Every reader has a favorite thing to read when they want to relax and lose themselves in a book. For me it’s Agatha Christie’s mystery books.
Many of the things that Golden Age mysteries are known for were born in Agatha Christie’s books. The settings are often quaint villages, country houses, seaside hotels, or far away locations. Agatha Christie grew up on the southern coast of England, spent some time in Cairo as a young woman, and made regular trips to Iraq with her second husband who was an archaeologist. The locations in her books really help pull the reader into the story, like the stuffy, overheated Orient Express in Murder on the Orient Express.
Agatha Christie write about several key detectives who each have their own series. The famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, tends to work with high society and in far-flung locations. Miss Marple, who is far more clever than an ordinary neighborhood busybody, tends to work in small towns where she knows at least one major character well. Tommy and Tuppence, an adventurous couple, solve mysteries mixed with romance.
If you’re worried that these books were written decades ago so their plots must be old fashioned, don’t be. Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries are full of revenge, identity theft, drug dealings, and love gone wrong. Murder on the Orient Express “ripped from the headlines” long before television producers did, and The A.BC. Murders featured a serial killer before the term was even invented. The twists are surprising; I’ve only ever been close to solving the mystery once.
Agatha Christie wrote books that were meant to be fun. Many of them have self-referential dialogue along the lines of, “You’ve read too many detective stories” or “Anyone who’s read a detective story would know that.” She herself had a real love of adventure, traveling the world and even surfing in the 1920s. Agatha Christie also hated spoilers. She went so far as to write a sequence into her long-running play The Mousetrap where a cast member swears the audience into secrecy about the conclusion of the play.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, her first book. AgathaChristie.com is doing a monthly read-along featuring some of the most classic stories featured. I’ve read most of them, but it’s still hard to resist a re-read.
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