The amazing Agatha Christie

James Cudney of This is my truth now blog is hosting an Agatha Christie Readathon. You can find out all about this here: https://thisismytruthnow.com/2018/02/28/365-challenge-day-348-readathon-agatha-christie/

James’ post reminded me of how much I enjoyed reading Agatha Christie books as a teenager. I read every single Poirot and Miss Marple books she wrote and Wikipedia tells me there were 66 books in these two series. My favourite of these two characters is Hercule Poirot, the short Belgium detective who she describes as having a keen sense of order and a head full of little grey cells. It is interesting that it is generally believed that Agatha Christie came to despise this character of hers. Her scathing descriptions of Hercule Poirot as being a ridiculous little man whose only saving grace is his ability to solve crimes is thought to be testimony to this belief. I always found Monsieur Poirot to be very entertaining and the stories he featured in were generally better, in my opinion, than those featuring Miss Marple.

My favourite Agatha Christie book is And Then There Were None. I thought this story was terrifically clever and I loved some of the descriptions of the characters in the book and their reactions to the various murders. I saw this book as a play when I was in high school and it ingrained itself into my mind when I saw my school fellows acting out the characters that eventually fell to the murderer.

The blurb of this book is as follows: “Ten strangers, apparently with little in common, are lured to an island mansion off the coast of Devon by the mysterious U.N.Owen. Over dinner, a record begins to play, and the voice of an unseen host accuses each person of hiding a guilty secret. That evening, former reckless driver Tony Marston is found murdered by a deadly dose of cyanide.

The tension escalates as the survivors realise the killer is not only among them but is preparing to strike again… and again…”

It is intriguing to me that Agatha Christie’s books are still so popular despite the fact that they are fairly old fashioned and conservative. They now have status as classics with makes me smile as we were not encouraged to read them when I was at school as my English teacher said they were trashy and badly written. Well, I suppose they are not written Tolkien style but they have good stories and Agatha Christie is the best selling author of all time according to the Guinness book of world records.

To me, one of the most interesting facts about Agatha Christie is that she did not plan her books. She did not know who the murderer would be when she started writing her books but let them develop as she went along.

Did you know that Agatha Christie also wrote the world’s longest running play, The Mousetrap. I am hoping to see it when we visit the UK later this year.

A few more of my favourite books by Agatha Christie: