I couldn’t let the week pass by without mentioning that September 15th (today) is the Birthday of Agatha Christie. The author was born in Torquay, Devon on the English Channel in 1890, and had she lived, she’d be celebrating her 120th.
Like Conan Doyle with Holmes, Agatha Christie would never live him down, even though she meticulously plotted Poirot's death in the early 1940s. The book, Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, was locked away in a bank vault and wouldn't see the light of day until 1975, months before Christie's death on 12 January 1976.
Hers was a remarkable career and what better way to remember her life than revisiting a few of my favourites among her work? In no particular order, you might consider:
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
As I've already mentioned, this is where Christie's career began, so what better place to start? You'll meet Poirot and the bumbling Captain Hastings, and get an excellent sample of Christie's penchant for poisoning.
The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)
What on earth could
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
Agatha Christie at her most clever, though some critics cried foul when they found out whodunit. I disagree, of course. The plotting is tight, the characterization is spot-on. This is the epitome of Golden Age mystery.
After the Funeral (1953)
Appearances are a matter of life and death in this classic drawing-room drama. The house described in the novel was based on Agatha's sister's real-life gothic manse: Abney Hall.
Cards on the Table (1936)
Death Comes as the End (1945)
The Mysterious Mr Quin (1930)
The Thirteen Problems (1932)
Christie's corpus has never been out of print and her books are available in all sorts of editions. I'm particularly partial to the paperbacks from Dell, published in the late 60s and early 70s. HarperCollins, Christie's UK publisher, recently began issuing hardcover facsimiles of the first editions, which I also like.
But whatever the edition, so long as it's Agatha Christie, you're not likely to be disappointed.
Elizabeth Frengel is a curator of rare books at The University of Chicago Library Book Arts and History