Agatha Christie....where to start?

[aperolspritzbasicbitch]

I'm thinking of reading my first Agatha Christie - any recommendations for what you would consider to be her 'best' book?

Body In The Library.
My first AC book and still my favourite.👍

The Joan Hickson TV adaptation was a pretty accurate adaptation and certainly the best.

It's probably easier to answer with what books not to start with. So late period works like Postern of Fate, Elephants Can Remember, Third Girl, etc. Her later novels are just not on any sort of par with those from the 1920s through to the 1950s. Though Endless Night is an outlier. I wouldn't really recommend her spy novels for first reading over her detective novels.

Oh I've got a soft spot for Tommy and Tuppence, and their Russian spies who are all called Boris

I loved A Murder is Announced, Five Little Pigs, After the Funeral, Death on the Nile, 4.50 from Paddington, Dumb Witness, A Caribbean Mystery, Sad Cypress and The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side. These are a mix of Marples and Poirots.

If I had to pick one, I think I'd go for...Five Little Pigs'.

I love The Mysterious Affair at Styles!

I LOVE love love how you can see society change over fifty or so years - styles is country house murder, by the end it’s office girls in flats!

I love Marple and Poirot but I'd start with either And Then There Were None or Endless Night. Both are fantastic.

Actually, that’s a super idea of one to start with as it introduces Poirot as a character.

Yes, the T&T books are fun.👍
They seem to be the forgotten characters. Apart from the books, (80's?) TV series and some radio plays they seem to pass unnoticed.

You've forgotten the badly cast 2015 version with David Walliams and Jessica Raine. Understandably...

I loved the A,B,C murders and Mrs McGinty’s dead.
Third Girl is good too.

My daughter thinks Cat Among the Pigeons is the best one to start with .

Cat Among the Pigeons and The ABC Murders both loved by me too.

Start with Evil Under the Sun or Death on the Nile.

For Poirot, I'd say Evil Under the Sun- glamorous guests, beautiful location. For Miss Marple, Murder In the Vicarage. I also really love Nemesis and Sleeping Murder, both a bit different.
I'd love to be reading all her books for the first time again. I have a good collection of the Crime Club and Collins hardback editions- some I inherited and then added to over the years. They are facsimiles of the original covers. I love them!

One of my favourites is the little known Mrs McGinty’s Dead (Poirot). I also love A Murder is Announced (Marple). They were amongst the first that I read as a teenager - school librarian must have been a fan! - and have stayed with me. Agree that they [Agatha Christie books, not specifically these two] are a lovely insight into different eras and how England changed over the decades.

Endless Night is quite polarising, people love it or don’t like it and I’m afraid I’m in the latter group.

A Murder is Announced, Five Little Pigs, Sad Cypress, Sleeping Murder, The Pale Horse, 4.50 from Paddington are some of my favourites.

Roger Ackroyd was the first one I worked out. So I wouldn't start with that.

Me too. I’d heard so much about there being an amazing twist that I guessed what the twist might be & then I was right.

My absolute favourite is The Moving Finger. Good plot with well drawn characters and a charming romantic side plot. I was pleased to read it was one she considered amongst her best.

I do like Curtain - Poirot's last case but obviously don't start with this one. Death on the Nile is fabulous

I was also going to say Roger Ackroyd. I didn't read it first, in fact I came to it much later than the others, but it's really clever.

Oh I've got a soft spot for Tommy and Tuppence

I like Secret Adversary partly because of the background - two young people who had served in the Great War trying to find work and settle down to peace time life. I was looking forward to seeing this done on tv and was hugely disappointed to find they'd updated it to the 1950s, and the actors were far too old. I lasted less than five minutes before switching off.

I like N or M too.

And I like the books which feature Mrs Oliver. Cards on the Table and Dead Man's Folly, for examle.

I second the recommendation of AC's autobiography, and her memoir of life on archaeological digs in the Middle East - Come Tell Me How You Live. It's interesting to see how bits of her own life found their way into her books, from her training as a dispenser in WW1 to chance encounters on trains.

I think there is a lot more in AC's books than some critics will acknowledge.

One of my favourites is The Sittaford Mystery.
In fact, it probably is my favourite, which is weird as I love Miss Marple & Poirot.

Has anyone said Nemesis yet? I'm reading that at the moment and enjoying it. Love Miss Marple, she rocks!!

I like Nemesis too. It’s even better read after A Caribbean Mystery, since it’s a sort of sequel.