Intermediate Reading Exercise

A Biography of Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is known around the world as the 'Queen of Crime'. She is the best-selling fiction writer of all time, with her books having sold an estimated two billion copies. Only the Bible and Shakespeare have sold more. But who was the woman behind these brilliant detective stories?

Born in 1890 in the south of England, Christie did not have a formal education but was taught to read by her mother. During the First World War, she worked as a nurse and later in a pharmacy, where she gained an extensive knowledge of poisons. This medical experience would later become a key feature in many of her murder mysteries, providing inspiration for the clever ways her characters were killed.

She published her first novel in 1920, which introduced the world to one of her most famous characters: the intelligent Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.

Another of her beloved detectives, the quiet but sharp-minded Miss Marple, first appeared a few years later. Christie's own life contained a mystery that could have come from one of her novels. In 1926, after discovering her husband was having an affair, she drove away from her home and vanished. Her disappearance caused a media sensation, and a nationwide search was launched. She was eventually found eleven days later in a hotel in Harrogate, claiming to have no memory of how she got there. To this day, nobody knows for sure what really happened during that time. If she hadn't been so famous, it's unlikely the story would have received so much attention.

Throughout her long career, she wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections. Her stories are famous for their brilliant plot twists, where the least likely person often turns out to be the killer.

She created a formula for the classic 'whodunnit' mystery that countless authors have tried to imitate since. One of her most famous plays, 'The Mousetrap', opened in London in 1952 and has been running continuously ever since, making it the longest-running play in history. The audience is famously asked not to reveal the identity of the murderer after leaving the theatre, a tradition that has helped maintain its suspense and popularity for decades.

Agatha Christie died in 1976, but her legacy is stronger than ever. Her books continue to be adapted into popular films and television series, introducing new generations to her unforgettable characters and perfectly constructed plots. She remains the undisputed master of classic crime fiction.