Celebrating the Queen of Crime

September 15 marks the 125th anniversary of Agatha Christie’s birth, and the occasion is the subject of celebration online and around the world. Agatha Christie didn’t invent the detective novel, but she made the genre her own. Dame Christie wrote more than 70 detective novels and short fiction, and created two of mystery readers’ most beloved sleuths: Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, with his luxuriant mustache and his “little gray cells”; and Miss Jane Marple, the sharp-eyed queen of the cozy mystery. Christie’s classic And Then There Were None remains the best-selling crime novel of all time, selling more than 100 million copies worldwide.

Christie herself is the most widely published novelist of all time, in any genre or language—her combined works have sold more than 2 billion copies worldwide. She is, in fact, outsold by only Shakespeare and the Bible. Christie was a renowned and record-breaking playwright as well. Her play The Mousetrap, which opened in 1952 and ran for 21 years, still holds the record for the longest unbroken run in a London theater.

The last public appearance in Christie’s extraordinary career was for the opening night of the play version of Murder on the Orient Express in 1974. Avondale Library is commemorating the 125th anniversary with a special screening of a classic Agatha Christie film on Sunday, September 13, at 2:30 p.m.

Join the celebration: come see the film and/or check out works by and about Christie from your local library. Find out more about Agatha Christie and the global 125th anniversary celebrations at http://www.agathachristie.com/125th-anniversary/.

Ellen Griffin Shade
Avondale Regional Branch Library