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Jacklyn B

May 24, 2022 2:48am

0:00 | 5:48

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How did Agatha keep her readers engaged after decades of writing?

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Agatha Christie is most famously known for her 66 novels and 14 short stories, focused around a certain mystery that needs solving. From a very early age, Christie had a love for reading, as she taught herself to read at the age of 5. She grew up in the midst of World War 1 and that is when she started her writing career. Her first book, "The Mysterious Affair at the Styles" had characters that was largely based on people she saw around her. The book became so popular due to her description of the murderer's use of poison, that when the book was eventually published Agatha received an unprecedented honour for a writer of fiction - a review in the Pharmaceutical Journal. People knew her as a "person who listened more than she talked, who saw more than she was seen". She did, however, find herself in her own mystery as she went MIA for approximately 11 days. There was an extensive man-hunt for her and only her car showed up a couple days later. She was then recognised at a hotel that she was staying at, under the name of her husband mistress. She claimed to have no recollection of ending up there and never talked about it with any of her friends and family. This episode calls into consideration the line of fiction and reality for Christie. She then went onto write dozens more novels after divorcing her husband, Archie, shortly after her disappearance.

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About Agatha Christie - The world's best-selling novelist

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Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist in history, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime.

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This piece of art is a sketch of the original, real life Orient Express. I found it very interesting that Christie decided to use a train franchise that began operation in 1883 and existed when the book was being published.

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The first murder that is mentioned in the Murder on the Orient Express is that of Daisy Armstrong, a five year old who was kidnapped for ransom and then murdered. As a result of this, her pregnant mother dies of complications, her father kills himself, and a maid under suspicion also commits suicide. However, this brilliant writing by Christie is not completely from her own imagination. The Armstrong case is strongly inspired by the kidnapping of two year old Charles Lindbergh Jr., that happened two years prior to the book being published. Daisy, mirroring the Lindbergh case, was the child of a wealthy family and was taken from her room in the night. The support staff in the Lindbergh case was also highly suspicious, and as mentioned in the book, that individual eventually committed suicide after facing so much hate and rash from everyone, only to later be deemed not guilty. I do think this was a very strategic move to reference the Charles Lindbergh case as Daisy Armstrong as it was still fresh in the news at the time which game each of the readers a real like connection to the book.

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Spoiler alert: This piece contains spoilers for Murder on the Orient Express

The legendary story, Murder on the Orient Express, was not only inspired by the famous train and Agatha Christie's own experiences on board, but more surprisingly by a real life crime.

There are many contenders for the "trial of the twentieth century." One of them is the prosecution of Bruno Hauptmann for the Lindbergh kidnapping case. In 1932, Charles Lindbergh Jr., the baby son of the famous aviator, was taken from his crib in the middle of the night at the Lindbergh's New Jersey home. A media whirlwind ensued, but after a couple of months of fruitless attempts to locate and rescue Charles Lindbergh Jr., the child's body was sadly discovered. The police made little headway in the case for a while, although some heavy suspicion fell on the household staff. Violet Sharp, a maid in the Lindbergh household, was repeatedly questioned by police on suspicion of complicity. Eventually, Sharp committed suicide. Later, the police concluded that she was not involved. After a couple of years and a media circus, the German born Bruno Hauptmann was linked to the crime; and was subsequently tried, convicted, and executed for kidnapping and murder. Hauptmann contended his innocence to the end and to this day many commentators believe him to be wrongfully convicted and executed, although others are convinced that justice was done.

Agatha Christie rewrote this case for Murder on the Orient Express when she crafted the subplot of the Armstrong kidnapping case. In Murder on the Orient Express, the little victim is a girl, Daisy Armstrong. After her body is found, her pregnant mother dies due to complications from pregnancy. The devastated father kills himself, and an innocent servant under suspicion commits suicide. Christie found it necessary to add the additional deaths to heighten the tragedy and for important plot purposes. In real life, Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh survived (although the heartbreak naturally took an emotional toll on them) and had five more healthy children. In Murder on the Orient Express, there is no doubt about the guilt of the kidnapper, who escapes conventional justice by using bribery to receive a not guilty verdict.

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The case that inspired Murder on the Orient Express

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Spoiler alert: This piece contains spoilers for Murder on the Orient Express The legendary story, Murder on the Orient Express , was not only inspired by the famous train and Agatha Christie's own experiences on board, but more surprisingly by a real life crime. There are many contenders for the "trial of the twentieth century."

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The Orient Express departed in December of 1935 from Istanbul, Turkey and scheduled to arrive in London. The novels begins with "It was five o'clock on a winter's morning in Syria," which presents the reader with a specific time, place and most importantly, the weather. This is an important part of the book because Hercule Poirot can infer that the murderer is still on the train due to the lack of footprints outside the snowed down train.

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A group of passengers trapped on the Orient Express in a snow storm with a murdered body and a Belgian detective to keep them company: Murder on the Orient Express is one of Agatha Christie's most famous stories. It's an intricate mystery revolving around a group of characters cut off from the world where Poirot exhibits not only the power of his little grey cells but his concern and compassion for humanity.

The underlying plot of the story was one Agatha Christie pulled from the headlines at the time, the abduction of Charles Lindbergh's son, a traumatic real-life mystery involving murder and extortion that had yet to be solved when Murder on the Orient Express was published. As for the setting, Christie had long professed a love of the Orient Express, finally achieving her dream of travelling on it in 1928 with her first solo trip abroad. In writing the story, she painstakingly noted the details of the carriages; clues such as the position of door handles would prove vital to Poirot's investigation. Several fans, in fact, have followed in Christie's footsteps, double-checking her descriptions.

Need it be said - the little grey cells solve once more the seemingly insoluble. Mrs Christie makes an improbable tale very real, and keeps her readers enthralled and guessing to the end.

Times Literary Supplement

2017 welcomed the release of a 20 th Century Fox feature film adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also took on the role of Hercule Poirot. Joining him are Penelope Cruz, Johnny Depp as Ratchett, Willem Dafoe as Hardman, Michelle Pfeiffer as Mrs. Hubbard, Judi Dench portraying Princess Dragomiroff, Daisy Ridley as Mary Debenham, Tom Bateman as Bouc, Derek Jacobi portraying Masterman, and Leslie Odom Jr. playing Doctor Arbuthnot. Dutch actor Marwan Kenzari played Michel, Josh Gad portrayed Hector MacQueen, and Lucy Boynton plays Countess Andrenyi. Discover more about the adaptation here.

The first adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express was the award-winning 1974 film featuring an all-star cast and Albert Finney as Poirot. Other stars included Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, and Ingrid Bergman, who won an Oscar for her role as Greta Ohlsson. The film won nine awards in total and had an additional sixteen nominations in 1975. It was remade for TV in 2001, with Alfred Molina as Poirot.

The story was adapted in 2004 by BBC Radio 4 with John Moffatt in the role of Poirot. 2006 saw the story become a PC game. Playing as a new character, Antoinette Marceau, gamers work alongside Poirot to solve the mystery of Ratchett's death. In 2007 the story became a graphic novel, adapted by François Rivière, but it wasn't until 2010 that David Suchet appeared on the famous train. David Suchet also did the Poirot voice-over in the PC game. Although generally faithful to the original novel, this TV film emphasised the religious and moral themes of the story as Poirot grappled with the nature of justice, clearly struggling with his final decision.

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Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

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Murder on the Orient Express is one of Agatha Christie's most popular stories and one of Hercule Poirot's finest cases. Discover the story now.

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Christie got most of her inspiration writing, through the world that she knew and saw. She recorded in her notebooks the general plot and the important key, clues before she actually started writing the book. She found that starting with the subtle descriptions, made the grand scheme of the plot fall into place a lot faster. Christie was recorded to have "endless notes in dozens of notebooks" and in an autobiography said "I used to make notes in them of ideas that struck me, or about some poison or drug, or a clever little bit of swindling that I had read about in the paper".

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Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop...suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head.

Agatha Christie, An Autobiography

Spending most of her time with imaginary friends, Agatha Clarissa Miller's unconventional childhood fostered an extraordinary imagination. Against her mother's wishes, she taught herself to read and had little or no formal education until the age of fifteen or sixteen when she was sent to a finishing school in Paris.

Agatha Christie always said that she had no ambition to be a writer although she made her debut in print at the age of eleven with a poem printed in a local London newspaper. Finding herself in bed with influenza, her mother suggested she write down the stories she was so fond of telling. And so a lifelong passion began. By her late teens she had had several poems published in The Poetry Review and had written a number of short stories. But it was her sister's challenge to write a detective story that would later spark what would become her illustrious career.

Agatha Christie wrote about the world she knew and saw, drawing on the military gentlemen, lords and ladies, spinsters, widows and doctors of her family's circle of friends and acquaintances. She was a natural observer and her descriptions of village politics, local rivalries and family jealousies are often painfully accurate. Mathew Prichard describes her as a "person who listened more than she talked, who saw more than she was seen."

The most everyday events and casual observations could trigger the idea for a new plot. Her second book The Secret Adversary stemmed from a conversation overheard in a tea shop: "Two people were talking at a table nearby, discussing somebody called Jane Fish... That, I thought, would make a good beginning to a story - a name overheard at a tea shop - an unusual name, so that whoever heard it remembered it. A name like Jane Fish, or perhaps Jane Finn would be even better."

And how were these ideas turned into novels? She made endless notes in dozens of notebooks, jotting down erratic ideas and potential plots and characters as they came to her "I usually have about half a dozen (notebooks) on hand and I used to make notes in them of ideas that struck me, or about some poison or drug, or a clever little bit of swindling that I had read about in the paper".

Image © The Christie Archive Trust

Of the more than one hundred notebooks that must have existed, 73 have survived and John Curran's detailed and thorough analysis provides a veritable treasure trove of revelations about her stories and how they evolved (see Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks). The notebooks themselves include previously unpublished material and are an intriguing look into her mind and craft. The seeds for several stories are easily identified. In 1963 a notebook held details of a plot in development: "West Indian book - Miss M? Poirot . . . B & E apparently devoted - actually B and G (Georgina) had affair for years . . . old 'frog' Major knows - has seen him before - he is killed"

A Caribbean Mystery was published in 1964 with the "Old Frog" as the novel's first victim. The Caribbean island is beautifully described and was probably based on St. Lucia, an island that Christie had visited on holiday. But many of the hundreds of plots and red herrings from her fertile imagination never actually made it into print and as she herself said: "Nothing turns out quite in the way that you thought it would when you are sketching out notes for the first chapter, or walking about muttering to yourself and seeing a story unroll."

She spent the majority of time with each book working out all the plot details and clues in her head or her notebooks before she actually started writing. Her son-in-law Anthony Hicks once said: "You never saw her writing", she never "shut herself away, like other writers do."

As grandson Mathew Prichard explains, "she then used to dictate her stories into a machine called a Dictaphone and then a secretary typed this up into a typescript, which my grandmother would correct by hand. I think that, before the war, before Dictaphones were invented, she probably used to write the stories out in longhand and then somebody used to type them. She wasn't very mechanical, she wrote in a very natural way and she wrote very quickly. I think a book used to take her, in the 1950s, just a couple of months to write and then a month to revise before it was sent off to the publishers. Once the whole process of writing the book had finished then sometimes she used to read the stories to us after dinner, one chapter or two chapters at a time. I think we were used as her guinea pigs at that stage; to find out what the reaction of the general public would be. Of course, apart from my family, there were usually some other guests here and reactions were very different. Only my mother always knew who the murderer was, the rest of us were sometimes successful and sometimes not. My grandfather was usually asleep for most of the time that these stories were read but the rest of us were usually very attentive. It was a lovely family occasion and then a couple of months later we would see these stories in the bookshops."

Image © The Christie Archive Trust

Discover all of Agatha Christie's written works here.

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Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop...suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head. Agatha Christie, An Autobiography Spending most of her time with imaginary friends, Agatha Clarissa Miller's unconventional childhood fostered an extraordinary imagination.

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This poem written by Christie in 1973, describes a serine picnic. It can be interpreted that she is coming to terms with the life that she lived and never lost any sense of her good life. I think that this ideology is important when it comes to Christies writing because she stayed consistent with her writing which meant fans continued to love every new book that she published. Out of all of the poems that I read, I liked this one the best because it is from her point of view and she is the one telling the story, unlike her other dozens of books that have the inner monolog Hercule Poirot.

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Casual readers usually neglect Christie's poems, but her inner life is there and not Marple's or Poirot's.

"Picnic 1960" suggests Christie never lost her sense of her good life. In the final poem of the volume, Christie makes the case that she has tender feelings about her age and her life's worth at seventy years old. Poems and Postern of Fate are Christie's final publications. She died in 1976.

Symbolically, Christie situates her picnic site by the side of a busy road where she has parked her Rolls Royce. Spread out on her rug, she has opened her wicker and served tea, sausage rolls and oranges only slightly tinged with dust.
Afternoon tea by the side of the road
Get out the chairs and set up the tea,
Time to go home? Strew the orange peel round,
Leave paper and portions of pie,
Pack up the crocks and get into the queue,
Perfect picnic place, love, and goodbye . . . . Serviettes, too, are a must,
Never a moment that's quiet or dull,
Sausage rolls flavoured with dust! That is the meal that I love,
Hundreds of cars rushing past all the time,
Sunshine and clouds up above!
See Agatha Christie. Poems. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1973

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Casual readers usually neglect Christie's poems, but her inner life is there and not Marple's or Poirot's. "Picnic 1960" suggests Christie never lost her sense of her good life. In the final poem of the volume, Christie makes the case that she has tender feelings about her age and her life's worth at seventy years old.

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A common development in Christies novels was the psychological struggles that were experienced by characters who appeared to be crossing a stage. Christie had a tendency to unfold certain scenes where the reader thinks they know what is happening, when in actuality, she goes in an entirely different direction. It was said her story were written so meticulously and so well that the readers felt as if they were watching the book in a play. This also helps the flow and the appeal to read her future works

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The works of Dame Agatha Christie are still a part of popular culture. In a writing career lasting more than 55 years, she wrote 72 novels (66 mystery novels and 6 romance novels) and 15 short story collections-a body of work that remains unparalleled in any genre, except perhaps by Stephen King.

What made Agatha Christie's stories stand out?

What made her stories stand out were, of course, the characters. She created memorable and dignified characters which any class of readers could relate to. Her most memorable and popular characters, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, are great examples of her skill to develop "high society" characters with mainstream appeal.

Agatha's novel, " The Mysterious Affair at Styles" (published in 1920) introduced the character Hercule Poirot. Poirot, a Belgian private investigator, appeared in thirty-three novels, one play, and over 50 short stories from 1920 to 1975. Miss Marple, an elderly woman who used her amateur sleuthing skills to solve crimes, appeared in 12 of Agatha's mystery crime novels and 22 short stories. Miss Marple often worked beside Poirot on tough crime cases.

Agatha regularly looked for "creative inspiration" by studying the people around her; however, her chosen genre, the murder mystery, stunted her writing process because it was difficult at times to put reality into fictional environments; for example, she sometimes had trouble using attributes of acquaintences to do things she couldn't imagine them doing, like murder, and this often caused writer's block. To overcome this obstacle, she would develop many characters from scratch. She would note physical appearances of strangers whom she saw and met in public and then would use their likeness and subtle mannerisms to develop relatable characters for her mysteries.

Agatha completed her first novel, " Snow Upon the Desert" in 1911 or 1912. She shopped it around to many publishers, only to receive rejection after rejection. Her first novel was never published. Her second novel, " The Mysterious Affair at Styles," completed in 1919, was published several months later by The Bodley Head, an independent English publishing house.

What was Agatha good at?

Agatha was adept at combining period subject matter with delicate story development, creative plot structure, and psychology. This is evident in her novel, Curtain, her brilliant finale. Written long before her death and placed in a bank safe with instructions to be published only after her demise, Curtain is a masterpiece that utilizes the best of her talents.

The full title, "Curtain: Poirot's Last Case" was written in 1941, thirty-five years before Agatha's death. It was published for the first time in 1975, right before Agatha died in 1976. Her final Poirot novel, "Elephants Can Remember," was released in 1972, succeeded by her last novel, "Postern of Fate" in 1973, after which she could no longer write due to illness. " Curtain " finally brings the Poirot character to a close-Agatha finally "kills him off."

A common thread in many of Agatha's novels was to develop a psychological struggle and to use topical references and brilliant characters who appeared to be crossing a stage. Her stories felt that way, as if you were sitting in an audience watching the most elegant play unfold before you. It's not surprising that films and TV shows based directly on her works were filled with great actors playing crusty and snooty, yet relatable, desperate characters.

Guinness Book of World Records recognizes Agatha Christie as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels, collectively, have sold more than 4 billion copies. Her best-selling mystery novel of all time is " And Then There Were None," which has sold over 100 million copies. Agatha is also the most translated individual author. Her novels have been translated into over 100 languages.

To avoid stagnation, Agatha developed a habit of writing more than one book at a time. Despite being raised by an affluent upper-class family in England, her language was always simple, using a writing style that every reader could understand and enjoy. Although simple in style, her intriguing plots and sub-plots challenged readers to figure out "who done it" before the story ended. Agatha cleverly paced material, allowing readers to move through stories at a steady or slow pace that enhanced the drama. She relied heavily on dialogue, a technique to vary the pacing of the story as well as to heighten suspense. The beginnings of her works are strong on description, which gradually drop off as dialogue and interaction between characters take over. With shorter sentences and sharp dialogue, she hurries readers along to what's always a captivating conclusion.

Agatha preferred to plot her crime stories from the murder itself. First, she would plan out the mode of murder, the killer, and the purpose. Second, she would factor in the various suspects and their own intents. Third, she would concoct potential clues and diversionary tactics to pull readers in different directions. She restrained herself from including excessive misleading clues because it would stifle the plot.

Agatha devised her mysteries with intricate deceptions to manipulate readers' thoughts and feelings and to make it more difficult for readers to solve the main mystery. She often used the same story-development formula for many of her crime novels: the main character-a detective or private investigator-either discovers the murder a past friend, somehow associated with the murder, contacts the main character for help. As the story unfolds, the main character questions every suspect, investigates the location of the crime, and carefully jots down each clue, allowing
readers to scrutinize the clue and try to solve the mystery on their own. Just as readers build up clues and think they know who might have comitted the murder, Agatha kills off one or a few main suspects, leaving readers shocked and confused that they were wrong about the murderer's identity. Eventually the main character gathers all of the remaining suspects at one location and reprimands the culprit, revealing numerous unconnected secrets along the way, usually lasting 20-30 pages.

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography contains her memoirs and her reflections on life, including her writing career. It is believed she began writing her autobiography in 1950 and eventually completed it in 1965. In 2012, U.S. publisher William Morrow Paperbacks re-published her 570-page autobiography as a "reprint edition." It is available at Amazon.com.

It's not a coincidence that Agatha's most famous protagonist, Hercule Poirot, constantly referred to his approach to solving mysteries as using his "little gray cells," a reference to his brain. Similarly, Agatha applied her "little gray cells" to the written page. She was an exceptionally smart and gifted writer, deftly combining sharp structure with a psychological spin that still feels fresh today. She refused to write down to her readers, but instead invited all types of readers into her stories. She left a library of work that's both intelligent and timeless. A reader can pick up a book published decades ago and not feel any passage of time. Murder and good writing-a combination that made the "Queen of Crime" one of the best writers in history.

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The Writing Style of Agatha Christie | FreelanceWriting

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The works of Dame Agatha Christie are still a part of popular culture. In a writing career lasting more than 55 years, she wrote 72 novels (66 mystery novels and 6 romance novels) and 15 short story collections-a body of work that remains unparalleled in any genre, except perhaps by Stephen King.