Osborne - Life and crimes of agatha christie - a biographical companion to the works

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 Didnt 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 Poirots 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 McGintys Dead

52 They Do It With Mirrors

53 After the Funeral

54 A Pocket Full of Rye

55 Destination Unknown

Spiders Web

56 Hickory Dickory Dock

57 Dead Mans 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 Crackd from Side to Side

64 The Clocks

65 A Caribbean Mystery

66 At Bertrams Hotel

67 Third Girl

68 Endless Night

69 By the Pricking of My Thumbs

70 Halloween Party

71 Passenger to Frankfurt

72 Nemesis

73 Elephants Can Remember

74 Postern of Fate

75 Poirots Early Cases

76 Curtain: Poirots Last Case

77 Sleeping Murder

78 Miss Marples 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

For Joe Hansen, crime novelist in the Christie mould, in Los Angeles; and Ken Thomson, his sometime accomplice in publishing, in London.

Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? was the title of an article by the American critic and novelist Edmund Wilson, who had no taste for crime fiction. It was a silly question, for millions cared.

W. H. Auden began an essay, The Guilty Vicarage, with the words For me, as for many others, the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol, and went on to confess that if 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.

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 Christies Black Coffee during a summer season of repertory in Tunbridge Wells in 1955 (Nearer the Latin temperament was Charles Osborne as the slick Dr Carelli, said the local newspaper critic, after savaging the leading lady); (iii) I once met Dame Agatha at a party given by her publishers to celebrate the publication of Passenger to Frankfurt in 1970. Suddenly and uncharacteristically nervous at finding myself momentarily alone with the eighty-year-old author whom I had admired for so many years, I found myself offering her an engagement to take part in an Arts Council Writers Tour, and address audiences in the provinces. Oh, Im afraid I couldnt do that, Dame Agatha replied immediately. I wouldnt be any good at it, and in any case, you see, the reason I began to write more than sixty years ago was in order to avoid having to talk to people.

Let me assure potential readers of this book that they may proceed in perfect safety. Nowhere in these pages do I reveal the identity of any of Agatha Christies murderers.

Unless otherwise indicated, dates given after the titles of books are those of first publication. In the majority of cases only a few weeks separate American and British publication dates. Where a title was not published in both countries, this is made clear.

My thanks for help of various kinds are due to the following individuals and institutions: Jonathan Barker, Jacques Barzun, Agatha Christie Ltd, Allan Davis, Sebastian Faulks, Joseph Hansen, Jennifer Insull, Mathew Prichard, Sir Peter Saunders, Brian Stone, Julian Symons, Kenneth Thomson, John Wells, Philip Ziegler; Arts Council Poetry Library, Brighton Area Library, British Library, British Theatre Institute Library, William Collins Sons & Co., Crime Writers Association, Daily Telegraph, Library of Congress, London Library. I am especially grateful to my editor, Elizabeth Blair.

C.O.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles
POIROT (1920)

It was while she was married to Archie Christie that Agatha Christie, ne Miller, wrote and published her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. That marriage lasted for less than fourteen years, ending in divorce at about the time of publication of her ninth book, The Mystery of the Blue Train, but her career as a writer of crime fiction continued for a further half-century and a further eighty-five titles (excluding the plays). Having become known to a vast reading public as Agatha Christie, the author continued to use that name for professional purposes throughout the rest of her life, although privately she became Mrs Max Mallowan soon after her divorce from Christie.