Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan was an English writer. She is known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around her fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Christie also wrote the world's longest-running play, a murder mystery, The Mousetrap, and, under the pen name Mary Westmacott, six romances. Where did she get some of her characters and backgrounds? Poirot was given the nationality, Belgian, of first World War refugees arriving in 1916 Torquay and Miss Marple shared some characteristics with Christie’s grandmother. The Boyntons in Appointment with Death were inspired by fellow-passengers on a Nile cruise; Major Belcher, her first husband Archie’s boss with whom they travelled on a round-the-world trade mission in 1922, became Sir Eustace in The Man in the Brown Suit; a colleague from her dispensing days inspired a character, 40 years later, in The Pale Horse. And personal experience often provided a setting: the geography of Burgh Island, off the Devon coast, appears unchanged in Evil under the Sun; the swimming-pool of the actor Francis L Sullivan (a West End Poirot) provided the murder scene in The Hollow; her own home and garden at Greenway is the setting for Dead Man’s Folly and Five Little Pigs. The Orient Express, an archaeological dig, a sea voyage, a Caribbean holiday – all these personally-experienced backgrounds were put to good use over a half-century of writing. Enjoy free online English audiobook “Agatha Christie Presents Mysteries”, a breathtaking novel by Agatha Christie.
