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Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language with another billion in 44 foreign languages.
She is the most widely published author of all time in any language, out-sold only the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 79 crime novels and a short collections, 19 plays, and 6 novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.
She was born Agatha Miller on September 15, 1890, in Torquay, in Devon, England. After her father's death she accompanied her mother on a trip to Egypt and shortly after her return she met her first husband, Colonel Archibald Christie. In 1914 they married in Bristol. Her husband was posted abroad and Agatha became a nurse in a surgical ward, tending the causalities sent back from the front. Then she transferred to the dispensary where she gained a rudimentary knowledge of poisons - a knowledge which she later used in her books.
Their only child Rosalind was born in 1919. After 1922 the marriage started to break up and in 1926 the stress led to Agatha's disappearance for ten days. She never explained the full story of those ten days which culminated in her discovery in a Harrogate hotel. Two years later, in 1928, she divorced him, still keeping his name professionally.
On a trip to Baghdad she met the archaeologist Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on his excavations in Syria and Iraq, spending several months a year there. They married in 1932. The marriage was a great success. They lived happily together for forty-six years until Agatha's death.
Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introduced the Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian detective who was destined to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. Hercule Poirot would appear in about 25 of Christie's later novels. He died in Curtain, written in 1975. The other principal detective, Mrs. Jane Marple, a elderly spinster, first appeared in Murder at the Vicarage, in 1930. Following these, she wrote 66 of the most popular detective novels ever written.
To take a break from murder, Christie wrote six romance novels under the pseudonym of Mary Westmacott; two memoirs, one of which recounts her experiences in Syria with her second husband; and an autobiography, aptly entitled, An Autobiography, published after her death.
Mrs. Christie had many of her books turned into plays, and she eventually got so fed up with how other people adapted her books, that she decided to try for herself. The Moustrap (1952), is the longest running play in history with the record of 8862 performances at one theater.
In her books, her misdirection of the reader through dialogue and pointless hints captivate the reader, and force one think on a certain path while the murderer(s) stays out of suspicion. The interesting web of plots and foreshadowing once inside the book involve the reader, and keep the suspenseful atmosphere. Because of all these qualities in her writing, she became internationally successful, having her books translated into more languages than the works of Shakespeare were. Her books have sold over 100,000,000 copies throughout the world.
In recognition of her achievements she was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1971. Five years later, when she died, Dame Agatha was, and still remains to this day, the most successful murder mystery writer in the world.
Agatha died at Wallingford in Oxfordshire an January 12, 1976.
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