Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie (1890–1976) is the bestselling novelist of all time, whose detective fiction created the enduring figures of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Her novels — from Murder on the Orient Express and four-and-after classics such as After the Funeral to a long run of plays including The Mousetrap — defined the modern detective genre.

Trained as a nurse during the First World War, where she learned about poisons, Christie published her first novel in 1920 and her last in 1973, writing more than seventy books. Her ingenuity with plot and the fair-play puzzle made her stories irresistible, and her work has been adapted for film, stage and television more than any other author's.