The most popular mystery writer of all time concocted a rich recipe of intrigue, character, and setting. All of Agatha Christie's 66 detective novels are covered here in great detail. Each chapter begins with general comments on a novel's geographical and historical setting, identifying current events, fashions, fads and popular interests that relate to the story. A concise plot summary and comprehensive character listing follow, and each novel is discussed within Christie's overall body of work, with an emphasis on the development of themes, narrative technique, and characters over the course of her prolific career. An appendix translates Poirot's French and defines the British idiomatic words and phrases that give Christie's novels so much of their flavor.

This book brings a new lens to the work of Agatha Christie through a series of close readings which challenge the official solutions by Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. This book's approach interweaves two core ideas: first, it explores the importance of French critic Pierre Bayard’s self-styled ‘detective criticism’; second, it takes detective criticism in a new direction by refocusing on the beginnings of Agatha Christie’s novels. In this way, the book counters the end-orientation that has traditionally dominated the reading experience of, and critical response to, detective fiction by exploring the potential of the beginning to host other interpretations and stories. Offering a new way of reading detective fiction, this book is a mixture of narratology and detective criticism, and deploys it in the form of radical new readings of a number of Christie’s most famous works. This illuminating text will interest students and scholars of crime and detective fiction, literary studies and comparative literature.

This series offers students a bridge from simplified fiction to the original writings of famous literary figures. This complete text edition has an introduction and glossary and is suitable for students preparing for Cambridge Proficiency.

Agatha Christie’s Complete Secret Notebooks brings together for the first time Secret Notebooks and Murder in the Making, two volumes that explore the fascinating contents of her 73 notebooks. This includes illustrations, deleted extracts, unused ideas, two unpublished Poirot stories and a lost Miss Marple.

Listed as the best-selling novelist of all time by the Guinness Book of World Records, Agatha Christie can easily be considered a household name, but writing amazing stories is not all she accomplished. This book discusses her life including her experiences as a volunteer during World War I, archaeologist, traveler, and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, as well as her continued influence on the world today.

Over 400,000 copies sold! If you are a mystery buff, an Agatha Christie fan, an occasional Christie reader or an acquaintance of any of the above, this book is for you and all your fortunate friends The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie, on the 25th anniversary of Agatha Christie's death, continues as a grand salute to the queen of mysteries. It is filled with wonderful and surprising things about her books, her characters, the movies and plays based on them, and Dame Agatha herself. Original contributions by some sixty writers celebrate the Christie touch. Take your pick among thse intriguing features and speculations: -Surviving an English country weekend - if you had the advice of Hercule Poirot - A guide to the Christie poisions, as well as the cruder methods of genteel mayhem - The "other" Agatha Christie who wrote romantic novels - A murder victim's (!) first-person account of a Christie Mystery Weekend - The Hercule Poirot Double-Crostic and other puzzles That's a taste. There's much more - and witty plot summaries of all Christie's novels, plays, and many of her short stories. (But no endings, of course!) This treasury is more than entertainment - it is also a personal reference work for Christie fans. And there are scores of movie posters, film stills, illustrations and a Christie mystery map, too.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,6, Cologne University of Applied Sciences, language: English, abstract: The present study is concerned with the analysis of female detective novels coming from the USA and Great Britain. Firstly, the history of female detective novels and the ideal crime scheme are explained in order to introduce the topic and to give basic information on it. In a second step the characteristics of female detective novels in opposite to male detective novels are highlighted whereas the analysis is focused on lady detectives and female roles, motives and topics and adaption to male manner of speaking. In a last step the appeal of detective novels for women writers is analysed. It was shown that female detective novels are not a separate sub-genre but a separate field within the genre of detective novels. However, women writer gave the genre new impulses helping to develop it.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2.0, University of Vechta (IKG), course: English and American Detective Fiction of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, language: English, abstract: Agatha Christie’s novel "Curtain: Poirot`s Last Case" was written in the early 1940s. It is her last Poirot novel. The author intended to publish the novel posthumously. Therefore, the manuscript was kept in a safe for over thirty years. "Curtain: Poirot's Last Case" was finally published in 1975 since Agatha Christie “changed her mind and allowed the publication before her death, which followed only about three months later”. Christie lived from 1890-1976. She was born in Torquay, Devon, and died in Wallingford, Oxfordshire. Agatha Christie is regarded as the Queen of Crime all over the world. She has written 80 crime novels which include short story collections, 19 plays and six additional novels which were published under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. “Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in 100 foreign countries. She is the most widely published author of all and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare.” Agatha Christie’s novels are often related to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, which is mostly dated between the two World Wars. One of the characteristics of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction is that the so far dominated short form of detective stories has been replaced by the long form of detective stories. Additionally, the majority of the novels, which were written during this period, are so-called “Whodunnits” where the reader does not know who the villain is, until the ending of the story. Curtain was written during the Second World War and does not only show characteristics of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction but also shows modern traits of crime fiction since the detective “fails to protect his society from criminal contagion or from the dangers of the criminal voice” as seen later in this assignment.

From the very first book publication in 1920 to the recent film release of Death on the Nile, this investigation into Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot celebrates a century of probably the world’s favourite fictional detective.

As he did in the Edgar®-nominated and Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards–winning Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, Christie expert and archivist John Curran once again examines the unpublished notebooks of the world's bestselling author to explore the techniques she used to surprise and entertain generations of readers. Drawing on Christie's personal papers and letters, he reveals how more than twenty of her novels, as well as stage scripts, short stories, and some more personal items, evolved. Here are wonderful gems, including Christie's essay on her famous detective, Hercule Poirot, written for a British national newspaper in the 1930s; a previously unseen version of a "Miss Marple" short story; and a courtroom chapter from her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which was edited out of the published version in 1920; plus an insightful, well-reasoned analysis of her final unfinished novel, based on the author's notes and Curran's own deep knowledge of Christie and her work. A must-read for every Christie aficionado, Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making is a fascinating look into the mind and craft of one of the world's most prolific and beloved authors.