Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie was born on 15th December 1890,in Devon. She is mainly remembered for her 79 detective novels but she also wrote romances under the name of Mary Westmacott. She was called the “Queen of Crime”. One billion copies of her books have been sold in English and another billion in 44 languages. She is the best-selling writer of all time.
In 1914 she married Colonel Archibald Christie and they had a daughter, Rosalind Hicks. During World War I she worked at a hospital . This job influenced her work: many of the murders in her books were carried out with poison.
After her mother’s death and her husband’s infidelity she was really depressed. So much so that, on 8th December 1926, Agatha disappeared for ten days. Her car was found abandoned. The police searched everywhere. There was an immediate uproar in the press, with speculation that Mrs Christie had been murdered or commited suicide.
Several days later, she was found in a health spa in the town of Harrogate, where she signed in under the name of Teresa Neele, the name of the woman with whom her husband had recently admitted having an affair. She claimed to have suffered amnesia due to a nervous breakdown but nobody believed this. They finally got divorced in 1928 and she married the archaeologist Max Mallowan, who was 14 years younger than her. Unluckily, it was not a happy marriage. He had many affairs, notably with Barbara Parker, whom he married in 1977, a year after Christie's death.
She was made a Dame in 1971. On 12 January 1976, she died at age 85, from natural causes. She was buried in the nearby St Mary's Churchyard in Cholsey.



Her characters

Miss Marple

Jane Marple was an elderly spinster from the fictitious village of St Mary Mead. She appeared in twenty short stories and twelve novels.
She was a keen observer of human nature and a very intelligent woman. She solved mysteries through observation and a few polite questions. She was not a central character, she was rather peripheral. But there was always a good male character or policemen who were more involved in the narrative.

Hercule Poirot


Hercule Poirot appeared in 30 novels and 50 short stories. He was a Belgian detective who was always neatly dressed and had a big ego. He believed that crime was not solved on evidence alone. He thought that the greatest tool for crime solving was the mind, thanks to “the little grey cells”.

Agatha loved reading mysteries and she was influenced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The most famous fictional detectives are Poirot and Holmes. There is an interesting comparison in the following link:
http://www.freewebs.com/poirot/poirotvsholmes.htm
If you like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, try this trivia: http://www.funtrivia.com/playquiz/quiz1779951462030.html


Agatha Christie's centenary, celebrated by David Suchet and Joan Hickson, 1990. Contains interviews with Dame Agatha's grandson, Mathew Prichard, author H.R.F. Keating and other authors and critics.