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Agatha Christie Message Board 1/1/2012
Talk about the novels, new and used books that Christie has written!

Author Christie's Book Reviews

4:50 From Paddington (What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!)
Elspeth McGillicuddy had just witnessed a murder on the train passing hers. A woman was being strangled! But no one believed her except her friend Jane Marple. Fortunately, the old spintster Marple was surprisingly adept at solving criminal puzzles. The only problem was, where were she going to start, when there was no body, no motive and and no knowledge of the victim's identity?...
A Caribbean Mystery
Miss Jane Marple is vacationing in luxurious St. Honoré in the Caribbean Islands. Just as she begins to get used to the slow and monotonous island life, a shocking question awakes her dormant curiosity: “Would you like to see a picture of a murderer?” Suddenly, the same man who had asked her this is found dead in his room the next morning. As fellow hotel residents brush off this event, Miss Marple begins to dig deeper into this, more than coincidental, ...
A Murder Is Announced
A newspaper ad in the small town of Chipping Cleghorn announces that a murder will take place that very evening at the home of Letitia Blacklock. This comes as a surprise to the residents of Miss Blacklock's home, but they assume it is some sort of joke or party idea. Accordingly, many townspeople turn up that night, expecting a murder mystery party. But, to everyone's surprise, when the lights go out, a true murder is committed. The victim is unknow...
Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
Agatha Christy had an amazing life and was an amazing women. She lived life happily and in return is known as a best selling author, who has traveled the world, experienced a dig, and grew up through the two world wars....

Christie booklist

And Then There Were None
The story opens up by introducing 10 characters. These characters do not know each other and are invited to Indian Island off the coast of Devon. The guests are invited by an unknown couple named the Ownens who are said to be millionaires and own the island. Each character is invited for a different reason through a letter from this mysterious couple. Once the characters reach the island, they are welcomed into a fancy house where they will be stayin...
Black Coffee
Black Coffee was Agatha Christie's first ever stage play written in 1930's. The play was recently adopted as a novel by Charles Osborne (author of 'Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie'). Though the novel is not actually penned by Christie, it comes as close to being one. After decades, Christie fans are presented with a Hercule Poirot novel that truly reads like authentic, vintage Christie. Poirot is urgently summoned by scientist Sir Claud Amory to he...
Cards On the Table
The novel starts with Hercule Poirot being invited by a rich man with a promising note that he will display murderers whose murders could not be proved! Poirot finds it dangerous and accepts the invitation to find out what the rich man had promised. The party consists of a security team - a Superitendent, detective Poirot, a detective story writer and a colonel along with 4 suspects who are the rich man's exhibits of murderers. The guests start with the ...
Crooked House
Agatha Christie often resorted to nursery rhyme titles. This one is just too perfect so I defer to Mother Goose herself: "There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile. He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile. He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse. And they all lived together in a little crooked house." ...
Curtain
Captain Hastings, recently widowed, has recived a letter from his friend Hercule Poirot. Oddly enough, the postmark is from Styles! (The place where Poirot solved his first case in England.) Hastings goes at once. Not only is Poirot there, but his daughter, Judith, as well. Styles was sold by the Cavendishes, and is now a guest house. Hastings meets his old friend, and is saddened to see him in a wheelchair, crippled by arthritis and a weak heart. ...
Dead Man's Folly
When bestselling author Ariadne Oliver begs Hercule Poirot to help her, he gallantly comes to the rescue. Mrs. Oliver is organizing a Murder Hunt for charity at a country estate, but believes that a real murder will actually take place. She asks Poirot to intervene but, despite his efforts, a young girl is killed and a woman disappears. Poirot knows he has plenty of clues, but he cannot make sense of them. When an old man dies soon after, Poirot's frustr...

Agatha Christie list of books

Death Comes as the End
In Ancient Egypt, newly-widowed Renisenb returns to her family home after several years away. Complications arise almost immediately as her father brings home a new concubine, Nofret, who begins to turn family members against each other. Just as Renisenb and her brothers realize what a danger Nofret is, she is found dead. Only Renisenb, the family scribe, and the wise family matriach realize the death was no accident, and together they set out to solv...
Death On the Nile
When about 16 people go on a Nile excursion, no one is prepared for 3 grisly murders. It is up to Hercule Poirot to discover the criminal...or criminals...in a baffling murder mystery....
Endless Night
This story is unlike other Agatha Christie Mysteries. The main character is a man, which is saying the story of his life. Mr. Rogers is a man who had many jobs and many women. But now all he wants is a house called "The Gipsy's Acre" (made by the magnificent Santonlx) and a woman. Rogers first meets Ellie near the terrain of this house and after more meetings they decided to get married. However Ellie is very rich woman, and she has many lawyers and r...
Evil Under the Sun
Hercule Poirot's vacation on a peaceful seaside hotel is cut short when the glamorous actress Arlena Stuart is strangled to death on the beach. ...
Five Little Pigs AKA Murder in Retrospect (US)
When Beautiful Carla Lemarchant is ushered into Hercule Poirot's room and asks for his assistance in solving the murder of her father, Poirot certainly has a strange case ahead of him, for this murder happened sixteen years ago! With Carla's mother tried and subsequently convicted for the crime. At the time of the murder Carla is only five years old and after the death of her father Amyas, she is shipped off to Canada to start a fresh life with her...
Hallowe'en Party
When teenager Joyce Reynolds is drowned in a bucket of bobbing apples on a Halloween party arranged by the famous crime author Ariadne Oliver, she calls for her old friend, the Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot, to solve the case. ...

Agatha Christie novels

Mrs. McGinty's Dead
Hercule Poirot is contacted by Superintendent Spence (we also met in "Taken at the Flood" and "Hallowe'en Party"). He believes James Bentley, a man convicted and just about to be hanged for the murder of his landlady to be innocent and wants Poirot to investigate. ...
Murder At the Vicarage
It should have been easy to find Colonel Protheroe's murderer. After all, half the village wanted him dead, and the other half certainly wouldn't mind his absence. It wasn't as if suspects were hard to come by! Yet when the Colonel is found shot in the vicarage, it's a shock to everyone. The obnoxious police, with the help of the vicar and clues from Miss Marple, investigate the crime. To their surprise, they find that the quiet town of St. Mary Mead is ...
Murder for Christmas
It is Christmas Eve, and elderly Simeon Lee has invited his family home for a good old-fashioned holiday celebration. At least, that's what he told them. In fact, the old man has a mean streak, and insults each and every one of his children in turn. Later that night, he is found violently murdered in his locked office. The police are immediately called, but of course nobody has a clue until Hercule Poirot arrives. ...
Murder in Mesopotamia
When Nurse Leatheran's patient is brutally murdered at an archaeological dig, she teams up with detective Hercule Poirot to unravel a plot of obsession, jealousy, and revenge. Amy Leatheran, a nurse working in the Middle East, is hired by Erich Leidner, an archaeologist, to care for his wife Louise. He says that she has been suffering from a lot of nervous strain and anxiety, and that he is concerned for her mental health. Amy joins the Leidner's expedit...
Murder on the Orient Express
Hercule Poirot is a private detective. He is summoned to London to solve a case and boards the Orient Express, securing a first class compartment, through his friend M. Bouc. Once aboard the train a passenger, who is traveling under the name of Rachett, asks him to make sure he survives through a possible attempt to end his life. Mr. Poirot refuses and soon after Rachett is murdered. While the train is stuck in a snow bank, M. Bouc asks Poirot to take on...
Murder with Mirrors
Carrie Louise Serracold is not in touch with reality. She doesn't realize her life is endangered by arsenic in her tonic, poisoned chocolates, and a murderer in the family. That's in addition to running a school in her home rehabilitating juvenile delinquents! Lucky for Carrie Louise, her sister Ruth Van Rydock sends lifelong friend Jane Marple to keep an eye on things. Although Miss Marple tries to warn her, Carrie Louise refuses to believe her granddau...

Agatha Christie information

N or M?
Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are trying to find a nazi spy during World War 2. When Tommy is called to a secret government meeting, Tuppence tracks him down, going to the same hotel as him. The two must try to stop a Nazi spy before he infiltrates the English government....
Nemesis
Sort of a sequel but VERY standalone. Miss Marple once described herself as 'Nemesis'. Now she is called upon to play that role. Given no information about what she should investigate she undertakes to solve a mystery that she knows nothing about. Of course she suceeds....
Ordeal By Innocence
The Argyles have an adopted child who has been convicted of murdering their adoptive mother. Jacko Argyle's alibi for the night of Rachel Argyle's killing falls through and he is convicted and soon after dies in prison. After all, while Jacko could be charming, he was always in trouble with the law and not very well-liked by his 'siblings'. But Dr. Arthur Calgary comes forward with compelling evidence to the contrary. A bout of amnesia prevented ...
Peril at End House
Hercule Poirot's Cornish vacation is interrupted by the troubled young woman Nick Buckley. She has narrowly escaped death three times in as many days and believes they are accidents, but Poirot is not so sure. His suspicions are confirmed when Nick's cousin is shot dead in an apparent mistake of identity......
Poirot Loses a Client
When Hercule Poirot receives a letter requesting his investigative assistance, he quickly responds. However, the woman no longer needs his services, he finds, because she died before the letter was mailed! Poirot investigates her death with the help of Captain Hastings, and the two soon conclude that Emily Arundell was murdered. The pair must act quickly to expose the murderer and prevent another death....
Sparkling Cyanide
Not to long ago, George Barton's wife Rosemary Barton had a birthday party where she committed suicide by drinking cyanide in front of some of her closest friends. The party included her husband George, her sister Iris, George's secretary; Ruth Lessing, Lady Alexandra Faraday, Stephen Faraday, and Anthony Browne. The clues all pointed to suicide; from the cyanide in her purse to depression after the flu, no one even considered anything but suicide....
Taken at the Flood
Hercule Poirot investigates the death of a husband in Africa and the murder of his alleged friend in England. One day at the Coronation Club in London Hercule Poirot overheard Major Porter tell members about the death of a friend in Africa and his widow's remarriage in New York. Porter added that the young woman was recently widowed again when her husband Gordon Cloade and and three servants died in a bomb explosion in London. The widow Rosaleen Cloade a...
The A.B.C. Murders
Hercule Poirot, the renowed Belgian detective, and his friend/sidekick Hastings, receive a letter informing them of a murder on a certain day in a certain town. They don't really think very much of it, but then the murder actually happens. Strangely, the murder was commited in a town called Andover, on a woman named Alice Ascher, and an A.B.C. railroad guide is left behind. Then there is another murder on a woman named Betty Barnard, and the A.B.C. gu...
The Big Four
This is a novel featuring Agatha Christie's master sleuth Hercule Poirot. Poirot takes on a mysterious group of 4 supervillians bent on world domination. The group includes the following : a Chinese political mastermind, an American tycoon, a French nuclear scientist and a British assassin and master of disguise. They are quite a formidable bunch. Additionally, Poirot has to contend with Countess Vera Rossakov. She is in the employ of the big...
The Body in the Library
The body of a young woman is found in the library of Colonel and Mrs. Bantry. Mrs. Bantry immediately calls in her old friend, Miss Marple, to investigate the crime. The body is identified as a dancer who worked at a nearby hotel and was in no way connected to the Bantrys. It is also discovered that the young lady had attached herself to a rich old man and his family and that he had been planning to adopt her. Soon afterwards, the body of another you...
The Clocks
This book is a Poirot mystery even thought the detective appears only episodically. The main character Colin Lamp is a spy and was searching for a house of a suspected spy, when Sheila Webb appears from an other house saying there was a murder. The owner of the house is a blind woman that was not in the house at the time of the murder (or so she claims). The girl that discover the body was call here specifically and told to go to that room, but the blind...
The Hollow
Hercule Poirot is disgusted by the crude humor his hostess displays by arranging a "murder" scene to unfold as he arrives. Too bad it was real... When Poirot realizes the man with the gunshot wound is really dying, he rushes over just in time to hear the man gasp a name: "Henrietta." Poirot first suspects the wife of the crime, then the mistress, and every other family member and servant in turn. He finally realizes that every clue, rather than leading h...
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Man in the Brown Suit was first serialised in The Evening News under the title "Anna the Adventuress". Shortly thereafter, Christie released the entire collection as "The Man in the Brown Suit. Penniless recently-orphaned Anne Beddingfeld witnesses a man falling to his death in a crowded London tube station. A mysterious, brown-suited man claiming to be a doctor examines the body.But, he drops a piece of paper that Anne picks up On the paper ...
The Moving Finger
Jerry Burton and his sister Joanna relocate to the village of Lymstock so he can convalesce after a flying accident. His doctor feels that a quiet rest is what will speed up his healing. Everything seems typical of small town life until they receive an anonymous letter stating that they are not brother and sister. They toss the letter in the fire. However, after asking around, they realize they are one of many recipients of these types of letters. When s...
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
When the widow Mrs. Ferrars commits suicide and the businessman Roger Ackroyd is murdered in the space of just a few days, the small English village King's Abbot is even more full of gossip than usual. The murder is a complete mystery to the local police. Fortunately, though, the (attemptedly) retired belgian detective Hercule Poirot is also living in the village, and agrees to come out of retirement one last time to solve the case. ...
The Murder on the Links
This mystery begins when the great Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is called to France by an urgent letter from Monsieur Renauld. Poirot decides to go not because the letter was written in urgency but because Poirot determines it was not. When Poirot and his friend Captain Hastings reach Renauld's home it is too late. Just that morning M. Renauld has been found stabbed in the back in a half dug grave on a golf course in his backyard. His wife was found ...
The Mysterious Affair At Styles
Captain Arthur Hastings is wounded and sent home from WW1. He meets his friend John Cavendish, who offers him a stay at his (or rather his step-mother's)house, called, "Styles." Hastings accecpts and so they go there. Hastings is introduced to the other members of the household, which include Mr. Inglethorp, the new husband of Mrs. Cavendish (John's step-mother.) No one likes him, except his wife, and no one trusts him. Naturally, when Mrs. Inglet...
The Pale Horse
Father Gorman is called to a woman's deathbed. She tells him a story that he can hardly believe, in fact a story that will kill him. A short time later he is bludgeoned while walking home. However, the killer didn't find what he was looking for, namely a list of nine names in the priest's shoe... ...
The Secret Adversary
In the beginning, the ship Lusitana has been torpedoed and a stranger has given a young girl a packet contaning an important document. The stranger dies, and the girl, whose name is Jane Finn, disappears, and the packet is forgotten. Until, that is, a labor unrest starts in England and if the papers fall into the wrong hands it could prove deadly to the government. Tommy Beresford and Prudence Cowley (nicknamed Tuppence) know nothing of this when they...
The Secret of Chimneys
Anthony Cade (or GENTLEMAN JOE) is not a man who stays too much in a place or on a job. So when his friend asks him deliver the memories of a former prime-minister of a small country he accepts. However things don't go that smoothly. First in visited by a polite baron, a violent member of a known criminal organisation and then is attracted by his Italian waiter. And of course all they want is the manuscript. His second mission is to give a young lady s...
The Seven Dials Mystery
When a guest dies mysteriously in her house, the intrepid Eileen "Bundle" Brent seeks out to find his killer- only to be drawn into a labyrinth of secret societies and international espionage. Eileen "Bundle" Brent is intrigued by the death of a young man in her bedroom, and is determined to find answers.The novel opens at a party in the mansion of the Marquis of Caterham, who has rented it to a wealthy businessman and his wife, Sir Oswald and Lady Coo...
The Under Dog
The famous detective M. Hercule Poirot is involved in a baffling case of a quarrel that led to the murder of Sir Reuben. According to the witness Parsons, he overheard a quarrel that supposedly took place between Sir Reuben and his nephew Charles Leverson at the end of which a loud thud was heard. The next day Sir Reuben is found dead at his study desk. The accused Charles Leverson has got no way out of the trouble as all the evidences go against him. Ho...
They Do It With Mirrors
A friend of Miss Marple is worried about their old friend Carrie-Louise Serrocold. Altough the reason is unclear, Miss Marple takes it seriously and visits Carrie-Louise and her third husband Lewis in their house,which has been turned into a reform institution for underage criminals. Things turn more serious, however, when Carrie-Louise's stepson Christian is found shot and it turns out someone have been trying to poison her. Miss Marple starts her own p...
Third Girl
After aging detective Hercule Poirot receives a bizarre visit from a young woman who "may have" killed someone, he unravels an intimate family drama of fraud, deception, and murder. When the aging detective Hercule Poirot is interrupted at breakfast by a young woman claiming that she may have killed someone, he feels compelled to investigate- and in the search of her crime, discovers a far more sinister family plot that he must unravel. The novel ope...
Towards Zero
When tennis player invites ex-wife and current wife to visit his aunt's, little does anyone know someone will be killed. The only real clue is the murderer is someone who has killed before......
Why Didn't They Ask Evans?
When Bobby Jones finds a man who has fallen over the side of the cliff in Marchbolt, Wales, he sends his friend Dr. Thomas to go get help. The man is dying and right before the end he wakes up and says, "Why didn't they ask Evans?" Bobby is puzzled about this, but later forgets it until he tells the dead man's family about it and is poisoned! Fortunatly, he doesn't die, and his friend, Lady Frances Derwent decides to help him with the case. They don'...