Sparkling Cyanide
About the Author
Agatha Christie was born in Torquay in 1890 and is the author of over 80 works, including detective novels and short stories, 19 plays, and six novels published under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920 and introduced the world to Hercule Poirot, who would become one of the most popular fictional detectives since Sherlock Holmes (as would another of Christie’s sleuths, the amateur detective Miss Marple). In 1952 her play The Mousetrap premiered in London’s West End and has run continuously ever since. Christie’s books have sold more than two billion copies in over 100 languages (said to be outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare), and have been adapted many times for film and television. She was made a dame in 1971 and died in Oxfordshire in 1976. In 2013, she was voted the greatest crime writer of all time by the Crime Writers’ Association.