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} }) </script> </div> </form> </fieldset> <article class="entryArticle content STeditorial"> <header class="entryHeader icon-author"> <h1 class="entryTitle">Christie, Agatha </h1> </header><p class='tagLine'>Entry updated 25 November 2024. Tagged: Author.</p><div class="browsingBtns"> <span> <input class="button PNI previous" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?id=p&entry=christie_agatha'" value="Prev" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI next" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?&entry=christie_agatha'" value="Next" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI incoming" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/incoming.php?entry=christie_agatha'" value="About This Entry" title="What links to the entry; contributor initials explained; how to cite; other information" /> </span> <span><input class="button PNI" type="button" value="Checklist" onclick="window.location.hash='chklst'" ></span> <span><input class="button PNI" type="button" value="Alpha" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=christie_agatha&abc'" ></span> <span><input class="button PNI" type="button" value="Chron" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=christie_agatha'" ></span> <span style="cursor: pointer;" onclick="window.open('/gallery.php?link=christie_agatha');"> <img alt="Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com" style="margin: 0; position: relative; top:-2px;" src="/images/icon-gal.gif"></img></span> </div><p style='float:right; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:10px; position: relative; top: 3px;'> <a href='/gallery.php?id=ChristieA-LoveTec.jpg' target='_blank'> <img src='https://x.sf-encyclopedia.com/gal/thumbs/ChristieA-LoveTec.jpg' alt='pic'></a></p> <p>(1890-1976) Prolific and popular UK author of detective fiction whose best-known investigators <b>Hercule Poirot</b> and <b>Miss Marple</b> feature in many novels, stories and <a href="/entry/cinema">Cinema</a>/<a href="/entry/television">Television</a> adaptations; Poirot is introduced in her debut novel, <i>The Mysterious Affair at Styles</i> (<b>1920</b>). Christie's very considerable talent for juggling character and motivation amid small and/or isolated circles of suspects did not lend itself to stories of <a href="/entry/near_future">Near Future</a> global revolution, but she nevertheless attempted two. The early <b>Poirot</b> novel <i>The Big Four</i> (2 January-19 March 1924 <i>The Sketch</i> as <i>The Man Who Was Number Four</i>; fixup <b>1927</b>) is episodic in a manner strongly reminiscent of Sax <a href="/entry/rohmer_sax">Rohmer</a>'s <i>The Mystery of Dr Fu-Manchu</i> (fixup <b>1913</b>; vt <i>The Insidious Dr Fu-Manchu</i> <b>1913</b>), and likewise features a <a href="/entry/yellow_peril">Yellow-Peril</a> Chinese mastermind. Other members of the villainous Four are a US multimillionaire; a French <a href="/entry/mad_scientist">Mad Scientist</a>, distantly resembling Madame Curie, whose <a href="/entry/invention">Inventions</a> include new applications of <a href="/entry/nuclear_energy">Nuclear Energy</a> and destructive <a href="/entry/rays">Rays</a> which are tested on hapless American warships; and an anonymous English executioner whose murders Poirot investigates. A roughly similar Big Five, lacking the Fu-Manchu figure, appears in the late and remarkably incoherent <i>Passenger to Frankfurt</i> (<b>1970</b>). Here a global "Revolution of Youth" – explicitly imitating the Hitler Youth, with a blond and Wagnerian "Young Siegfried" as puppet leader – shuts down European airports, razes Washington, District of Columbia, to the ground, and causes general alarm. The proposed solution is a speculative <a href="/entry/drugs">Drug</a> or gas which can be widely broadcast to induce permanent benevolence and "horror of causing pain or inflicting violence"; the novel effectively ends with a retired <a href="/entry/scientists">Scientist</a>'s decision to resume work on this "Project Benvo", while the author has seemingly forgotten the unresolved state of world chaos.</p> <p>Christie wrote several short stories with supernatural elements – some collected, together with orthodox nonseries detections, in <i>The Hound of Death</i> (coll <b>1933</b>) – and created a kind of sentimental Occult Detective [see <i>The</i> <a href="/entry/encyclopedia_of_fantasy_the">Encyclopedia of Fantasy</a> under <b>links</b> below] for <i>The Mysterious Mr. Quin</i> (coll <b>1930</b>). In these stories the shadowy and elusive <a href="/entry/mysterious_stranger">Mysterious Stranger</a> Harley Quin (the "harlequin" pun is deliberate and explicit, sometimes echoed in effects of lighting) does not so much detect as use his presumably occult information to steer a mundane friend, Mr Satterthwaite, towards the insight required to explain a crime; the misleadingly titled <i>The Complete Quin & Satterthwaite: Love Detectives</i> (omni <b>2004</b>) includes two long <b>Hercule Poirot</b> investigations featuring Satterthwaite as a minor character, but not Quin. In <i>The Pale Horse</i> (<b>1961</b>), a criminal operation which expensively disposes of unwanted relatives is fronted by three modern "witches" whose ritual presents as a <a href="/entry/technofantasy">Technofantasy</a> fusion of <a href="/entry/psi_powers">Psi Powers</a> and a mysterious electrical <a href="/entry/machines">Machine</a> which supposedly directs a curse or death spell along the appropriate compass bearing; despite this impressive pantomime the killings are of course achieved by mundane means, involving <a href="/entry/poisons">Poison</a>.</p> <p>Christie was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1971. [DRL]</p> <h3 id="chklst">Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, née Miller</h3> <p><b>born</b> Torquay, Devon: 15 September 1890</p> <p><b>died</b> Cholsey, Oxfordshire: 12 January 1976</p> <p><b>works</b> (highly selected)</p> <p><input type="button" value="Alphabetical" class="button PNI" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=christie_agatha&abc'"> <input type="button" value="Chronological" class="button PNI" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=christie_agatha'"></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Big+Four&field-author=Christie+Agatha" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Big Four</a></em> (London: Collins, <b>1927</b>) [fixup: stories first appeared 2 January-19 March 1924 <em>The Sketch</em> as <em>The Man Who Was Number Four</em>: <b>Hercule Poirot</b>: hb/]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Pale+Horse&field-author=Christie+Agatha" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Pale Horse</a></em> (London: Collins, <b>1961</b>) [hb/]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Passenger+to+Frankfurt&field-author=Christie+Agatha" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Passenger to Frankfurt</a></em> (London: Collins, <b>1970</b>) [hb/]</li> </ul> <p><b>collections</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Mysterious+Mr+Quin&field-author=Christie+Agatha" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Mysterious Mr. Quin</a></em> (London: Collins, <b>1930</b>) [coll: stories first appeared March 1924-October 1929 var mags, with one new to this collection: hb/] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Complete+Quin+and+Satterthwaite+Love+Detectives&field-author=Christie+Agatha" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Complete Quin & Satterthwaite: Love Detectives</a></em> (London: HarperCollins, <b>2004</b>) [omni of the above with <em>Three-Act Tragedy</em> (<b>1934</b>) and 3 shorter tales: pb/photographic]</li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Hound+of+Death+and+Other+Stories&field-author=Christie+Agatha" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Hound of Death and Other Stories</a></em> (London: Odhams Press, <b>1933</b>) [coll: hb/]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Last+Seance+Tales+of+the+Supernatural&field-author=Christie+Agatha" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Last Séance: Tales of the Supernatural</a></em> (London: HarperCollins, <b>2019</b>) [coll: hb/Matt Griffin]</li> </ul> <p><b>links</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><a target="_blank" href="http://www.agathachristie.com/">Agatha Christie</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?928">Internet Speculative Fiction Database</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/451">Project Gutenberg</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/"><em>The Encyclopedia of Fantasy</em></a>: <a target="_blank" href="https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/occult_detectives">Occult Detectives</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://sf-encyclopedia.com/gallery.php?link=christie_agatha">Picture Gallery</a></li> </ul> <p><b>previous versions of this entry</b></p> <ul><li><a href='https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/christie_agatha' target='_blank'>Internet Archive</a></li></ul><br /><br /></article></div> <div class="sideBarsWrapper"> <div class="sideBarsColsWrapper clearfix"> <div class="column sideBar12 clearfix"> <div class="columnForm"><aside id="blogFeed" class="widget"> <div class="content STeditorial clearfix"> <h2>Recently visited entries<span style="background:url(/images/thingSFE2.png) !important"></span></h2><ul style='width: 50%; 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