About

With any prolific author whose life and work has captured the public imagination across generations, there inevitably emerges a sense of protectiveness around the ‘ownership’ of that author and their oeuvre. To declare yourself an admirer of Agatha Christie may result in a raised eyebrow – a look that asks, ‘But how much of her work do you really know?’ Indeed, such a statement could mean any number of things. Maybe you’ve read the odd Poirot whodunit, enjoyed television adaptations of the Miss Marple mysteries, or been to see The Mousetrap performed on stage. Perhaps you’ve dug a little deeper, reading the Parker Pyne short stories, or those of the mysterious Mr Quinn. Maybe the ‘Young Adventurers’, Tommy and Tuppence, have captured your imagination. I would call myself a fan of Agatha Christie. Yet, even in writing those words – and safe in the knowledge that the bookshelves around me are filled with ever-crumbling editions of Agatha Christie novels that have been read countless times – I know that many readers will question how deep my dedication really runs.

 

My own passion for Agatha Christie has several origins: watching the 1974 film version of Murder on the Orient Express at a young age, with Wendy Hiller as the Princess Natalia Dragomiroff, her pallid face both frightening and intriguing me in equal measures; a balmy summer evening at the age of 11 or 12, at an open-air theatre watching a haunting production of And Then There Were None; Sunday evenings, curled up in front of the TV alongside my sister, parents and, often, grandparents, watching David Suchet’s rendering of Poirot, alongside Hugh Fraser as Captain Hastings (the latter whose voice on the audiobooks regularly accompanies me throughout my day). Yet casual enjoyment only turned into true passion when I inherited, from my maternal grandmother, a pile of early edition Agatha Christie novels and short-story collections.
 

My grandmother had been a librarian, and my memory of her house includes a pile of library books – usually mystery, crime or thrillers – beside her chair in the ‘back room’ (a dining room-cum-sitting room at the back of the house, as the living room was preserved for ‘best’). Her own collection of books included copy after copy of Agatha Christie novels, their corners turned and their spines sellotaped. There was something about reading these well-enjoyed books that made me feel closer to the grandmother I had lost. Between the pages I often encountered a shopping list, written in her familiar handwriting, or domestic accounts, jotted down on lined notepaper, later used as makeshift bookmarks. I’ve kept them there, sandwiched in with Poirot and Miss Marple, to be rediscovered again.
 

What began as a grieving process soon slipped into a passion of my own. I fell in love with Agatha Christie’s writing. But it was not only the stories that drew me in. I love Christie’s ability to conjure characters from a brevity of words; the social history that can be gleaned from each book – of lives lived through two World Wars; of a shift away from large households, replete with professional, domestic staff; of fluctuations in the place of women in the workplace; of changing fashions, attitudes and freedoms. I love her sense of geography, the way she can map a place – be it a house, town or city – such that you feel you know it, can navigate it and can understand the viability of a character slipping unseen through a window into the garden, or travelling from the crime scene to a nearby hostelry in the time allowed. Moreover, I cannot but be in awe of her ability to traverse genres; though she is known as the ‘Queen of Crime’, Christie also wrote pacy thrillers and stories of the supernatural, steeped in ‘atmosphere’ and with the ability to leave a lingering sense of unease.
 

What follows is perhaps the natural conclusion of years spent reading books by Agatha Christie. It is a story-by-story exploration of Christie’s work, taken in chronological order, examining fact and fiction, uncovering the true-life events that inspired so many of Christie’s narratives. These are pages replete with social and cultural observations, surprising details and the elements that simply fascinated me as a reader – the ‘conversation pieces’ if you will. The project covers the novels and short-story collections Christie wrote under her own name – it does not include those penned as Mary Westmacott, nor those written as part of the Detection Club.
 

I start from the assumption that you have read the books in question and want to dig a little deeper. There are no synopses, and there are many spoilers. While I do draw on biographical details, this is not a biography of Agatha Christie – many of those have been published, along with the author’s autobiography. Nor is this a bibliographic examination of first editions, though details of the publication date, publisher and alternative titles are included. In terms of the short-story collections, I have used the UK collections and collection titles. I’ve ordered the stories chronologically rather than by type to allow for an examination of the evolution of Christie’s work and the crossover between short stories and novels, but have indicated from the outset the type of the work and the series from which it comes. References to plays are made where relevant, but I have not included full entries on all of Christie’s plays here, perhaps that is for another project.

I hope in reading what follows you can enjoy Agatha Christie’s work in a new way and that it opens up new avenues to discover more about this prolific author.