Fortunately, the bright young Agatha was able to teach herself and fell in love with English poetry.
She received no formal education until she was sent to finishing school in Paris at the age of 15. The only other detective Christie wrote who rivaled Hercule Poirot in popularity was Miss Jane Marple. In particular, it was her grandmother’s cheerfulness cut by her ability to (correctly) assume the worst in everyone that truly drove the character.ĥ) HERCULE POIROT RECEIVED A NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARY Marple was an amalgam of old women Christie used to meet in the villages as a child, as well as her grandmother. Hercule Poirot is the only fictional character in history to receive an obituary from The New York Times. When he perished in the 1975 novel Curtain the reaction from fans was fierce. The New York Times printed a front-page obituary for the character on August 6, detailing his fictional life’s achievements.
But seeing as Poirot’s debut was also that of Christie’s, it is poetic that the following year Christie herself passed away. Though most of Christie’s novels involved murder, she was not big on gruesome violence. Many of her slain characters were poisoned, and this is likely due to Christie’s past working in a dispensary during war-time which equipped her with a working knowledge of pharmaceuticals. In fact, her knowledge of poisons was such that her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles received a glowing write-up… from a pharmaceutical magazine.ħ) SHE SWORE THE OFFICIAL OATH OF DETECTIVE WRITINGįounded in 1928, The London Detective Club was a social club for crime writers, of which Christie was a member in good standing. As part of its membership, each writer needed to swear a (mostly tongue-in-cheek) oath to never keep vital clues from their readers and to never use entirely fictional poisons as a plot crutch.