About This Book

This, the first Agatha Christie mystery ever, was published 1n 1920. It introduces Hercule Poirot and Hastings to the waiting world, and that small, dapper Belgian detective, with his waxed mustache and clever "little gray cells," continues to delight readers (and TV viewers) to this day!

About Agatha Christie

(1891-1976) English mystery writer, Agatha Christie, was the creator of detective Hercule Poirot, and also of the clever, innocent-seeming Miss Marple, a sedate elderly lady from a small English town. These characters have taken on such a life of their own that they made Christie (Mrs. Mallowan) a rich and famous woman. In addition, they helped her earn the honor of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and the right to call herself Dame Agatha.

Born Agatha Miller, she married Archibald Christie in 1914. They were divorced in 1928, and she married archaeologist Max Mallowan two years later. Her reputation as a writer was already well established at the time of her divorce, and she continued to use the name "Christie" as a pen name for the remainder of her life.

Familiar titles from her many dozens of books are, "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" (1926), "Death on the Nile" (1937), "The Mousetrap," which was produced as a play in London in 1952 and which has been running there continuously for 50 years, and "Witness for the Prosecution" (1953) which was made into a film in 1957, and which earned her the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award.