I've never read any Agatha Christie...

[Harshmug]

Which of her books should be my first?

I have quite a lot on my plate at the moment and am struggling a bit with concentration so would do best with a relatively easy read.
Thanks!

The Secret Adversary and the other Tommy and Tuppence books are some of my favourites. I'd definitely agree with the people saying And Then There None being brilliant too.

I love The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - start there. It's very clever.

My favourite Poirots are Evil Under the Sun and Death on the Nile.

I have a couple of off the wall choices too:
The Pale Horse - standalone, with a great plot and supernatural theme. Recent Rufus Sewell adaptation was diabolical.
Why Didn't They Ask Evans - also forever plagued by terrible TV adaptations.

I also rather love Destination Unknown, which is more of a thriller than a mystery - though I may be in a minority of one there.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyde (sure my spelling has gone to pot).
The ABC Murders
And Then There Were None.

Helpful and interesting replies here, thank you all!
I will start with Roger Ackroyd.

I've read them all!
My English teacher told me they were bad for my English and I shouldn't read them... (They never did me any harm.)

I’ve been steadily rereading AC since Christmas and the best ones have been:

A Murder is Announced
Cat Among the Pigeons
Evil Under the Sun
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans
The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side
Five Little Pigs
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

but really, I enjoy all of them.

Read them all, multiple times and still enjoy them, and all the old films and series.
Watched a Margaret Rutherford recently, didn't like it as much as i remembered.
Hope you enjoy them OP!

I also rather love Destination Unknown, which is more of a thriller than a mystery - though I may be in a minority of one there.

I think AC put a lot of herself into Hilary, the protagonist of Destination Unkown. She's tall and red haired and desperately trying to escape from unhappiness caused, in part, by the breakdown of her marriage....

They Came To Baghdad is another standalone featuring an intrepid young heroine, which makes use of Agatha's knowledge of the Middle East, and is quite funny at times.

@LouisRenault Yes, I love They Came To Baghdad too. And on the Middle Eastern theme, Murder in Mesopotamia is one I always enjoy.

My recommendation is Five Little Pigs. I love Agatha Christie books. There's something very comforting about them, which sounds all wrong because they generally feature several murders!

My first AC was a tape of The Blue Geranium & Other Stories, read by THE Miss Marple, Joan Hickson. I listened to that so many times i wore the tape out. By that point i’d read everything else by her i could get my hands on, with a special soft spot for At Bertram’s Hotel.

I like the ones without a regular detective best, then Miss Marple and then Poirot. Can't stand the Tommy and Tuppence ones. And Then There Were None; They came to Baghdad, The Man in the Brown Suit and The Moving Finger are probably my favourites.

I agree with this! A.B.C Murders probably my favourite.

Murder at the Vicarage too.

Plus her short stories.

Five Little Pigs. The Gone Girl of its day.

I also have a soft spot for The Hollow.

My favourite has always been And Then There Were None :)

Mrs McGinty’s Dead (Poirot) and A Murder is Announced (Marple) are amongst the first two that I picked up and read from the school library, I thought they were genius and fell in love with the genre. I still love them!

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is brilliant - good choice OP.

This is a nostalgic thread for me! I discovered Agatha Christie in my teens and devoured all that I could find in the library.

I started with Evil Under The Sun, then tore through Death On The Nile, Appointment With Death, Dumb Witness, After The Funeral, Murder In Mesopotamia and Cards on The Table. When I couldn't find any more Poirot I tried the Marples - The Mirror Crack'd, A Caribbean Mystery and The Body In The Libray were my early favourites.

My favourite stand-alone was Death Comes As The End. To this day it's the only one where I correctly guessed who did it before the solution was given.

I absolutely love Agatha Christie!

So clever. The plotting is amazing and they're immensely comforting to read.

Five Little Pigs is one of her cleverest, I think. Christie does Rashamon. And Then There Were None,too. Very dark. I thought the 2015 (?) BBC adaptation was excellent.

Love Miss Marple too. Has anyone read the 'autobiographies' of Poirot and Miss Marple, by Anne Hart? Very charming.

The final Poirot novel, Curtain, is wonderful too.

The Seven Dials Mystery is the only one I've read despite having seen Poirot etc.

DM used to read them as a child when she went to stay with her uncle but I've never really got into them.

I have every single Agatha Christie book - as others have said, you read them for the plots rather than the 2D/stereotypical characterisation. She was overly fond of the hackneyed trope of using physical features to indicate character traits (weak chins and indecisive mouths galore!) and the casual racism of the time that characters display is uncomfortable to say the least. Her plotting is so deft and clever though - really ingenious.

I agree with others that her later books aren’t generally as good. Ones I have a soft spot for include: The Hollow; Crooked House; Death Comes as the End (unusually set in ancient Egypt); The Man in the Brown Suit; Hercule Poirot’s Christmas; and The Mysterious Mr Quin. The best ones, though, are And Then There Were None and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - just so clever. Endless Night is another clever and unusual one, almost eerie in places.

I'm current reading my first ever AC. Just 4 Miss Marlowe stories in one volume from charity shop.

Watching thread with interest.