“Agatha Christie: The Mother of the Cozy Mystery” by Nancy West

There’s more to Agatha Christie than slick plot twists and quaint settings (like the fictitious Chipping Cleghorn). Christie was an adventurous woman, said Nancy West, the University of Missouri English professor who authored the biography, the latest in the Simon & Schuster series of pocket portraits of famous writers. A world traveler who took up surfing in South Africa and pursued the hobby in Hawaii, Christie was one of the few British women to own her own car in the 1920s, said West. “And she liked to drive fast,” added the professor, citing British brands like the Humber Super Snipe and Morris Cowley among Christie’s vehicles. Christie was already an established writer in 1926 when her husband of 12 years asked for a divorce. The news caught Christie off-balance whose subsequent “disappearance” became a major press event in England when thousands combed the countryside looking for the lost author, unaware that Christie, initially despondent about the break-up, was enjoying a holiday in Yorkshire (the letter she left a relative explaining her whereabouts had been mislaid). Christie soon got back to writing—not just mysteries and plays—but she also joined fellow mystery writers like Dorothy Sayers to deliver original mysteries on BBC radio. West notes that Christie and her second husband stayed in London during World War II, braving the Blitz. Through it all, she kept writing, producing, among other things, The Mousetrap, the longest-running play of all time. A writer is fortunate to develop one literary character to draw a reader’s attention. Christie came up with two: Hercule Poirot (who starred in 33 novels including Murder on the Orient Express) and Miss Marple (who starred in 12). Both have also been repeatedly featured in movies and TV adaptations. West said she and her family are especially fond of David Suchet's portrayal of Poirot on British television, programs that ran on British TV from 1989 to 2013. The latest Hercule Poirot TV series will air in 2027 (this time with 33-year-old Edward Bluemel as Poirot), West said. When Christie died in 1976, she left behind an estate valued at just over 110,000 pounds, not the lavish fortune one would expect from the woman who sold millions of books in her career. British tax laws dogged Christie throughout her life, said West. For her next book, West said she plans an account of her experiences as a youth attending films and film houses in New York with her father in the 1970s. She recounted one episode where, as an eight-year-old, she recognized Greta Garbo on the streets of New York. “We followed her for blocks until she went into an automat and watched her eat a piece of pie,” recalled West, who planned to approach the reclusive star and talk to her before “I chickened out,” she laughed.