
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) was an English writer of mystery books who perfected the art of the twisty plot and remains the bestselling novelist of all time. Her books include 66 mysteries and 14 short story collections and she also wrote the world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap.
We asked her only grandson, Mathew Prichard—who spent decades managing her literary estate—to recommend the best Agatha Christie books to us. Her books have also been recommended across a range of interviews on Five Books, with many modern writers of mystery and crime including her books among their favourites. Agatha Christie’s memoir, based on her trips to the Middle East with her archaeologist husband, Max Mallowan, is also highly recommended.
The novel Agatha Christie herself was most proud of was Crooked House.
2022 saw new Miss Marple mysteries being published: a book of short stories by some of today’s most popular mystery writers, as well as a new Agatha Christie biography by Lucy Worsley.
Books by Agatha Christie
“It’s a great set-up for a mystery that draws directly from Christie’s own experience of travelling in the Middle East. She was very familiar with that area, so the setting is very precise and well described, you really feel like you are there. And there’s this undercurrent of evil; she’s exploring the idea of how a disturbed and disturbing personality in a family can trickle down the generations. This woman who’s been murdered is truly horrible. She’s really done a number on her children. All together, this makes for a great mystery and it deserves to be more widely known.” Read more...
“She has a very good plot with some good clueing and misdirection. It’s a good mystery in a country house setting, at Christmas. What more could you want but a murder? That murder involves an apparent impossibility.” Read more...
Martin Edwards, Literary Scholar
“This novel created a huge amount of publicity and discussion when it first came out because Christie did something that just broke every rule in the mystery genre playbook. . . . I come down on the side of the group that says it was a brilliant move. It was audacious.” Read more...
David Baldacci, Novelist
“I have chosen what I think is a masterpiece. Now, there are always the snooties, and there always will be, particularly in this country. There are snobs who don’t like authors who dare to tell stories and don’t like success. Agatha Christie was a brilliant storyteller. She didn’t sell millions of books by mistake. But the best one is And Then There Were None. But for those who have wondered where to start with Agatha Christie, this and The ABC Murders are frankly the two best she’s ever done, and if I had to pick just one, I would pick And Then There Were None.“ Read more...
Jeffrey Archer, Novelist
“It might have the greatest premise I’ve ever heard in my entire life. And she pulls it off! She absolutely nails it. It’s not just a gimmick. She uses it to explore psychology, to explore how people just turn up to watch. It’s grotesque. She’s always fascinated by that, and this is the book where you see the idea absolutely coalesce: she turns murder into a spectator sport.” Read more...
Stuart Turton, Novelist
In writing The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman doubtless took inspiration from the Miss Marple books by Agatha Christie. Yes, everyone has heard of them, but they really are among the best. No one has really ever managed to do plots as well as Agatha Christie did, which is probably why she remains so widely read and translated. In terms of which Miss Marple to read, there are 15 of them (including two books of short stories) in total, but some of the best ones are A Murder is Announced, Murder at the Vicarage and 4.50 from Paddington. They’re also fun to listen to as audiobooks. Often Joan Hickson, who plays Miss Marple on TV, is the audiobook narrator (even when, as in the case of Murder at the Vicarage, the ‘I’ in the book is not Miss Marple, but the vicar). I found her voice hard to adjust to at first, but unforgettable: I can still hear her speaking to me now.
From our article Books like The Thursday Murder Club
Death on the Nile (book)
by Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie wrote dozens of mysteries with twisty plots, but Death on the Nile must rank as among her best. It's a touching story, almost believable, and the setting on the Nile in Egypt atmospheric. Christie apparently wrote it while staying at the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan, the starting point, in the book, for the paddleboat cruise down the Nile which inevitably ends in murder. The audiobook version, narrated by David Suchet—who played Hercule Poirot in many BBC adaptations and so for many people is Hercule Poirot—is just under 8 hours and ideal listening for family car journeys.
“Tommy and Tuppence a married couple, who used to be involved in espionage, and now there’s a war and no one seems to want them. Then they are recruited, or rather, Tommy is recruited to help find a mole in the British intelligence services. And Tuppence decides that she’s not being left behind, so she gets dressed up incognito, goes to join him, and they pursue this case together. It is all about finding fifth columnists. It was the one time that Christie tried to write about the war while it was happening, and she does it in a more lighthearted tone.” Read more...
“Agatha Christie was married to a man named Max Mallowan, a well-known archaeologist, particularly in the Near East. She wrote Come, Tell Me How You Live in 1946. It’s a tremendously chirpy account of absolutely colonial archaeology: of expeditions in Syria or parts of Iraq and digging up mounds. It’s a fun read, very cheerful, but one of the difficulties archaeology has is to try to extract itself from being a colonial profession and one of the very big questions now is what does archaeology mean to indigenous people in post-colonial continents?” Read more...
Neal Ascherson, Journalist
“Witness for the Prosecution is one of the truly great theatrical murder-mysteries. It has an ingenious twist, it’s daring and adventurous. If you ever see the play, put yourself in the position of the writer and ask yourself how anyone could bring it off.” Read more...
The ABC Murders
by Agatha Christie
There’s nothing quite like an Agatha Christie when it comes to listening to a whodunnit as an audiobook, and because they were written in the 1930s, they’re good for listening to with children as there is no swearing or graphic violence. Often it’s actors we’ve got to know on TV or in movies who narrate them. The ABC Murders works particularly well as an audiobook, performed by Hugh Fraser (who played Captain Hastings, Hercule Poirot’s sidekick, in the TV series).
Narrator: Hugh Fraser
Length: 6 hours
“The book is about three young people; my grandmother was well into her 70s when she wrote it. As a young person myself in the early 1960s, I saw more of my grandmother than at any other time because I was studying at Oxford, not far from where she lived and worked at the time. There are, fortunately, no characters in Endless Night that she ‘copied’. But she does say somewhere in the book that it’s all about relationships. To me, it’s an astonishingly modern and human book. To write about people 50 years younger than herself was a tour de force. And that’s quite apart from the plot. It also illustrates her belief in evil as a force in the world.” Read more...
Interviews where books by Agatha Christie were recommended
The Best Agatha Christie Books, recommended by Mathew Prichard
Agatha Christie wrote some 80 mysteries and short story collections, nearly all designed to entertain and delight readers with their ingenious plot twists. Here, her only grandson, Mathew Prichard, who oversaw her literary estate for many decades, recommends books that give a good sense of the range of her work, from Miss Marple to Hercule Poirot to mysteries featuring neither, and including her best short story.
The Best Classic Crime Fiction, recommended by Sophie Roell
Since the early stories of the 18th and 19th centuries, crime fiction has been an incredibly popular and enduring genre, the investigation of murder somehow capturing the imagination of millions of readers around the globe. Here, Sophie Roell, editor of Five Books, uses strict but simple criteria to pick out the best classic crime fiction, from the Victorian age through to the 1950s.
The best books on Archaeology, recommended by Neal Ascherson
The journalist, author and editor of the journal Public Archaeology, explains why the history of archaeology is a surprisingly bloody affair – 80% of the Polish archaeological profession died one way or another during WW2
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1
Checkmate to Murder: A Second World War Mystery
by E.C.R. Lorac -
2
Traitor's Purse: The Albert Campion Mysteries
by Margery Allingham -
3
N or M?: A Tommy and Tuppence Mystery
by Agatha Christie -
4
Death in Captivity: A Second World War Mystery
by Michael Gilbert -
5
Murder's a Swine: A Second World War Mystery
by Nap Lombard
The Best Wartime Mystery Books, recommended by Caroline Crampton
The Best Wartime Mystery Books, recommended by Caroline Crampton
The ‘golden age’ of detective fiction is usually considered to end suddenly with the outbreak of the Second World War. But many of the era’s leading novelists continued to write prolifically throughout, says Caroline Crampton, creator of the popular Shedunnit podcast. Here she selects five of the best wartime mysteries.
The Best Murder Mystery Books, recommended by Stuart Turton
The best murder mysteries set up their stories like a game between the reader and the writer, says Stuart Turton, bestselling author and lifelong mystery fan. Here he highlights five of his favourites, in which detectives make miraculous deductions, or doggedly chase clues until they meet with satisfying solutions.
The Best Detective Fiction, recommended by Jeffrey Archer
With so many works of detective fiction coming out each year, which books stand the test of time? Here, bestselling British author Jeffrey Archer talks us through some of his favourites, the books he found completely unputdownable and made him want to read everything the author had written.
The Best Mystery Books, recommended by David Baldacci
The best mystery books are completely unputdownable and addictive, the entertainment they provide more portable than watching TV and so much more satisfying than looking at your phone. Bestselling author David Baldacci, one of the masters of the genre and a passionate advocate for literacy and reading, talks us through some of the best mystery books ever written—as well as the contemporary authors he most admires.
The Best Thrillers, recommended by Simon Kernick
Plot is king, says bestselling thriller writer Simon Kernick of his chosen genre. He lists five of his all-time favourites
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1
The Detective Stories of Edgar Allan Poe: Three Tales Featuring C. Auguste Dupin
by Edgar Allan Poe -
2
The Mystery of the Yellow Room
by Gaston Leroux -
3
The Third Bullet and Other Stories
by John Dickson Carr -
4
Hercule Poirot's Christmas
by Agatha Christie -
5
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
by Ross and Shika Mackenzie (translators) & Soji Shimada
The Best Golden Age Mysteries, recommended by Martin Edwards
The Best Golden Age Mysteries, recommended by Martin Edwards
Partly as a response to the horrors of World War I, the 1920s and 30s saw a surge in the writing of whodunnits, a period often referred to as the ‘golden age’ of mystery writing. Here, Martin Edwards, one of the leading experts on the genre, picks out some key works, with a special focus on ‘locked room’ mysteries.
The Best Summer Mysteries, recommended by Caroline Crampton
If you’re about to jet off for a relaxing vacation, you might be looking for a page-turning detective story to keep you enthralled on your sun-lounger. Here, Caroline Crampton—creator of the popular podcast Shedunnit—recommends five classic murder mysteries set in glamorous summer holiday locations.
Mathew Prichard recommends the Best Agatha Christie Books