Agatha Christie: Essential Novelists - Agatha Christie

Title Page

Introduction

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Murder on the Links

About the Publisher

"For some years I enjoyed myself very much writing stories of unrelieved gloom... Then I thought it would be fun to try and write a detective story."

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devonshire County, England on September 15, 1890. Daughter of a typically Victorian couple, even though her father, Frederick Miller, American, was raised in the best European tradition. Her parents did everything they could to make her pursue a career as a lyric singer or pianist. But Agatha Christie preferred to spend her time writing poems and short stories.

She was brought up at home, where she studied piano and singing, until she married Colonel Archibald Christie in 1914, whose surname she would adopt until the end of her life. When World War I begins, she enlists as a volunteer in the Red Cross Army. Acting as a nurse in England, she accepts a challenge from her sister: to write a police story in which the reader could not discover the identity of the killer before the end of the story. The Mysterious Case of Styles, which had as protagonist a Belgian named Hercule Poirot, inspired by the various Belgian politicians who took refuge in England at that time, was born. Hercule Poirot would still be the protagonist of a series of other books, becoming one of the greatest detectives ever created. But it was only in 1926 that she was able to attract public attention with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Some time after his release, Agatha Christie mysteriously disappeared. As in her stories, she left ephemeral trails, diffuse clues, confusing all the English police, and provoking serious suspicions of being looking for advertising promotion for a badly started career.

In 1930, already divorced and a successful novelist, she remarries. This time with Max Mallowan, archaeologist, with whom she travels through the East. It is from these trips that she draws inspiration for several successful books such as: Death on the Nile, Intrigue in Baghdad and others.

She has also created other characters, like Miss Jane Marple, a nice old lady with a deep knowledge of human nature, who lives in little Saint Mary Mead. Miss Marple's debut was in the book Murder in the Pastor's House.

Her more than 80 published books sold over 1 trillion copies worldwide, making Agatha Christie the greatest writer of detective novels of all time. Agatha Christie died on January 12, 1976 and her husband 2 years later.

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