Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie (Torquay, 15 September 1890 – Wallingford, 12 January 1976) was a British writer of detective fiction. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), introduced Hercule Poirot; Miss Marple first appeared in 1930, in The Murder at the Vicarage. She wrote some sixty detective novels, many collections of short stories and a number of plays, among them The Mousetrap, running in London since 1952. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Death on the Nile (1937) and And Then There Were None (1939) are among her most widely read titles. She published six romantic novels under the name Mary Westmacott, and was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1971.