69 pages 2 hours read

Agatha Christie

The Mousetrap

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1950

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Introduction

The Mousetrap

  • Genre: Play; mystery
  • Originally Published: 1950
  • Reading Level/Interest: College/Adult
  • Structure/Length: Two acts, two scenes; approx. 70 pages
  • Protagonist/Central Conflict: Seven strangers are snowed in at a remote guesthouse in the country. A police sergeant arrives and tells them there is a killer among them, and the strangers are forced to reveal their sordid pasts. But who is the killer?
  • Potential Sensitivity Issues: Murder; stereotypes; racial slurs

Agatha Christie, Author

  • Bio: 1890-1976; English writer known as the “Queen of Crime” for her detective novels and for writing the world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap; studied voice and piano in Paris at 16; served as a nurse during WWI; wrote over 70 detective and mystery novels in her lifetime, many adapted to stage plays and film; earned the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award in 1955; awarded the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1971; holds the title of the most-translated individual author and a Guinness World Record for best-selling fiction writer of all time with more than two billion copies sold
  • Other Works: Murder on the Orient Express (1934); Death on the Nile (1937); And Then There Were None (1939); A Pocket Full of Rye (1953); Sleeping Murder (1976)

CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:

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