Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime"—a moniker which is now trademarked by her estate—or the "Queen of Mystery". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
Portrait of Christie entitled Lost in Reverie, by Douglas John Connah, 1894
Christie as a girl, early 1900s
Christie as a young woman, 1910s
Christie as a nurse in the Voluntary Aid Detachment of the British Red Cross. She is pictured in 1915 outside her childhood home of Ashfield.
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
Consulting detective Sherlock Holmes examines a suspect's boots in an illustration to the 1891 story "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
Wilkie Collins (1824–1889)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
