Agatha Christie: Detective Writer Extraordinaire

Agatha Christie (1890-1976) was an prodigious writer with around 80 detective novels and other collections of stories published, giving us sleuths of the calibre of Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot.  

She also wrote, The Mousetrap which holds the record for the longest-running play ever (60 years and 25,000 performances in 2012).

Her works have sold an astonishing four billion items with her sales eclipsed only by the Bible and Shakespeare's works.

What is usually not so well known is that Christie was a Christian (Church of England) who took her faith seriously enough for a reader to detect it within her works. However, her writing is not evangelical for her vocation was detective novel-writing for the glory of God.

One of her major theme-ideas was the often hidden but nevertheless real sinfulness of men and women.¹This sinfulness was also to be found in English villages which romantic writers liked to think pristine and wholesome.

Next time we will look at Christie's The Body In The Library and see how the above theme of the novelist is expressed in her great creation, the sleuthhound Jane Marple.

1. This theme is one of whom Christie would have been reminded at every Holy Communion service in the opening Collect: 'Almighty God, unto whom all hears are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.' (1662 BCP)