Agatha Christie - The Queen of Crime

Agatha Christie, also known as Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, Order of the British Empire DBE, was an English crime novelist. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is most known for her 80 mystery books, particularly those starring Hercule Poirot or Jane Marple, which gained her the moniker 'Queen of Crime' and established her as one of the genre's most influential and original writers. All Agatha Christie's books provide the reader with a glimpse of everyday life in England and the people who live there. The reader can suspend moral judgement and be simply charmed by her excellent plot twists amid the cloak and dagger backdrop of country lanes, eerie fog, and dripping rain. In the classic form of a who-done-it, her writing spins a suspenseful yarn that lends new meaning to the hackneyed term, "as the plot thickens." Her cliffhanger endings astound the reader.

Christie is frequently regarded by the Guinness Book of World Records and others as the all-time best-selling fiction author, and second only to William Shakespeare as the best-selling author of all time. Her novels have sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in 103 other languages. She is the all-time best-selling author in France, with over 40 million copies sold in French (as of 2003), compared to 22 million for the nearest competitor, Emile Zola. Only the Bible, according to legend, outsells her.

Early Life 

Agatha (Miller) Christie was born to an American father and a British mother in the Devon town of Torquay. She never claimed or held citizenship in the United States. Many of her books (including And Then There Were None) were set in and around the area where she grew up. Clara Miller, Christie's mother, was interested in the occult and frequently told her daughter bedtime stories of mystery and adventure. She encouraged Agatha to write, and their trips to France and Egypt together gave her her first experience of various cultures. Emily Dickinson's poetry affected the emerging writer, who was influenced by great literature from Emily Bronte to Lord Byron. Madge, her older sister, urged her to pursue a career as a mystery writer and challenged her to develop a scenario in which the least likely suspect is the murderer. Christie's would make this a preferred strategy.

She was educated at the Miller family's Ashfield house. She enjoyed reading, as well as playing the piano, singing, dancing, and tennis. Christie had aspired to be an opera singer and studied music in Paris, but she was never able to make a living as a musician. Christie's father, Frederick Miller, died when she was 11 years old, and the family fought to keep their country house for many years.

Marriage

On Christmas Eve in 1914, at the age of 24, she married Colonel Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps, just as WWI was beginning. Hercule Poirot was introduced in her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1920. For the rest of her life, she would write at least one book virtually every year. Christie's marriage ended in disaster when her husband disclosed his intention to marry a much younger woman who was a mutual friend. In 1928, she gave him a divorce, albeit unwillingly. Rosalind Hicks was the couple's only child. Following her divorce, Christie went on to have a busy writing era. She worked as a Red Cross volunteer nurse at a hospital and then a pharmacy during World War I, a career that inspired her writing because many of the murders in her tales are committed using poison.

Agatha departed on a solo expedition in 1928, seeking peace and a reprieve from her recent divorce and the media attention surrounding her disappearance. She rode alone aboard the Orient Express, a luxury train. Baghdad was her last destination. She had such a good time in Baghdad that she went back the following year.

Sir Max Mallowan was the first person she met on her second trip. Christie married Mallowan in 1930. Her travels with him provided background information for several of her Middle Eastern novels. They would roam around Syria and Iraq for decades. Christie was penning several of her most popular mysteries while Mallowan was engaged in archaeological projects. Max's career was archaeology, and it was now Agatha's favourite pastime. On their archaeological digs, when fans would come to see the now-famous writer, the couple had many beautiful adventures together.

Murder on the Orient Express (1934), one of the most famous Agatha Christie Novels that was later adapted into a film, was written in the Pera Palas hotel in Istanbul, Turkey, the railroad's southern terminal. Christie's room is kept as a tribute to the author by the hotel. Christie bemoaned the introduction of the aeroplane, which she saw as displacing more romantic modes of transportation such as the train and steamship. Many of Agatha Christie's stories are set on these slower forms of transportation, and she loved the Orient Express train because she could "see life go by."

The Final Chapter

Christie stored two of her manuscripts in a bank vault, planning for them to be published after her death, in an unprecedented effort to leave an inheritance for her husband and daughter. Curtain and Sleeping Murder were to be the final cases—the big denouement—of her two intrepid detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, respectively. Christie had not foreseen her own longevity when she penned the novels, which were intended for posthumous release. Christie permitted the publishing of Curtain, in which Poirot is killed off, following the popularity of the film adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express in 1974.

Awards and Honors

In 1956, Agatha Christie was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire for being the most popular British crime novelist. In 1960, her husband earned the same honour, this time for archaeology. In 1968, Sir Max and Lady Mallowan were knighted, giving them the titles of Sir Max and Lady Mallowan. Queen Elizabeth II awarded Agatha an Order of Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1971.

Her play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest run in London, having opened on November 25, 1952, at the Ambassadors Theatre and still running after more than 20,000 performances as of 2006. In honour of Queen Mary's birthday, this drama was written as a radio play.

Death

Agatha Christie died of natural causes at Winterbrook House, Cholsey near Wallingford, Oxfordshire, on January 12, 1976, at the age of 85. She is buried at Cholsey, Oxon, in St. Mary's Churchyard. Rosalind Hicks, Christie's only child, died of natural causes on October 28, 2004, at the age of 85. Mathew Prichard, Christie's grandson, now holds the royalties from his grandmother's writings.

Information About Agatha Christie - At a Glance

• Agatha Christie’s Date of Birth: 15 September 1890

• Agatha Christie’s Place of Birth: Torquay, Devon, England

• Agatha Christie’s Deathdate: 12 January 1976

• Agatha Christie’s Place of Death: Winterbrook House, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England

• Agatha Christie Genre: Murder, mystery, detective, story, crime fiction, thriller

• Agatha Christie Nationality: British

• Notable Agatha Christie Novels: 

• Murder on the Orient Express

• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

• Death on the Nile

• The Murder at the Vicarage

• Partners in Crime

• The A.B.C. Murders

• And Then There Were None

• The Mousetrap

• Agatha Christie’s First Book: The Mysterious Affair at Styles(1916)

• Best two plays of Agatha Christie: The Mousetrap and Witness for the Prosecution.

Agatha Christie Books in Order of Publication (For Hercule Poirot Collections)

• The Labors of Hercules (1947)

• The Witness for the Prosecution (1948)

• The Under Dog and Other Stories (1951)

• Poirot's Early Cases  (1974)

• Hercule Poirot's Casebook (1984)

• The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories (1997)

• The Double Clue (2016)

• The Grey Cells of Mr Poirot (2019)

Christie, a remarkable crime novelist, authored her own autobiography, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography, in 1977, in order to prevent more conjecture and examination about her personal life, which was always anathema to Christie. She wrote 75 books, including 66 detective novels and 14 collections of short stories. Christie is one of the most well-known mystery writers in the world, as well as one of the best-selling novelists of all time. Only Shakespeare and the Bible are said to outsell her works.