The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie: A biographical companion to the works of Agatha Christie
A biographical companion to the works of Agatha Christie – revised and updated editionAgatha Christie was the author of over 100 plays, short story collections and novels which have been translated into 103 languages; she is outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Many have tried to copy her but none has succeeded. Attempts to capture her personality on paper, to discover her motivations or the reasons for her popularity, have usually failed. Charles Osborne, a lifelong student of Agatha Christie, has approached this most private of persons above all through her books, and the result is a fascinating companion to her life and work.This ‘professional life’ of Agatha Christie provides authoritative information on each book’s provenance, on the work itself and on its contemporary critical reception set against the background of the major events in the author’s life. Illustrated with many rare photographs, this comprehensive guide to the world of Agatha Christie has been fully updated to include details of all the publications, films and TV adaptations in the 25 years since her death.Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.
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THE AGATHA CHRISTIE COLLECTION
1 The Mysterious Affair at Styles
2 The Secret Adversary
3 Murder on the Links
4 The Man in the Brown Suit
5 Poirot Investigates
6 The Secret of Chimneys
7 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
8 The Big Four
9 The Mystery of the Blue Train
10 The Seven Dials Mystery
11 Partners in Crime
12 The Mysterious Mr Quin
>* Black Coffee
13 The Murder at the Vicarage
14 The Sittaford Mystery
15 Peril at End House
16 The Thirteen Problems
17 Lord Edgware Dies
18 The Hound of Death
19 Murder on the Orient Express
20 The Listerdale Mystery
21 Why Didnât They Ask Evans?
22 Parker Pyne Investigates
23 Three Act Tragedy
24 Death in the Clouds
25 The ABC Murders
26 Murder in Mesopotamia
27 Cards on the Table
28 Dumb Witness
29 Death on the Nile
30 Murder in the Mews
31 Appointment with Death
32 Hercule Poirotâs Christmas
33 Murder is Easy
34 And Then There Were None
35 Sad Cypress
36 One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
37 Evil Under the Sun
38 N or M?
39 The Body in the Library
40 Five Little Pigs
41 The Moving Finger
42 Towards Zero
43 Death Comes as the End
44 Sparkling Cyanide
45 The Hollow
46 The Labours of Hercules
47 Taken at the Flood
48 Crooked House
49 A Murder is Announced
50 They Came to Baghdad
51 Mrs McGintyâs Dead
52 They Do It With Mirrors
53 After the Funeral
54 A Pocket Full of Rye
55 Destination Unknown
>*Spiderâs Web
56 Hickory Dickory Dock
57 Dead Manâs Folly
58 4.50 From Paddington
>*The Unexpected Guest
59 Ordeal By Innocence
60 Cat Among the Pigeons
61 The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
62 The Pale Horse
63 The Mirror Crackâd from Side to Side
64 The Clocks
65 A Caribbean Mystery
66 At Bertramâs Hotel
67 Third Girl
68 Endless Night
69 By the Pricking of My Thumbs
70 Halloweâen Party
71 Passenger to Frankfurt
72 Nemesis
73 Elephants Can Remember
74 Postern of Fate
75 Poirotâs Early Cases
76 Curtain: Poirotâs Last Case
77 Sleeping Murder
78 Miss Marpleâs Final Cases
79 Problem at Pollensa Bay
80 While the Light Lasts
* ADAPTED BY CHARLES OSBORNE
THE LIFE AND CRIMES
OF AGATHA CHRISTIE
CHARLES OSBORNE
HarperCollinsPublishers 77â85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
First published in Great Britain by
William Collins Sons & Company Limited 1982 Revised and updated edition 1999
Copyright © Charles Osborne 1982, 1999
Charles Osborne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780006531722
Ebook Edition © JULY 2011 ISBN: 9780007455508 Version: 2014-07-15
For Joe Hansen, crime novelist in the Christie mould, in Los Angeles; and Ken Thomson, his sometime accomplice in publishing, in London.
Contents
Copyright
Preface
1 Appearance and Disappearance
2 The Vintage Years
3 War and Peace
4 âThe Mousetrapâ and After
5 Towards the Last Cases
Plate Section
Bibliography
Notes
Illustration Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
âWho Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?â was the title of an article by the American critic and novelist Edmund Wilson,>1 who had no taste for crime fiction. It was a silly question, for millions cared.
W. H. Auden began an essay, âThe Guilty Vicarageâ,>2 with the words âFor me, as for many others, the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcoholâ, and went on to confess that âif I have any work to do, I must be careful not to get hold of a detective story for, once I begin one, I cannot work or sleep till I have finished it.â
The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie is a book for the likes of W. H. Auden, rather than for the likes of Edmund Wilson. It examines not only the crime novels but also everything else that Agatha Christie published, including the non-fiction, the stories for children, the poetry, the plays (both those written by her and those adapted from her novels by other hands), the films based on her works, and the six novels she produced under the pseudonym of Mary Westmacott.
My qualifications for writing this book are slender: (i) I began reading Agatha Christie surreptitiously during a Latin lesson at school in 1943, and I have stopped, temporarily, only because I have read everything she wrote and, blessed with a highly selective memory, have actually read several of the murder mysteries more than once over the years; (ii) I played Dr Carelli in Agatha Christieâs
