After more than two years, I finished reading all novels by the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie. I first read an Agatha Christie’s novel when I was at university. It was The Murder of Roger Acroyd and I was completely immersed in the writing, the complex story, the suspense and the twists, and let’s not forget the explosive ending.
Over the years, I read more Agatha Christie, focusing on Hercule Poirot mysteries, with Murder on the Orient Express as my favourite, and also the stand-alone, with And Then There Were None crowned my absolute favourite of Christie’s stories. Two years ago, I decided to read all her novels, including rereading the Hercule Poirot novels I already read and read the ones I hadn’t, and discovering also the stories of Miss Marple, the elderly spinster who solves cases in her village of St. Mary Mead, the comic duo of Tommy and Tuppence, and Colonel Race and Superintend Battle.
I enjoyed all the stories, of course some more than others, but I enjoyed the suspense and the twists, the supernatural elements present in some of them, the different casts of characters and the study of human nature. The novels can be easily read as a stand-alone and not in order and they are easy and quick to read.
Agatha Christie is definitely one of my favourite authors and I will be rereading her novels in the future, but now that I have finished her novels I am focusing on another author, one of her contemporaries: Dorothy L. Sayers. She was a member of the Detection Club together with Agatha Christie and other mystery authors, and her works included the translation of the three books of Dante’s Divine Comedy into colloquial English (although she died before finishing the final book). She is best known for her Lord Peter Wimsey series of which I read and enjoyed a couple of books in the past and I am looking forward to reading the entire series from the beginning!
