Agatha Christie: Queen of Crime

🔍 Agatha Christie is often remembered for her mysterious 11-day disappearance, but there’s so much more to her story. From her early struggles as a writer to her rise as the best-selling fiction author of all time, Christie’s life was as interesting as her novels.
 
 ☠️ In this episode, I explore how her wartime experience* contributed to her mystery writing and how her travel influenced her settings. 

✨ Join me as I uncover the full story of the Queen of Crime.

Where to start with Christie? I recommend:

• For a country house mystery: The Mysterious Affair at Styles 
• For an English village mystery: The Moving Finger
• For a 1920s mystery/romance with a dash of thriller: The Secret Adversary

*I apologize in advance for mangling “Bletchley” with my Texas accent!
 
Other episodes you might be interested in:

S1E1: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
 https://www.sararosett.com/mbps1e1/
 

For more classic whodunits, check out my books in print, audio, or ebook: 

High Society Lady Detective series 

1920s Lady Traveler in Egypt series

Sources:

https://www.agathachristie.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/123715.Agatha_Christie

🕵️‍♀️ 📦 Cozy Books Corner Subscription Box (affiliate code), a book box curated for cozy mystery readers.

➡️ Use code SaraR5 and get 15% off! ⬅️

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Welcome to Mystery Books Podcast. I'm Mystery Author Sarah Rosette. This is Season 6, Episode 1, and it's all about Agatha Christie. So a quick update on the podcast. In the past, I've done individual books. Each episode has usually been about a single book. So for season six, we're going to zoom out and take a bigger picture view. We're going to look at author careers. And I want to focus on some of the female authors from the golden age of mystery, some famous, like Agatha Christie. And in other episodes, I want to look at others who are considered lost because their works went out of print, but they're coming back into print now. And a lot of these are just not household names like Agatha Christie. But for today, we will start with Agatha Christie. So she is called the Queen of Crime. She's the best-selling fiction writer of all time. Her novels have sold over two billion copies. Now, everyone knows about her disappearance. That seems to be what comes up first if you search for information about her and her life and kind of what's going on besides book-related information about her. But there is so much more to her than just the story of her disappearance. So I want to take a look at some of the more interesting things about her besides her disappearance. We'll touch on that. But first, let's go into her family background. She was born to a wealthy upper class, upper middle class family in Devon in 1890. She was largely homeschooled, and she was initially unsuccessful when she tried to write and be published. She did not get her first book published. I believe it was her her, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was, I believe, was her second book that she wrote. And initially it was turned down by six publishers. This is very common, and oftentimes the first book doesn't see the light of day and it goes in the drawer. But Mysterious Affair at Styles, it hit a chord with a publisher, and he said, if you will revise a couple of scenes, we'll take it on. And so that's how she got that book published. She did the revisions, and that book is very much, it's evident that she was a fan of classic detective novels. She enjoyed the works of Wookiee Collins and author Conan Doyle. And you can see their influence in the Mysterious Affair at Styles. You've got the brilliant and eccentric detective with a very obtuse sidekick, who, of course, is the analog for the reader. So I've when I read Mysterious Affairs Styles, I couldn't figure it out, and I was much more in sync with Hastings than I was with Perot. So that book introduced Perot, which became her most famous detective. All right, so let's look at some interesting events during her life. She married her first husband, Archibald Christie, in 1914 and had one child, Rosalind. She worked in a hospital dispensary in both World War I and World War II, and she developed a very thorough understanding of poisons, which she later used extensively in her novels. It was great background work for her. She disappeared for 11 days in 1926 after the breakdown of her marriage and the death of her mother. And this made international headlines, and even Doyle got involved. He contributed to the investigation. Now, once she returned from this event, she never spoke about it. So I think that's part of the reason it's still considered such an interesting thing about her, is because she did not talk about it and because it made headlines and it was a sensation. She divorced in 1928, and that was a very difficult time for her. Divorce is always difficult, but even worse, I think, in the 1920s because of the social stigma associated with it. And she just had a very difficult time, and then she was also dealing with the death of her mother, who she had been very close to. So that time was a very dark time for her. She wrote The Mystery of the Blue Train during that time, and later she said it wasn't her best work. And I have a feeling that the uh events of her life going on kind of tinged her view of that book. I've read it. I thought it was uh interesting. I love the setting of it. It did have some kind of strange plotting to it, and maybe that's what she was referring to because she was excellent at plots and character, and maybe she was just disappointed in the mystery of the blue train. But I would say don't give it a miss if you enjoy 1920s books. I would definitely read The Mystery of the Blue Train. Uh things began to look happier for her. Uh, she met and married archaeologist Max Mallowin in 1930. She went with him on Digs several months each year in the Middle East, and she used her knowledge of archaeology and all her travel experiences in her fiction. And a good example of that is Murder in Mesopotamia. It combines both archaeology and an interesting travel setting. Another interesting thing about Agatha Christie is that she was investigated by MI5 during World War II after writing M N or M, which had a character named Major Belchley, which was a thriller, the book was a thriller about spies in wartime England. So today we can see why this was caught their attention in my five. They were concerned she had knowledge about Betchley Park where the codebreakers were working. But she explained she named the character after that location because she'd been stuck there while traveling by train. And that is often the case with writers. People assume certain things happen in certain books because of certain events, and often it is a much more mundane explanation than some of the uh theories. Let's call them theories. All right, let's look at her published works. Her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920, and it introduced the now iconic Hercule Perot. She went on to write 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, mainly revolving around Perot and Miss Markville. She wrote the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap, which has been performed at the West End since 1952. And I got to check an item off my bucket list. Last time I was in London, I went to see the Mousetrap. And it was very entertaining. It was a great mystery, lots of fun. And the theater itself is uh a classic, it has a classic feel to it. It's an older theater, so it was a lot of fun. I would say if you have a chance to go see that, definitely do. It is uh a fun experience. And then let's see, um, as far as her publishing, she also had a secret pen name, Mary Westmacott, and she kept it hidden for 20 years. And probably the reason she did was because they're very different from her mysteries. They she called them bittersweet. Uh, some people call them romances, but she called them love stories. So I can see why her publisher would encourage her to not let mystery readers know about this because you don't want a mystery reader going to a romance novel, especially if it's a bittersweet, maybe not a happy ending, and being disappointed. So she was good at keeping secrets. All right, her recurring themes in her books. Most of her books are fair play, whodunits, especially if you just look at the mysteries, not including the Mary Westmaccott books. Her mysteries were fair play, whodunits, and you can read them. The clues are there. She was a master at hiding clues, though, so it's very difficult to figure out her mysteries. There's also some psychological suspense in her books, and her stories take place in a variety of settings. Um, but most of the time you have a closed circle of suspects, and it's a who-done it. She did have some thrillers as well that are more international that don't have the closed circle. But the books she's most well known for have this tight circle of suspects, and you're trying to figure out who did it. And most of her books, I'll I'll read them and I'll think, oh my goodness, there is no way this person could have been the murderer. And of course, that's who it turns out to be. And when you see the solution, it completely makes sense, but it was just sleight of hand that I missed it most of the time. Her settings include English villages, an island, an airplane, trains, plenty of trains, a steamship, London flats, especially in her short stories. Those are in quite a few of the short stories, resorts, and archaeological digs. So she did quite a variety of settings. And she frequently used mundane objects as clues, such as a twisted paper, a coffee cup, or a beer bottle, things that are easy to overlook. And she was very good at giving you information, but in a way that you just skimmed right over it. Okay, notable works. We have probably the one of the more I would say her most famous book is Murder on the Orion Express. And then along with And Then There Were None. And And Then There Were None was named as the world's favorite Christie in 2015. And then also the merger of Murder of Roger Aykroyd was voted the best Who Done It Ever written in 2013 by members of the Crime Writers Association. So those are classics, and they were very innovative. They were not your typical murder mystery, and I think that's one reason she's well known is she didn't completely play by the rules. She bent them quite a bit. And um, some people get very upset about that when they read some of these books. They were mysteries, but they didn't follow along and they were unexpected. And I think that's one reason they're so famous and one reason she's so famous. Where to start with Christy? If you're new to Christy and don't know where to start, her backlist is pretty huge. So I will give you a couple of ideas depending on what type of book you're in the mood for or you like. Uh if you want a country house mystery, I would go with the mysterious affair at Styles. If you want an English village mystery, try the moving finger. If you want a 1920s mystery slash romance with a dash of thriller involved in it, uh read The Secret Adversary. So I hope this podcast helped you learn a little bit more about Agatha Christie. And if you're interested in this podcast and enjoyed it, I hope you'll tell a fellow mystery reader. If you can't get enough of the 1920s Who Done It, so you can check out my High Society Lady Detective series, an audiobook, ebook, and print at Sarah RosetteBooks.com. All right, happy sleuthing, and I'll see you next time.