Miss Marple

It's the birthday of Mary Clarissa Agatha Miller, better known as mystery writer Agatha Christie (1890) (books by this author), born in Torquay, Devon, England. Christie had an unconventional childhood: her parents didn't send the children to school, preferring to keep them home and teaching them piano and violin. Christie taught herself to read at an early age, which displeased her mother, who thought she had plenty of time for that later on. Her mother did enjoy scary stories, though, as did her older sister, Madge, and the three of them delighted in making up thrilling tales.

Christie married in 1914, just before the advent of World War I. While her husband was at war, she worked at a pharmacy, where she learned quite a lot about poisons, knowledge that became useful for her books later on.

On a dare from her older sister, she wrote her first mystery novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). The book was rejected several times before finally being published and was only a modest success, but it did introduce the character of Hercule Poirot, an extravagantly mustached Belgian detective. Poirot would prove to be immensely popular with readers, appearing in more than 33 Christie mysteries, but Christie was tired of him by the 1930s. She wrote in her diary that she found the character "insufferable and an egocentric creep." When she finally killed him off in the novel Curtain (1975), The New York Times ran a full-page obituary for his character.

Her favorite character was Miss Jane Marple, who first appeared in The Thirteen Problems (1925). Marple was an amateur detective whom Christie based on her grandmother and her grandmother's cronies. When asked why Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple never appeared together, Christie answered, "Hercule Poirot, a complete egoist, would not like being taught his business or having suggestions made to him by an elderly spinster lady."

After her novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) became an international best-seller, Christie was a phenomenal success for the rest of her life, writing more than 80 novels, including Murder on the Orient Express, and 30 short-story collections. Her play The Mousetrap, which was first written as a radio sketch for the 80th birthday of Queen Mary, is the longest-running play in history. It was first staged in 1952 and has been running continuously ever since. Christie was made a Dame of the British Empire (1971). Her novels have been adapted for film, stage, video games, and even anime.

Christie's victims have been strangled by a raincoat belt and a ukulele; stabbed with a corn knife; jabbed with a venom-tipped dart; drowned in an apple tub; crushed by a bear-shaped marble clock; and electrocuted by a chessboard rigged to deliver the fatal charge upon completion of the third move of the Ruy Lopez opening, which is Bb5.