Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books.
It is the 258th day of the year, leaving 107 days remaining in 2022.
She told her detective stories, mostly about murder, with a large cast of suspects, intricate details, simple language, and quick-paced dialogue.
Two of her characters appeared in most of her books: the mustached, intelligent and egotistical Hercule Poirot, and Miss Marple, a little old lady from a small village who somehow had an intuitive knack with her deductive reasoning.
Christie is recognized as one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time, with some 2 billion books sold -- half of that total in English, and half translated into 100 other languages. She is the author of the longest-running play ever: Mousetrap, which has played continuously in London's West End since 1952, except for a 14-month break in 2020-21, when COVID-19 shut down all theaters.
She wrote 66 novels and 14 short story collections, as well as six novels under a pseudonym. When she killed off Poirot in a story published after her death, The New York York Times wrote its first-ever obituary for a fictional character.
Her first book, which introduced Poirot, was The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1920. It was written on a dare from her sister. It involved the murder of a Mrs. Inglethorp at the Styles Court. She had been poisoned, a favored method of death employed by Christie, a one-time apothecary's assistant.
Christie had some trouble publishing the book, but once she did, her career rarely stalled. She published The Secret Adversary in 1922, introducing a second detective, the couple Tommy and Tuppence. Miss Marple -- perhaps the author's favorite sleuth, although she denied any resemblance -- came onto the scene in The Tuesday Night Club, a short story published in 1927.
Christie's several plays included Witness for the Prosecution, which premiered on Broadway in 1953, winning a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and an Edgar Award.
Her other novels included And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, and Death on the Nile. Her novels often were serialized in magazine in the United Kingdom and the United States. Many of her works were adapted for the theater or the movie screen.
She died in 1976.
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