Queen of crime lives on through Hercule Poirot

January 12, 2017 marked the 41st anniversary of the death of famous British detective novelist and playwright Agatha Christie.
Christie is best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, as well as the world’s longest-running play – The Mousetrap. Her memoirs are: “Come, Tell Me How You Live” and “Agatha Christie: An Autobiography”.
Her books have sold more than a billion copies in the English language and a billion in 44 foreign languages.
Christie created a number of fictitious characters in her critically acclaimed creative literary works but the outstanding and most fascinating was Hercule Poirot - the genius detective who solved some of the most mysterious and puzzling crimes making him one of the world’s best cunning investigators.
Christie created Poirot during World War I. Soon Poirot’s fame as a detective extraordinaire spread over the world resulting into hundreds of people seeking his services.
The famous shrewd small Belgian man with an egg-shaped head, an enormous black mustache and curious mannerisms had a passion for perfection, order, punctuality, rational thought, and had a justified confidence in his deductive genius.
Poirot’s investigative skills coupled with the ingenious mysteries challenge both the reader as well as the detective.
He said murder was his business before it happened as well as afterwards and devoted himself to solving problems in crime that included crimes of passion, jealousy, hatred and all the other romantic causes of murder.
Poirot also investigated delicate lucrative sophisticated and bloodless white collar crime cases.
A complete collection of more than 50 Poirot short stories was published by HarperCollins Publishers in 1999 under the title “Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories”.
One of Poirot’s outstanding obscure cases was solving the murders at the Victoria Ball. This was possible because of his peculiar working methods, the case’s sensational features, the well-known people involved, and the tremendous publicity by the press.
This episode is captured in the story titled: “The Affair at the Victory Ball”. Because of the complexity of the case Inspector Japp of the Scotland Yard invited Poirot to have his finger in the pie.
The fancy dress ball was held at the Colossus Hall in London and Lord Viscount Cronshaw’s party attended dressed in the costumes of the old Italian comedy ‘Commedia Dell’Arte’. Cronshaw’s party consisted of six people: himself, his uncle, the honourable Eustace Beltane, was Punchinello and Ms Mallaby, an American widow, was Punchinella. In the roles of Pierrot and Pierette were Mr and Ms Christopher Davidson (he being a stage actor) and finally, Miss ‘Coco’ Courtenay, an actress rumoured to be engaged to Cronshaw, was Columbine.

Tactical solution
In the double tragedy, Cronshaw was found dead stretched on the ground with a table-knife in his heart. While Ms Courtenay was discovered dead in her bed, and that her death was due to an overdose of cocaine.
Poirot swung into action by reconstructing the crime to have an actual representation.
The 864-page collection has a spectacular diversity in the plots and themes of these cases, ranging from very brief tales to full-length novellas. Violent murders, poisonings, kidnappings and thefts, all are solved or thwarted with Poirot’s usual panache – and the characteristic application of his ‘little grey cells’.
Another of Christie’s fictional characters is Captain Arthur Hastings, OBE, the chronicler, partner and best friend of Poirot. He appears in many Poirot stories, novels and plays, generally as the narrator.

Start of her writing journey
According to agathachristie.com, Christie always said she had no ambition to be a writer although she made her debut in print at the age of 11 with a poem printed in a local London newspaper.
Finding herself in bed with influenza, her mother suggested she write down the stories she was so fond of telling. And so a lifelong passion began.
By her late teens she had had several poems published in The Poetry Review and had written a number of short stories. But it was her sister’s challenge to write a detective story that would later spark what would become her illustrious career.
Christie wrote about the world she knew and saw, drawing on the military gentlemen, lords and ladies, spinsters, widows and doctors of her family’s circle of friends and acquaintances. She was a natural observer and her descriptions of village politics, local rivalries and family jealousies are often painfully accurate.
“Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop...suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head,” she says in “Agatha Christie: An Autobiography”.
Mathew Prichard describes her as a “person who listened more than she talked, who saw more than she was seen”.
When Christie died in 1976, at 85, she had become the world’s best-selling novelist of all time. She is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime.Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on September 15, 1890 in Torquay, Devon, South West England. She met Archie Christie in 1912 and they married on Christmas Eve 1914.

Best-selling novelist of all time

Christie’s short stories include Double Sin, The Case of the Missing Will, The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge, The Cornish Mystery, The Million Dollar Bond Robbery, The Chocolate Box. Others are: The Jewel Robbery At The Grand Metropolitan, The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb, The King of Clubs, Wasps’ Nest, and The Veiled Lady, among others.
Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon. She served in a hospital during the First World War before marrying and starting a family in London.
She was initially an unsuccessful writer, but The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published in 1920 featuring Hercule Poirot.
Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly two billion copies.