Hercule Poirot's Christmas - Agatha Christie [95]
I learned these precepts from her books:
A mystery should be a mystery, carefully constructed to provide the discerning reader with fair clues pointing to the solution.
Characters should be as real as flighty Cousin Jane; the over-tidy housewife next door; the jealous husband; or the conniving co-worker—people every reader has encountered.
Misdirection is the mystery writer's best friend.
Simplicity in writing is a virtue.
Murder is never funny. People are funny.
Innocence matters.
I do my best to follow the trail blazed by Christie. I am honored that some critics have described me as “America’s Agatha Christie.” I love reading and writing a “Christie-kind-of-mystery,” and I continue to re-read her books, always with delight.
I have a hope that someday I will read her again. My husband, Phil, is confident there will be coconut cream pie in Heaven.
I have a different wish.
I’m counting on a new Christie for Christmas.
Carolyn Hart is the author of the Death on Demand novels (including The Christie Caper), which have won multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards. She is also the creator of the highly praised Henrie O series (Death on the River Walk). One of the founders of Sisters in Crime (www.sistersincrime.org), Ms. Hart lives in Oklahoma City.
About Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in 100 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Mrs Christie is the author of eighty crime novels and short story collections, nineteen plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.
Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was written towards the end of World War I (during which she served in the Voluntary Aid Detachments). In it she created Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian investigator who was destined to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. After having been rejected by a number of houses, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was eventually published by The Bodley Head in 1920.
In 1926, now averaging a book a year, Agatha Christie wrote her masterpiece. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the first of her books to be published by William Collins and marked the beginning of an author-publisher relationship that lasted for fifty years and produced over seventy books. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was also the first of Agatha Christie’s works to be dramatised—as Alibi—and to have a successful run in London’s West End. The Mousetrap, her most famous play, opened in 1952 and runs to this day at St Martin’s Theatre in the West End; it is the longest-running play in history.
Agatha Christie was made a Dame in 1971. She died in 1976, since when a number of her books have been published: the bestselling novel Sleeping Murder appeared in 1976, followed by An Autobiography and the short story collections Miss Marple’s Final Cases; Problem at Pollensa Bay; and While the Light Lasts. In 1998, Black Coffee was the first of her plays to be novelised by Charles Osborne, Mrs Christie’s biographer.
The Agatha Christie Collection
Christie Crime Classics
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
The Hound of Death
The Listerdale Mystery
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Parker Pyne Investigates
Murder Is Easy
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death Comes as the End
Sparkling Cyanide
Crooked House
They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Spider’s Web *
The Unexpected Guest *
Ordeal by Innocence
The Pale Horse
Endless Night
Passenger To Frankfurt
Problem at Pollensa Bay
While the Light Lasts
Hercule Poirot Investigates
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder on the Links