The Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, On This Day in History

 

"If you’re one of the few who haven’t experienced the genius of Agatha Christie, this novel (And Then There Were None) is a stellar starting point." — DAVID BALDACCI, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

This Day in History: The "Duchess of Death", the "Mistress of Mystery", and the "Queen of Crime", Agatha Christie, was born on this day in 1890. Christie wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She is the only crime writer to have created two equally famous and much loved characters. Poirot was so loved, he was given a full page obituary in the New York Times when he died.

Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies. According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author. Her novel And Then There Were None is one of the top-selling books of all time, with approximately 100 million copies sold. Her book, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, was voted the best crime novel ever by 600 professional novelists of the Crime Writers' Association.

Christie wrote during an era in what came to be called, "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", mostly during the 1920's and 1930's. Most of the authors of the Golden Age were British: Margery Allingham (1904–1966), Anthony Berkeley (aka Francis Iles, 1893–1971), Nicholas Blake (1904–1972), G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), Dame Agatha Christie (1890–1976), Edmund Crispin (1921–1978), Freeman Wills Crofts (1879–1957), R. Austin Freeman (1862–1943), Joseph Jefferson Farjeon (1883–1955), Cyril Hare (1900–1958), Georgette Heyer (1902–1974), Anne Hocking (1890–1966), Michael Innes (1906–1993), Msgr. Ronald Knox (1888–1957), E. C. R. Lorac (1894–1958), Philip MacDonald (1900–1980), Gladys Mitchell (1901–1983), John Rhode (1884–1964), Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957), Josephine Tey (1896–1952), Patricia Wentworth (1877-1961), Henry Wade (1887–1969), and many more. Dame Ngaio Marsh (1895–1982), was a New Zealander but was also British, as was her detective Roderick Alleyn. Georges Simenon was from Belgium and wrote in French; his detective, Jules Maigret, was a Frenchman. Some writers, such as Mary Roberts Rinehart, S. S. Van Dine, Earl Derr Biggers, John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, Erle Stanley Gardner and Elizabeth Daly, were American but had similar styles. 

If you noticed the name of Monsignor Ronald A. Knox above, you might know him from his translation of the Bible. Knox also came up with ten rules (commandments) for writing detective fiction at this time:

The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.

All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.

No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.

No [Chinese man] must figure in the story.

No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

The detective himself must not commit the crime.

The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.

The "sidekick" of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.

Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

Agatha Christie was a fan of detective fiction long before this time though, having enjoyed Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and The Moonstone, and Arthur Conan Doyle's early Sherlock Holmes stories. Much like Doyle did with Holmes, she tired of Poirot. By the end of the 1930s, Christie wrote in her diary that she was finding Poirot "insufferable", and by the 1960s she felt he was "an egocentric creep". Unlike Conan Doyle though, she resisted the temptation to kill her detective off while he was still popular.