﻿Agatha Christie, the Uncrowned Queen of Crime
Agatha Christie is best remembered for her almost 80 detective novels and her theatrical plays that are highly successful on West End. According to the Guinness Book of World Records Christie – besides William Shakespeare – is the best-selling writer of all time in the world. Only the Bible was sold in more copies.
Almost all of Agatha Christie’s detective stories focus on the British middle and upper classes. Usually the detective either stumbles across the murder or is called upon by an old acquaintance, who is somehow involved in the case. Gradually, the detective interrogates each suspect, examines the scene of the crime and makes a note on each clue, so readers can analyse it and be allowed a fair chance of solving the mystery themselves. Then, about halfway through, or sometimes even during the final chapter/act, one of the suspects dies, often because they have inadvertently deduced the killer’s identity and needed silencing. In a few of her novels there are multiple victims. Finally, the detective organises a meeting of all the suspects and slowly denounces the guilty party, exposing several unrelated secrets along the way, sometimes over the course of thirty or so pages. The murders are often extremely ingenious, involving some convoluted piece of deception. Christie’s stories are also known for their taut atmosphere and strong psychological suspense, anticipation, developed from the deliberately slow pace of her prose.
Her two characters, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, as well as the actors playing them, have become extremely popular.
Hercule Poirot
Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published in 1920, she introduced Hercule Poirot to the readers in this story; thereafter he appeared over a long time, in more than 30 novels and 54 short stories.
By the end of the 30s Christie became increasingly tired of her detective. At this time she confided to her diary that she was finding Poirot insufferable, and by the 60s she felt that Poirot was “an ego-centric creep”. However, she resisted the temptation to kill her popular detective off. She saw herself as an entertainer whose job was to produce what the public liked, and the public liked Poirot.
Miss Marple
Her other well-known character is Miss Marple, who was based on women like her own grandmother and her old girlfriends.
In contrast to Poirot, Christie was fond of Miss Marple. The reason why Poirot’s stories outnumber Marple’s stories is that The Murder at the Vicarage remained the sole Miss Marple novel until the 1940s.
Christie never wrote a novel featuring both Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. In a recording recently rediscovered and released Christie revealed the following 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.”