Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1978) was an English mystery writer who published 66 novels, 14 short story collections, and wrote the world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap, which has been in continual production since 1952 (excepting a short pause in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 crisis). Born Agatha Miller to an upper-class family in Torquay, Devon, England, Christie was educated at home. She married Archibald Christie in 1914, and divorced him in 1928. During a 1924 Empire Tour of Britain, Christie discovered surfing, which became a lifelong hobby. She married her second husband, Max Mallowan, in 1930. Mallowan was an archaeologist, and Christie frequently went on dig sites with him in the Middle East. Christie was still married to Mallowan when she died in 1976 at age 85. Christie had one child, Rosalind Christie Hicks, with her first husband, Archie.

Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was written during World War I in 1916 and published in 1920 after several rejections. Styles introduced Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, one of her most famous protagonists alongside armchair detective Miss Jane Marple. Poirot appears in more than 30 novels and 50 stories, while Miss Marple appears in 12 novels and 20 stories.

Christie is commonly associated with the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction,” a literary movement prominent in the 1920s and 1930s.