Sample from ‘Detective Fiction’

From Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Christie (1890-1976) is the best known author of the 'Golden Age' of detective fiction.  The child of well-to-do parents, she was educated at home and spent a year being ‘finished’ in Cairo.  In 1914 she married Archibald Christie, just before he left to serve in the Great War.  During the war she worked as a VAD nurse, including a period in a hospital dispensary, where she learnt about poisons.  In 1916, just for fun, she wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which featured Hercule Poirot, who was to become her main detective.  It was eventually published in 1920, by which time she had a baby daughter.  After the war she travelled with her husband, but kept on writing.  In 1926 her most popular book to date, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, was published, though up to this time, she had not thought of writing as a full-time career.

When in 1926 her mother died and her husband proved unfaithful, she disappeared for several days, just like a character in one of her stories.  It is not known whether she had a breakdown, or whether it was a publicity stunt, but her disappearance attracted huge public attention, and she was eventually ‘found’ at a quiet country hotel.  At least one film has been made about this episode, which she never discussed.  In 1928 she divorced Christie, and decided to become a professional author.  In 1930 she married Max Mallowan, an archaeologist she had met while visiting archaeological sites at Ur and they remained happily married.  Several of her books have an archaeological setting.  Christie continued to produce novels, short stories and plays at an incredible rate until the 1960s, but her later work is less satisfying, as times changed more quickly than she did.