In her last years, ironically, she became more and more popular. Her books, even in hardcover, sold between forty and fifty thousand copies in their first few weeks of publication. She received the C.B.E. in 1971. The Nicaraguan government put Poirot’s face on a postage stamp. John Cooper; B.A. Pyke (1994). Detective Fiction – the collector's guide (Seconded.). Scholar Press. pp.82, 86. ISBN 0-85967-991-8. Some people say that Christie’s shining period was her middle years. I find that she wrote her best books, in alternation with her worst books, until near the end. She was not a great writer, and some of her admirers, including Janet Morgan—in the authorized biography—say that she wasn’t even a particularly good writer. I disagree. She could produce a bad book, and when she did she usually knew it. Halfway through “Death Comes as the End” (1944), she wrote to Max that she was “despondent about it.” (This is indeed her worst detective novel.) But, from the beginning, she was perfectly fitted to her genre. Not only were her plots tight but she wrote excellent, natural dialogue. As the years passed, she developed a good feel for detail. In one book, the Bishop of Westchester, meeting Miss Marple in a hotel lobby, has a sudden memory of his childhood, in a Hampshire vicarage. He remembers himself calling out, “Be a crocodile now, Aunty Janie. Be a crocodile and eat me.” The vision flashes, then vanishes. Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories, published 1985, includes 20 from 4 sets: The Thirteen Problems, The Regatta Mystery, Three Blind Mice and Other Stories, and Double Sin and Other Stories.

Agatha ‘I just wanted my life to end’: the mystery of Agatha

Setting off on a world tour with Archie as part of a trade delegation for the Empire Exhibition, aboard RMS Kildonan Castle from Southampton. January 1922. Miss Marple also appears in "Greenshaw's Folly", a short story included as part of the Poirot collection The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960). Four stories in the Three Blind Mice collection (1950) feature Miss Marple: "Strange Jest", "Tape-Measure Murder", "The Case of the Caretaker", and "The Case of the Perfect Maid".A related subterfuge is the “double bluff.” Here, Christie gives us, near the beginning of the book, an obvious culprit. In “Murder at the Vicarage” (1930), the town vicar arrives home one evening and sees Lawrence Redding, a local painter, running out of the vicarage looking pale and shaken. The vicar then enters his house, goes to his study, and finds the town’s widely hated magistrate, Colonel Protheroe, slumped over the desk, with a bullet in his head. Christie seems to be telling us that Redding is the culprit. But we know her by now, so we say to ourselves that Redding is too obvious—and too obvious too early in the book—and so we cross him off our list. Soon, it seems, we are justified. Redding goes to the police and confesses to the crime. Then Anne Protheroe, the colonel’s wife, confesses, saying that Redding, her lover, was only trying to shield her. But then the suspicion shifts again, and again—until it comes full circle. The murderers, it turns out, were indeed Redding and Anne. Of course, the double bluff may be a triple bluff. In guessing that Christie is fooling us, we can be fooled, as with the red herring. The answers are rarely definitive. Sometimes, people with motives nevertheless have firm alibis. Conversely, innocent-seeming people may have utterly flimsy alibis. In “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas” (1938), when a young man says that he was in the ballroom, by himself, playing records, while the family patriarch was upstairs having his throat cut, Poirot takes this as an indicator of innocence rather than of guilt. It is, he says, “the alibi of a man who did not know that he would be called upon for such a thing.” Eventually, this man does come under suspicion, but soon the finger points to someone else instead. This mystification game is a standard device of suspense literature, but nobody did it quite like Christie.

Agatha Christie as a young woman in new exhibition - BBC News

Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary was presented for the stage for the first time in 2015 as a Watermill Theatre production, adapted from the Christie novel by Sarah Punshon and Johann Hari for a company of seven actors. A play in two acts, it was described in the publicity as being "shot through with fast-paced action, comedy, live music and a dash of romance". The live music was performed by the cast. Tuppence was played by Emerald O’Hanrahan, and Tommy by Garmon Rhys. It opened and ran at The Watermill Theatre, West Berkshire Playhouse from Thursday 12 February to Saturday 21 March, and then toured until Saturday 9 May, ending its run at the Rose Theatre, Kingston. [ citation needed] Sir James discovers Jane Finn, who has recovered her memory after an accident. She tells them where she hid the treaty, but they find instead a message from Mr Brown. While searching for writing paper in Julius's drawer, Tommy finds a photograph of Annette. Tommy concludes that Annette is the real Jane Finn and the Jane Finn they met was a plant to stop their investigation. He gets an original copy of the telegram sent to Tuppence and sees that her destination was altered on the copy he read. Tommy and Albert proceed to the correct destination.And Then There Were None was my most anticipated read of Christie. And let me tell you I wasn't let down. The story started with ten people from different walks of life receiving a letter from an unknown person inviting them to Soldier Island. But are they just travelling to this island or driving into a death pit? Mr Kramenin: Russian Bolshevik, serving in London, and one of the conspirators, called number one. Julius selects him to lead him to the girls. They are assembled—maybe eight or nine people—in a small place: a snowbound train, a girls’ school, an English country house. Then—oh no! A body drops. Who did this? And why, and how? Among those gathered, or soon summoned, is a detective, who says that no one should leave, please. He then begins questioning the people concerned, one by one. In the end, he collects all the interested parties and delivers the “revelation”: he names the murderer and the motive and the method. Almost never does the culprit protest. Occasionally, he goes off and commits suicide, but as a rule he confesses (“God rot his soul in Hell! I’m glad I did it!”) and exits quietly, under police escort. Anyone who has ever seen a Charlie Chan movie, or played Clue, or, indeed, read a detective story of the past half century will recognize this scenario, created by Agatha Christie, the so-called Queen of Crime, in the nineteen-twenties. Following the end of World War I and their retirement from military life, Agatha and Archie Christie moved to London and settled into civilian life. Their only child Rosalind Margaret Clarissa Christie (1919-2004) was born early in the marriage. Agatha's debut novel was first published in 1920 and turned out to be a hit. It was soon followed by the successful novels "The Secret Adversary" (1922) and "Murder on the Links" (1923) and various short stories. Agatha soon became a celebrated writer.