Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie was born in Torquay, Devon, in 1890 and educated largely at home. During the First World War she worked as a nurse and hospital dispenser, acquiring the knowledge of poisons that would serve her plots so well. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, appeared in 1920 and introduced Hercule Poirot, the fastidious Belgian detective who would appear in more than thirty of her novels.

Over a career spanning half a century she wrote sixty-six detective novels and fourteen short-story collections, perfecting the puzzle mystery in which every clue is laid fairly before the reader. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd startled critics with its audacity, and Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None became classics of the form. Her play The Mousetrap opened in London in 1952 and never stopped running.

Christie was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1971 and died at Wallingford in 1976. Her books have sold an estimated two billion copies and been translated into more than a hundred languages, outsold, it is often said, only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Poirot and Miss Marple live on across page and screen, and the detective story still follows the rules she perfected.