Agatha Christie
Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was a British writer who wrote mysteries, psychological fiction, plays, and poetry. That is an almost laughably cryptic basic description of one of the bestselling writers in publishing. Currently, it is estimated that her books have sold approximately two billion copies. Her estate estimates that she is the most widely published author or text after the Bible and Shakespeare. She has been translated into 103 languages. Not shabby for a upper middle-class girl who liked lab work in chemistry and pharmaceuticals — and who liked to write.
She bestrides the world of mysteries like a colossus. She is often considered formulaic in her approach, “cookie-cutter,” but any respectful reading quickly dispels that envious evaluation. She wrote sixty-seven detective novels and fourteen short-story collections, intimidating enough, and influential beyond all measure for a century now. She also wrote a series of novels under the name of Mary Westmacott which astonish anyone who reads them not as gothic romance, as they were marketed, but as psychological surgeries, merciless analytical examinations of women at the sharp end of reality. She often wrote with humor, with a sharp and sassy satirical eye, and she was capable of a sensitive pathos with the people who were collateral damage in her so-called “whodunits.” Remarkably, she had a cool and ambivalent attitude toward her heroes and heroines, including Miss Marple and the great Hercule Poirot.
Agatha Christie is a complex and complicated writer. I invite you to read her as comfort fare, which she is, and I invite you to read her as a twentieth-century novelist, which she is in a circumspect and mysterious way. Enjoy!
N or M?
N or M?
Set during the dark days of World War II, Agatha Christie’s N or M? puts two most unlikely espionage agents, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, on the trail of a pair of Nazi spies who have murdered Britain’s top agent.
World War II is raging, and while the RAF struggles to keep the Luftwaffe at bay, Britain faces a sinister threat from “the enemy within”—Nazis posing as ordinary citizens.
With pressure mounting, the intelligence service appoints two improbable spies, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. Their mission: to seek out a man and a woman from among the colorful guests at Sans Souci, a seaside hotel. But this assignment is far from an easy stroll along the promenade—N and M have just murdered Britain’s finest agent and no one can be trusted.