Agatha Christie: Queen of Crime

Agatha Christie is an English writer, known for her 66 detective novels, 14 short story collections and 1 play. More than thirty feature films have been based on her work and her novels have sold around 3 billion copies.

Her success as a novelist is an example of how an author can develop a truly recognisable voice and brand; her’s being The Queen of Crime or The Queen of Mystery. Despite critique of her populist style, her prolific output of novels featuring recognisable protagonists such as Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, creates a universe into which readers can return time and again to enjoy new episodes.

She was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller on 15th September 1890 into a wealthy upper-middle-class family. Christie described her childhood as “very happy”. Her time was spent between her home in Devon, a family house in West London, and parts of Southern Europe, where her family would stay during the winter.

Agatha receive a home education and was a voracious reader from an early age. At age 11, after her father’s early death she was sent to receive a formal education and later to Paris where she attended finishing school. In 1910, Christie and her mother Clara moved to Cairo to enjoy the warmer climate and Christie attended many social functions in search of a husband.

Christie wrote her first short story, a 6,000 word piece on the topic of “madness and dreams”. Other stories followed however, magazines rejected all her early submissions. Christie set her first novel, Snow Upon the Desert, in Cairo drawing from her recent experiences there. Still rejected by publishers, a family friend and published writer sent her an introduction to his own literary agent, who despite rejecting her novel suggested a second.

Agatha met Archibald Christie at a dance near Torquay in 1913. He was an army officer and they married on Christmas Eve 1914 while Archie was on home leave from the War. Christie volunteered at home and attended to wounded soldiers at a hospital in Torquay where she qualified as an “apothecaries’ assistant”. After the war, Agatha and Archie settled in a flat in London and in 1919, welcomed a daughter, Rosalind Margaret Hicks.

Agatha kept writing and having long been a fan of detective novels including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s early Sherlock Holmes stories, she wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles. This novel first featured Hercule Poirot, a former Belgian police officer, inspired by Belgian soldiers whom she helped to treat as a volunteer during the War. Her original manuscript was again rejected by many publishers however, after several months, The Bodley Head offered to accept it with revisions. It was finally published in 1920 and Christie was 30 years old.

Her second novel, The Secret Adversary (1922), featured a new detective couple Tommy and Tuppence, again published by The Bodley Head, earning her £50. A third novel followed again featuring Poirot, titled Murder on the Links (1923), as did more short stories. As Agatha kept writing, the popularity of her work grew.

Around this time, the Christie’s toured the world promoting the British Empire Exhibition, leaving their daughter Rosalind with Agatha’s mother and elder sister. However in late 1926, Archie asked Agatha for a divorce. He had fallen in love with a woman he had met on the promotional tour. On 3 December 1926, an evening that Archie left their house to see his mistress, Christie disappeared causing an outcry from the public and a nationwide man hunt. Christie’s disappearance was featured on the front page of The New York Times. She was discovered safely 10 days later, however her global fame was secured.

The couple divorced in 1928, and Archie married his mistress. Agatha retained custody of their daughter Rosalind and the Christie surname for her writing. The same year, she left England for Istanbul and subsequently for Baghdad on the Orient Express. Late in this trip, in 1930, she met a young archaeologist Max Mallowan, whom she married. Their marriage was happy and lasted until Christie’s death 45 years later.

During the Second World War, Christie worked in the pharmacy at University College Hospital, London, where she acquired a knowledge of poisons that she featured in her post-war crime novels. For example, so accurate was her description of thallium poisoning that on at least one occasion it helped solve a real case. Also during the Second World War, Christie wrote, Curtain and Sleeping Murder, both the last cases of the great detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Both books were sealed in a bank vault until near the end of her life.

Christie often accompanied her husband Mallowan on his archaeological expeditions, and her travels with him contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Christie’s 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express was written in the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey and the archaelogical temple site of Abu Simbel, is depicted in Death on the Nile as is life at the dig site in Murder in Mesopotamia. Their extensive travelling also resulted in transportation often playing a part in her murderer’s schemes.

From 1971 to 1974, Christie’s health began to fail, although she continued to write. She died on 12 January 1976 at age 85 from natural causes. She remains the most-translated individual author, being published in at least 103 languages and her novel, And Then There Were None with 100 million sales holds the record of being one of the best-selling books of all time. Her stage play The Mousetrap also holds the world record for longest run, opening in 1957 and still running today in the West End after more than 27,000 performances.

Whatever one thinks of Agatha Christie one cannot but admire the enormous impact she has made on world literature.