelling to and
from Mallowan's sites. Their extensive traveling had a strong influence on her writing, which is
often reflected as some type of transportation playing a part in her murderer's schemes. The
large amount of travel was reused in novels such as The Murder on the Orient Express, as well
as suggesting the idea of archaeology as an adventure itself.[61]
After the Second World War, she chronicled her time in Syria with fondness in "Come Tell Me
How You Live". Anecdotes, memories, funny episodes, are strung in a rough timeline, with more
emphasis on eccentric characters, lovely scenery, than factual accuracy.[9]:1985
From 8 November 2001 to 24 March 2002, The British Museum had an exhibit named Agatha
Christie and Archaeology: Mystery in Mesopotamia, which presented the secret life of Agatha
Christie and the influences of archaeology in her life and works. [60]

Spirituality[edit]
Christie's life within the archaeological world shaped not only the settings and characters for her
books but also the issues she highlights. One of the stronger influences is her love of the
mystical and mysterious. Many of Christie's books and short stories set both in the Middle East
and back in England have a decidedly otherworldly influence in which religious sects, sacrifices,
ceremony, and seances play a part. Such stories include "The Hound of Death" and "the Idol
House of Astarte". This theme was greatly strengthened by those times Christie spent in the
Middle East where she was consistently surrounded by the religious temples and spiritual history
of the towns and cities they were excavating during Mallowan's archaeological work. [citation needed]

Use of archaeology and spirituality in her writing [edit]

Many of the settings for Christie's books were directly inspired by the many archaeological field
seasons spent in the Middle East on the sites managed by her husband Max. The extent of her

time spent at the many locations featured in her books is apparent from the extreme detail in
which she describes them. One such site featured in her work is the temple site of Abu Simbel,
depicted in Death on the Nile. Also there is the great detail in which she describes life at the dig
site in Murder in Mesopotamia. Among the characters in her books, Christie has often given
prominence to the archaeologists and experts in Middle Eastern cultures and artefacts. Most
notable are the characters of Dr. Eric Leidner in Murder in Mesopotamia and Signor Richetti
in Death on the Nile, while many minor characters in They Came to Baghdad were
archaeologists.
Some of Christie's best known novels with heavy archaeological influences are:

Murder in Mesopotamia (1936) the most archaeologically influenced of all her novels,
as it is set in the Middle East at an archaeological dig site and associated expedition house.
The main characters include an archaeologist, Dr. Eric Leidner, his wife, multiple specialists,
assistants, and the men working on the site. The novel is noted most for its careful
description of the dig site and house, which showed the author had spent much of her time in
very similar situations. The characters in this book in particular are also based on
archaeologists Christie knew from her personal experiences on excavation sites.

Appointment with Death (1938) set in Jerusalem and its surrounding area. The death
itself occurs at an old cave site in Petra and offers some very descriptive details of sites
which Christie herself could have visited in order to write the book.

Death on the Nile (1937) takes place on a tour boat on the Nile. Many archaeological
sites are visited along the way and one of the main characters, Signor Richetti, is an
archaeologist.

They Came to Baghdad (1951) inspired by Christie's own trips to Baghdad with
Mallowan, and involves an archaeologist as the heroine's love interest.

Portrayals of Christie[edit]
Christie has been portrayed on a number of occasions in film and television. Several biographical
programmes have been made, such as BBC television's Agatha Christie: A Life in
Pictures (2004), in which she is portrayed by Olivia Williams, Anna Massey, and Bonnie Wright;
and Season 3, Episode 1 of ITV Perspectives: "The Mystery of Agatha Christie" (2013), hosted
by David Suchet, who plays Hercule Poirot on television.[62][63]
Christie has also been portrayed fictionally. Some of these portrayals have explored and offered
accounts of Christie's disappearance in 1926, including the film Agatha (1979) (with Vanessa
Redgrave, in which she sneaks away to plan revenge against her husband), and the Doctor
Who episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp" (17 May 2008), with Fenella Woolgar, in which her
disappearance is the result of her suffering a temporary breakdown owing to a brief psychic link
being formed between her and an alien). Others, such as Hungarian film, Kojak
Budapesten (1980; not to be confused with the 1986 comedy by the same name) create their
own scenarios involving Christie's criminal skill. [64] In the TV play, Murder by the Book (1986),
Christie herself (Dame Peggy Ashcroft) murdered one of her fictional-turned-real characters,
Poirot. The heroine of Liar-Soft's visual novel Shikkoku no Sharnoth: What a Beautiful
Tomorrow (2008), Mary Clarissa Christie, is based on the real-life Christie. Christie features as a
character in Gaylord Larsen's Dorothy and Agatha and The London Blitz Murders by Max Allan
Collins.[65][66]