Anyone else just bloody love Agatha Christie books?

[Puffypuffin]

I've read them all (bar Poirot's last case) over the years and every time I can't think what to read I go back and read one of them again. Love the descriptions of the characters, the settings, the clothes, all of it!

First one I read in my teens was The Murder of Rodger Ackroyd and I still think it's one of the best whodunnits I've read.

Anyone else have a favourite AC book?

Ooh, which service was this? Is it still going?

Take him to second hand bookshops / charity shops - they always have Agatha Christie books and far cheaper than advances on pocket money to buy them new!

If he / others his age enjoy AC then Lord Peter Wimsey by Dorothy Sayers might also be popular - as might Ngaio Marsh

Take him to second hand bookshops / charity shops - they always have Agatha Christie books and far cheaper than advances on pocket money to buy them new!

I thought this, so dd and I went to the library and two charity shops, one of which was just for books, when we were in town the other day, as she wants to read one and doesn't like ebooks. Not a single Agatha Christie to be found!

Alas no I'm sorry I just googled. It was Hachette. A few years ago ,I say airily, it was 11 😳!!

Yes, I love them! I just figured out how to get all my ebooks off my long-dead Kindle Keyboard and onto a phone app. Just finished Why Didn't They Ask Evans (proper moustache-twirling villain in that one, very action-packed!) and now either Towards Zero or Three Act Tragedy, both of which I've read before but I don't remember.

Sleeping Murder* and The Mirror Crack’d, are 2 of my favourites.
*The TV version with Joan Hickson is brilliant! Seriously creepy.

I do wonder where she got her ideas. The 4.50 from Paddington is easy to guess though - I bet she was on a train at night, when another passed very close, the carriages all lit up, and she thought, ‘What if….?

@DryIce oh well, the charity shop hunt goes on 😁

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER I ALWAYS think of the 4.50 From Paddington when I'm on a train passing another train. The question I have is who Lucy Aylesbarrow ended up with?

And yes, the Joan Hickson version of Sleeping Murder is very creepy! Nemesis too.

ABC murders and Evil Under the Sun are my faves but love them all.

Love them too, so comforting & nostalgic. I enjoy the Miss Marple books best. Also enjoyed watching the BBC doc about Agatha Christie with Lucy Worsley. Her life was quite interesting.

So good to see all this love for AC! She is sadly underrated by literary snobs. Storytelling is not as easy as people think; it's harder than "poetic" writing. She was able to write in several genres at once - crime, adventure, comedy, social commentary - while never losing hold of the essential plot thread.

Readers looking for more classic golden age crime, along the lines of Patricia Wentworth already mentioned, should try :

Josephine Tey
Christianna Brand
John Dickson Carr
Gladys Mitchell (can be a bit bonkers)
Margery Allingham
Michael Gilbert

I've told this anecdote on here before.

My now ex-husband was at a car boot sale years ago and one stall holder was selling a LOT of Agatha Christie paperbacks. Knowing I loved her, he snapped them up and had the following conversation with the seller.

Seller: Oh, I've got another one but I haven't put it out.
Ex: Oh great, I'll have it.
Seller: No problem, here it is.... It's the original title which is why I didn't put it out...

(Seller clocks the fact that ex is black)

Seller (panicking): I don't agree with it or anything!

I think you can probably guess which book it was!

And yes, he bought it 😁

Absolutely loving The Murder At The Vicarage! I didn't realise AC books were so funny!

The BBC adaptation with Joan Hickson is great too.

'Good evening, Chief Inspector.'

And Paul Eddington as the Vicar.

Yes, wonderful! All the Joan Hickson adaptations are great.

I absolutely love them, The Murder of RA is quite brilliant but I think my favourite is And Then There Were None, it has the most riveting plot. She was a genius.

Was it the one which came with a magazine? I collected the books (original covers) which came with the magazine for 10 or 11 issues and then it seemed to stop being produced (or more likely, wasn't available where I am). I was quite gutted I didn't get all the books but I still have the ones I got as well as the magazines on my Christie shelf. I also have the special stamps which Royal Mail did which came out a while ago - they have secret bits on them.

This is one of my faves because it’s so funny. It’s not regarded as one of her best works but I loved it.

Yes! This is the one! I have all the brochures in their own little folders like a proper ac nerd

Just re-reading all my Dorothy L Sayers that I bought in my late teens.

Went to greenway in the summer, beautiful house, and grounds. Kept saying to DP that I couldn’t believe I was in AC house.

The Lucy Worsley book is quite good, but for the love of God, don’t buy the audio version. She seriously needs some work on how to pronounce things. And I don’t mean her lisp - just basic vocabulary pronounced incorrectly. It seriously got in the way of enjoying the book for me.

I've never read one. Where should I start?

@roarrfeckingroar with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. If you like that, I'd proceed to And Then There Were None. Followed by any of the following:

Death on the Nile
Murder on the Orient Express
The ABC Murders
Death in the Clouds
A Murder is Announced
The 4.50 from Paddington

I hope you enjoy them!

Me too ! (re The Murder at the Vicarage) The characters are so well drawn, their interactions are so lively, and the plot is incredibly complicated yet she keeps all the balls in the air with seemingly no effort. When I was an editorial consultant, I used to advise my crime-writing clients to read this one.