Any Agatha Christie fans about?

[wineoclockthanks]

I read them all avidly about 40 years ago and am rediscovering them via Charity shops atm.

One of my favourites was about a group of people living in a shared house, possibly a student house and there were letters written in green ink. I've had a google but can't find the name of the book. Any ideas please?

No spoilers please because I can only remember the murderer in a few and don't want to spoil the rest.

Love the cover designs. Tom Adams ones especially. I try to pick them up cheap in 2nd hand bookshops or eBay etc just for the covers!

@SpiderHunter your BIL might like Anthony Horowitz - The Word Is Murder is great, written from the POV of a crime novelist who sets up an unlikely alliance with a hard-bitten detective. The Magpie Murders is also good.

I love Agatha, most of my favourites have already been mentioned. Sleeping Murder is great, as are Nemesis and The Moving Finger (all Miss Marple).

I love the Joan Hickson adaptations for the BBC, absolutely perfect imho.

@SpiderHunter he may also like Simon Brett

Agatha Christie was a founding member of the Detection Club which was a group of britich crime writers who believed in certain 'fair play' rules in detective/crime writing which preserves the style of writing for which Agatha is so well known. Simon Brett is a more recent President of the Detection Club and writes a variety of mini series of detective novels. I personally like the Charles Paris Mysteries and Also the Mrs Pargiter series but his most recent series is the Feathering series which has a large number of stories.

Love Agatha Christie but only Poirot, never cared for Miss Marple.
There’s a podcast called All About Agatha where they go through the whole back catalogue and rate/review them. It’s very in depth but I’ve quite enjoyed it.

Do you know the original title for And Then There Were None?

I love the Miss Marple books the best. I actually want to be her and live in St Mary Mead
My favourite (and first one I ever read) is the 4.50 from Paddington. Second favourite is Murder at the Vicarage. But I agree Why didn’t they ask Evans is brilliant.
DH has bought me Hercule Poirot’s Christmas as one of my pressies. Im going to start it on Boxing Day

I first read 'And then there were none'.when I was a teenager...but it had a different title then.

How can you be rubbish at Google?!

I read all of them voraciously when I was a young teen. Also love the older films - Murder on the Orient Express as mentioned but also Death on the Nile and Evil under the Sun. Ah, happy days

Love Agatha Christie! Started reading the Poirot books in order in my teens then it fell by the wayside in my 20s. Have picked them back up and recently finished Hickory Dickory Dock. No doubt I will go back to the start once I finish Curtain!

Love her books. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is still one of the best books I've ever read.

My favourite is Death on the Nile. I love both the 70s film and the David Suchet tv version.

And Then There Were None on the other hand totally traumatised me.

The recent remakes have all been shockingly bad. Sleeping Murder was ruined. Even worse was the travesty of Ordeal by Innocence a couple of years ago.

I loved Christie as a kid, I devoured them at about she 7/8/9. I am inspired to go find them out again! The joy of having read them thirty years ago is that I can't remember how any of them end!

My favourite was one with the murder on a small plane, it had a great big wasp on the cover and I loved it, I might start by trying to find that one again.

Loved these when younger. (The Dr Who episode with her in is one of my favourites too). I read Cat Among the Pigeons loads of times.

I think like many authors, she got a bit repeatitive towards the end.

@soupforbrains it was channel 5, followed by a dramatisation of Agatha Christie in the middle east somewhere that I've recorded but not watched yet.

Love her books. I have every one she wrote, all gathered over the years from various church fairs & charity shops.

Have you all been to Greenway to see her house? It's National Trust now and well worth a visit.

Oh, I watched the Netflix this afternoon and enjoyed it, thanks for the heads up about that. I generally prefer Marples over Poirots, I like the concept that all facets of human nature can be found in a tiny village and an elderly twinkly spinster recognises the many banal faces of evil.

I got married at The Old Swan, where she did her disappearing act.

Clawdy
Yes I know the one you are referring to
I’m just raking around the grey matter and I think and then there were none was shown on tv

Bloody hell I was on the end of my seat

Thanks so much for the recommendations folks!

My favourite was one with the murder on a small plane, it had a great big wasp on the cover and I loved it, I might start by trying to find that one again

Death in the clouds

Her autobiography is interesting, especially the way she managed to avoid mentioning her disappearance, and her use of very colonial language, which explains the original awful title of And Then There Were None, definitely not a word to use at any time.

That was it! It was this cover that I had.

And Then There Were None on the other hand totally traumatised me.

Oh me too - totally scared the shit out of me that book!

Oh yes - it's terrifying - and ingenious.

I really enjoyed the adaptation of that with Aidan Turner, Charles Dance, Miranda Richardson and co a few years back - I think that was a Sarah Phelps one. But it was fairly true to the original story iirc. The others (changing Poirot's background indeed!) I haven't been much of a fan of.

I'm listening to an audiobook of Hercule Poirot's Christmas at the moment

Obviously I wouldn't defend any modern usage of the word at all but in defence of Agatha Christie regarding the original title of 'And Then There Were None' she didn't just make it up or decide to use the word for the sake of it. It is/was the title of a commonly known and popular nursery rhyme around which the storyline is structured and the deaths follow the pattern of the rhyme (not dissimilar from 'A Pocketful of Rye') the rhyme itself and the novel were both known in the US as Ten little Injuns/Indians which is also racist and unacceptable but she didn't write the nursery rhyme and the plot itself is not racially charged in any way.

I love her autobiography, it gives such a good flavour of life in that period.

My favourite of her books is The Moving Finger, I think it has brilliant pace and characterisation. Five Little Pigs and Death on the Nile also absolutely riveting.