Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery

what's the point of just sitting there? And I can't imagine more boring than listening to us on headphones. Wait a minute, that's our show. Yes, there are people doing that very thing right now, Chuck, and you have just mocked their existence. So I've just met for Jerry's sake, you know. Yeah, I know Jerry is not a fan. No, she's not or a listener. So, um, I have a question for you, Chucked. You ever read a book? No? No, don't be ridiculous, Chuck. Have you ever met Agatha Christie? Uh? Yeah,

I matter when I was three? Oh? Really, do you have much of a memory of that encounter? A little bit? She was she was nice enough. She signed my Murder on the Orient Express copy first edition. Oh wow, that's got to be worth some money. It's pretty neat. Yeah. Do you still have that? Nah? I did some sprint cleaning here a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't even recycle or put it in a little free library. I just threw it in the trash. Did you? Didn't you say once that your brother has like a copy

of Number one Superman or something nuts like that. I thought he has something, some valuable comic book. No, huh, No, we must be confusing you with my other co host, Chuck. Now we we we weren't big comic book people. We don't have anything valuable like that. I got you well, Um, having met Agatha Christie when you were a kid, I feel like you'll probably have a lot to bring to this one. I I was. UM. I have never met her,

um still to this day, probably never will. And I have read a couple of her things and seen a couple of movies based on her stuff. But I would never consider myself like a um, a rabbit Agatha Christie fan. But I do appreciate her work a lot. You, UM,

pick this one. Why we have this series of books, children's books about um awesome women in history, from Freda to Coco Chanel to Amelia Earhart to Agatha Christie, And so I was reading this one the other night and I thought, hey, let's do you want to Agatha Christie. Haven't read any of her work, seen a couple of her movies the genre though as as films, I've never read a mystery murder mysteries, although I'm going to now.

I started reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which I think was her first published work UM last night, and it's just great. She just sucks you right in like you. She does what's um she creates and a lot of books, not all of them, but she creates what's called the cozy mystery with an S because it's British and I'd never heard that term before until this article. But when I came across it, I was like, yes, I love

that kind of thing. And that's exactly what I love about murder she wrote, Like the murder she wrote to where she goes to like Broadway or Paris or something like that, I can take her leave. They're fine, but it's the ones that are set in tiny, little Cabot Cove that's just isolated from the rest of the world. It's cozy and small, and it's like a village and all that those are the murder She wrote that I love the most, and I think that's what I like

about Agatha Christie mysteries too. Is there very typically cozy mysteries. I've never seen that show. What had this conversation before? No, that would be steered into my brain forever. Now we have because you said that the first time. Uh yeah, I've never seen it. But I'm a huge fan of um murder mystery movies, especially cozy mysteries like Clue is one of my favorite films, and this year's or last year's Knives Out was one of my top like three or four films of the year. I've not seen it yet.

It's still like seven dollars on Amazon Prime, so I haven't rented. I'm waiting for the price point to drop. I can know only a couple of bucks if you need alright, alright, if it's still a lot for a rental, I mean that's a lot. Do you think three ninety nine is manageable? Four ninety nine and up. That's a lot of that's a lot to move law for a rental if you ask me. Wow, yeah, this is I'm

taking a stand on this alright. Well, film professionals out there, please do not take offense to all your hard work. So I have a question for you. Have one more question. Um, have you seen that Agatha Christie film adaptation of Crooked House that came out in two thousand and seventeen. I think you'll like it. It was big budget, but it also looks like British made for television big budget. Gillian Anderson Dana Scully is in it because you know, the

Brits are nuts for her. Oh man, She's like their favorite person in the world and has been for years. And I don't know why. Nothing against Gillian Anderson, but like she just never hit it as big over here as she did there. Um, Terence Stamp, isn't it? Glenn Close, She's great, And I was like, this is really good. So I was reading little synopsies of it and all that stuff, and it seems like, um, that's It's widely regarded as one of her best, most ingenious and inventive works.

Cricket House, Cricket House. I believe that's on Amazon Prime for free. Well, yes, do you actually do the math of how much you pay for Amazon Prime to see how much you're paying for that movie? I don't want to do that. I just don't want to do that. Pennies, Why did you do that to me? All right, so Charles, um, let's let's get into this because I know that this one could be a little long if we're not um um deliberate, and I would say, maybe considerate of our time.

All right, Well that's an eight minute intro. So so far, so good. Uh she is perhaps again, it's kind of hard to tall able books tell with book sales because they can be a little dodgy. But she is often quoted as the scene as the best selling novelist of all time. Uh, and I did little check to compare, Like at the Stephen King sold a book or two. Sure, they tag his book sales at about three hundred and

fifty million UM. Her sixty six novels and fourteen collected works of short stories supposedly have sold to the tune of two billion. I saw four billion in one place, and I think after you hit the billion mark, you can just start tossing around whatever number you want. It's like, for example, we've we've had seventy billion downloads. Now I just decided, oh great, that's a lot of downloads. But think about it, Stephen King, how many books is that

cat written? How many has he sold all around the world? And it amounts to three hundred and fifty million, and he's one of the best selling authors of all time. A lot of people say that Agatha Christie's numbers hit two billion, Like you said, that's astounding. Yeah, that is. That is a ton of books. It's I don't think our stuff, you should know book will approach those numbers. No, you never say never, though it's a lofty goal. Now

ever say never. I also saw that she's the most widely translated author of all time to forty five languages. I was like, it seems a little low. So then somewhere else I saw a hundred and three. So let's go with that. So let's talk about this. Uh, cozy mystery or just mystery novels in general. Uh, they are very much um formulaic, which Ed helped us put this together. Ed points out that's why people like them because the familiarity and it's sort of a comfort food thing, like

a good beach book. You know what you're gonna get right, Yeah? Yeah, Yeah, there's and there's surprises and everything woven in. I mean, the whole thing is meant to be a surprise. It's a mystery. And part of the mystery and the allure of the mysteries that Agatha Christie not only wrote, but actually the whole genre she helped to develop, is that you are ostensibly able to figure out who the culprit

is in the murder. It's almost always a murderer. Um, And so there is like there is surprise is involved. That's the point. But there's also a tremendous amount of familiar familiarity. And that's that formula you were talking about, and that's what really has sucked generations of people into this whole genre her sixty six plus books. Yeah, so you've got that murder. Uh, you usually don't see this murder occur. She doesn't usually, and in general in murder mysteries,

you don't see the murder. That's kind of not the point of how grizzly or gruesome the act is. It's sort of all about finding that body. And I won't had a bunch of knives out things to say, but I don't say any of them now, thank you. But then you've got your detective that arrives on the scene, and I will say this knives out very much follows this formula very smartly. So so you've got this master

detective who usually arrives upon the scene. Um, but they may already be there, and they are generally very eccentric and sort of Um, they all all they always have these quirky sort of care juristics. Uh. In Christie's case, we have the very formidable Hercule Poirot, and then Miss Marple Jane Marple. Um. In Hercules case, he's Belgian and has this big mustache and it's just sort of eccentric in Belgian. Uh. Just you know, he's not French. There's

something about being Belgian that makes it slightly different. Sure. And Miss Marple apparently it's just a very ordinary and people underestimate her and that's how she uh sort of wins the day. Yeah, because for Hercule Poirot um was retired Belgium police detective, so he has some measure of authorities still to question people and interrogate people as he wishes. With Miss Marple, she's just kind of a quiet old

lady who sows and knits a lot. Um, and she just has a very keen eye for detail and an interest in solving, you know, the murders that seemed to happen around her. Um like Angela Lansbury. Basically yes, but rather than interrogate people directly, Um, Miss Marple's thing is she just kind of quietly is there and people tend to confide in her, and she kind of quietly helps them along and um gives them She gives them the rope to hang themselves with. That's how she interrogates people

or figures out who who the murderer is. Right, So you've got your setting in the in the cozy mystery setting, like you said, it's usually like an estate or a home, maybe a hotel. Uh, maybe it might be a small English village uh. Or an express obviously is on a train, another sort of confined space. Um. By the way, have you seen train to Boussan? I can I confuse that with no Piercer. I think I've seen both, but I can't remember which ones, which they're kind of very similar.

But Bussan is is zombies on a train Korean film. No, Then I think I've just seen snow Piercer. You should check out Train to Busan. Just if you think you've seen it all with the zombie genre, then think again, dude. That's saying something because that's that genre has gotten a little. Hey, let me ask you this. Have you seen I know you've seen it. You had to Ozark? Oh sure, I'm just started it. Yeah, I'm a couple of episodes into

the latest season. Okay, yeah you mean, and I just started at season one and I'm like, all I want to do is sit around and watch Ozark. It's amazing. Yeah, I love it. That's like hartwell you know, oh no, I didn't know that smart. I've tried to get Bateman and Laura Lenny on movie crushing. It's always thank you no. Oh yeah, yeah. Hey, you're getting responses. That's that's a big step forward. It's nice to be told no and just not anored. Yeah right, all right, so you've got

your setting um With Agatha Christie. She did include her travels in some of her later novels when they became like super popular, but it was still not like a globe trotting like James Bond kind of thing. No, that's that's the point. So like in a espionage thriller something that locals are all over the place, and you know, the characters constantly moving um in these cozy thrillers, like even if they're in an exotic locale, Um, they're still

set in a small part of that exotic locale. That's right. You got your suspects. They are questioned by the detective. They usually all have a motive, they usually all have the means because everyone, you know, in a great novel like this, everyone's got to be a suspect from the beginning. And then you can kind of quickly whittle or slowly

whittle that list down, right. And here's the thing what I was saying with the with the the kind of mystery that Agatha Christie wrote and and really established, you are part of the mystery, like you're either the um investigator, the detective has an assistant that they explained things too, very much like UM Sherlock, Holmes and Watson. Or if

the detective is working solo, say like Miss Marple. Miss Marple's might write a list of suspects and their motives and little clues down as part of the narration, and you're you're let in every step of the way. So you're part of this working towards solving the mystery, and as it's very frequently put it kind of pits you in a competition with the author to see if you can figure out who who done it before the end of the book. Yeah. I mean that goes back to

Encyclopedia Brown. The whole point is to try and figure that stuff out, right, Man, I love those Those are so great Encyclopedia Brown. I remember he busted one dumb kid who did something bad. I can't remember. Um oh man, good memory. It may have been bugs. Mean he was he kind of a big dumb oh who'd like beat up on chipmunks. I think, so, okay, he busted bugs once because bugs had tears coming out of the the outside corners of his eyes, a freak zoid, rather than

the inside corners. That's good. But see, the great thing about those books is that a twelve year old doesn't really necessarily always pick up on those clues. Oh I did, I wasn't that great. I'd be curious to see if they would stump me. Now No, no, I mean specifically with the outside of the eye thing. But yeah, no, I'm sure, there are plenty that I missed, but when you were a boy, I knew while staring in the

mirror tears came from uh. And so then at the end, to wrap up the little genre sort of summary, you've got this great ending usually where everyone's gathered together and the detective kind of walks everyone through the big reveal of exactly how the killer did it. Uh, And in her case, she did not um like when the killer is revealed, they didn't turn around and shoot them in

the face like it's usually pretty non violent. They would be wrestled to the ground or arrested, or maybe they might run away and you hear later that they had killed themselves or something like that. Sure, there was rarely a grand finale where they would be pressed to death in front of a crowd. So that, I mean, that's it, like bing bang boom. That was when you started on page one of an Agatha Christie novel, you knew exactly

how everything was going to play out. And then one of the other things is because this thing was so formulaic, there was also room for this for the author to kind of play with you the reader, and in using things like bluffs and red herrings I think are basically

the same thing. But the idea is that so the author in this case, Agatha Christie would say something like, um, you know, early on in the book, a a suspect would come running out of the house looking shaken and pale, and um, you the reader would be like, well, that's just way too obvious. She's not gonna name she's not going to point out who the murderer is at the beginning of the book, so I can disregard that person

or this very obvious clue or something like that. That was just kind of part of the interplay between author and reader. But then it could go even deeper to where she would say something like, well, I know that you think that this is too obvious, so I'm gonna actually make this the actual murderer, which she did in

some cases, which was like a double bluff. Apparently you could just keep going on and on and on, but it was this kind of um wrestling match or maybe slap fight between Agatha Christie and you, her reader, which made the whole thing all the more delightful. That's right, and she uh, it takes great pains to point out that she did not invent the genre. Uh. There were people like Arthur Conan Doyle obviously and Poe before her that sort of established some of these rules. But she

was very popular. She's very good at what she did. She wrote about what she knew. And we'll talk about her life coming up in a little bit. But these manor houses in these estates and these English villages and even the exotic locales, uh, and these train trips and things were things that she actually experienced. And you know, a lot of people are great at making stuff up, and a lot of people are great about writing what they know. And it seems like she was really great

at writing what she knew. Yeah, and um, for some reason, either it was the time or maybe because of her I'm not sure. It was kind of a chicken or the egg thing, but she happened to write about stuff that a lot of people wanted to read about these small you know, English villages and you know, quaint mannerisms of the uh upper middle and upper class English society, um. Set in this period of time that and for some

reason it just captured everybody's attention. And apparently when she started expanding, like I think after World War two to some slightly more exotic locales like Egypt or Mesopotamia, you know. Um uh, for like Death on the Nile was a very famous one during this time, or the Orient express um that really catapulted or into superstardom, international superstardom too. Yeah. I don't have a super firm read on the history of literature, but I get the idea that this is

sort of aligned with the beginnings of pop lit. Uh. And like I called it the beach book. Um, I don't know if there had been a ton of stuff like this that was just sort of pure comfort food and entertainment up to this point. Yeah, I'm not sure either. Nothing that I'm familiar with I can say, but they were very entertaining books. They were humorous, a very dark sense of humor. UM. Great dialogue, all these um verbal jous between the detectives and the suspects is really key

to that genre. Um. Something Knives Out did really really well. It was one of my favorite scripts of the year, maybe my favorite script, but just really really good, sharp writing. And it's no um, sort of no accident that she became so hugely popular now. And that's something like if you're not really familiar with Agatha Christie and you just

kind of look her up in passing. Um. One of the things you'll be confronted with is that a lot of people, a lot of critics say she was a hack and um, when what they're talking about is that formula that she followed to almost like a a soullessly rational degree, Like that was the formula, that's what she followed. Um. But that really misses like the fact that she had a really great eye for detail in the dialogue, like you were saying, like she was a good writer and

she could just crank workout. I think during the decade of the twenties she wrote a book a year. It might have been become more prolific later on in the thirties and forties too. Yeah, and she um, she was a business person. You know, there's nothing wrong with saying, wow, people love this stuff and they sell a lot and uh, although it took a while for that to happen, as we'll see, but there's there's nothing wrong with any of that. I think people that call our hack can go fly height. Yeah,

go fly it with extreme prejudice. Should we take a break, I think so, man, we'll come back and talk about her life great okay, Chuck so um Agatha Christie was born in eight in England, in Devonshire, in Torquay, which I always want to say tanger Ay, Devon sure. Sure. And it's in the southwest of England. So Torquay is kind of like our our Devonshire is like our Arizona. Basically,

that's my impression. I think it is very much like Arizona, right, the legendary Devonshire cactus right, So so which stalks the more um? And she was one of three kids, and I think her older brother and sister were both at least a decade older than her. So she had like a very um solitary childhood, which appears to have made her fairly happy. She didn't go to school. She was raised by governesses and educated by governess. Has spent a lot of time reading um and just hung out around

her family's estate. Yeah, I mean they had some dough they were they were not wealthy wealthy, but they were definitely upper middle class. They got an inheritance from her paternal grandfather such that her dad didn't need to work. Apparently, she is on record as saying that like her dad wasn't around much didn't really impact me once much. So he can go fly a kite as well. It's a lot of kite flying. And um, she was she loved

being out in the garden. She wasn't Um, I get the impression she wasn't like reclusive or anything, but she very much enjoyed time with her self alone, but also had friends and stuff when she eventually did go to school once her father passed and they couldn't afford that. Governess right, but she was a very very shy person. Um. The novelist Joanna Cascella um says that even as an adult, she was so shy that sometimes she wouldn't go into

shops because she would have to interact with the shopkeeper. Um. So it is a novelist. You know how many novelists are the life of the party and super outgoing. You've never met Philip Browth, apparently, I just I don't know, you kind of picture like the Stephen King's just locked in an attic somewhere and not like, well, let me ride a little bit, then I'm gonna go, uh, you know, go to a part right, go play some pick up

basketball and maybe volunteer at the local food bank. I don't know, it's just it's sort of a solitary pastime. So that sure, there are examples of uh, of extroverted authors, but I think she kind of fits the mold that you generally think of, especially for a lady mystery writer. Yeah, and you know, I think not only fits the mold. The more I learned about her, she made the mold. Basically everything we take her for granted as far as writing and mystery writing goes like she basically made it up.

It's it's pretty impressive stuff. Yeah. So she um, like we said, she did some pretty uh to us dumb dumbs in America seem like exotic traveling trips. But if you lived in England at the time, it's no big deal to go to Egypt and check out the Pyramids. That was if you had a little dough that was a pretty common vacation that you might take. So she did stuff like that, and she was exposed to um

exotic locales and use those in her work. Uh. In her very first novel, even Snow Upon the Desert, she wrote when she was like twenty two or twenty three years old, I think, and uh, you know, she had a hard time getting published at first because she was a young woman. Yeah, she was rejected out of hand. Um. And apparently also she started writing um because her sister told her that she probably wouldn't be able to write a mystery novel, which I love, so she did. She

wrote the what was it? Snow on? What? Snow upon the Desert? Snow upon the Desert? And she was very young then, um. And in between the time she wrote Snow upon the Desert and The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which would be her first published book, I believe she um wedged a lot of life in there in the form of getting married to a guy named Archibald Archie Christie.

And one of the things about Agatha Christie is that she was she never she wasn't a born writer, even though she did right as a younger person, like you were saying, like, she wasn't like a She just didn't

want to be a writer as a kid. And she ended up writing really seriously after she and Archie Christie got married, because Archie Christie wasn't particularly wealthy and couldn't necessarily care for her himself, so she started writing to to make money, which some people suspect is the reason she got into mystery writing in the first place because there was a very very popular genre. Even Yeah, well it makes sense, so she had the skills to pay the bills. It turns out that's right. Uh. They were

married nineteen fourteen. He was kind of promptly sent to fight in the Great War in France and she worked at a pharmacist at a war hospital during that period, and this is where she learned a lot about potions and poisons and pharmaceuticals and things that she would there's a lot of poisoning that goes on in her books. Um, and she later in her career, I think she actually would consult with doctors and stuff like that because she

wanted everything to be really medically accurate. But early and she learned a lot about this stuff from her work in the pharmacy. We just kind of cool and ghoulish, you know. She's like, how exactly would a person die from this bottle that I'm holding? So yeah, and apparently, um, most of the deaths in her books are poisoning, and like you were saying, like you ray rarely see the person die. They just come upon the body, and most of the times the poison body. Sometimes there there was

violence visited upon them. But for the most part is a body that was found poisoned to death. Yeah, and that's a good vehicle for a mystery novel because you know there's no murder weapon per se. There I guess there's the poison bottle. But it can often be very vague a poisoning death, like could it have been a heart attack? Like you have to kind of suss out at first whether or not it was even a murder.

It's not like an obvious thing where there's a a bullet hole in their chest or something like that, right, right, So poisoning is what she went with. Typically. It's another example also, Chuck, I think of like her writing what she knew too, at least writing what interested her. Um And she wrote in I believe nineteen twenty no during the during World War One, so while she was working at the dispensary and Archie was all flying in France, I believe, um, she wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles

and it was that's the one I started reading. And I don't understand how it was rejected at first, but it was. Um it's a really interesting book, just right out of the gate um in that it pulls you right into this little country English estate and all the people on it, and you realize just after a couple of pages that you're already invested in them, which is pretty amazing. And this is like not her first book, but it was her first uh serious work that wasn't

published immediately. It wasn't published until nineteen twenty um. And I think even after was published, it wasn't an immediate catapult to success for her, but it was a it was a remarkable first book to be published. Yeah, and this is the one that introduced the world to her chief detective for a lot of those novels, Mr Poirot, like we mentioned, And later on they asked her why he was Belgian, and she said why not? Basically, I

don't think a whole lot of thought went into it. Um. It turned out to be a really good choice because he had this kind of interesting accent and everywhere he went, I don't you know, they were never set in Belgium, so everywhere he went he was this sort of sort of strange foreigner that would come into town with this accent that no one quite understood, and he just had this sort of larger than life presence I think because of that. So it turned out to be a really

smart choice. Yeah. He was also a well known dandy who was very vain about his appearance. Um. And he apparently said in one of the later books that he plays up his foreignness and his dandy nous to um uh disarm suspects when he's interrogating them, to make them take him less seriously than they otherwise might. Man, I want to talk about knives out so much you cannot. I appreciate you not doing that. So she had a daughter, we should mention, in nineteen nineteen named Rosalind, and that's

the only child she ever had. And it was in nineteen twenty year later that they finally did publish The Mysterious Affair at Styles after she agreed to change the ending. They said, we don't like Poirot revealing all this evidence in court, so she changed the ending. They said great. That's when she went on to publish that novel every year for about ten years, very very big books. But they weren't um. They were popular, but she wasn't like

a superstar internationally at this point yet. No, not yet. UM. Again, she really catapulted later on because she moved to some of these more exotic locales. But one of the things that cemented her legend as a mystery writer, in addition to all of the work she did, in addition to her prolific nous and her extreme talent at this formula that she had worked out was UM what still today

is considered an unsolved mystery. In fact, it was featured onisode of Unsolved Mysteries UM, which I just randomly happened to see recently, and UM she disappeared. There's a whole sub plot to Agatha Christie's life that was really surprising, especially compared to how boring and normal and just kind of plotting with these instead of tease her normal life. Was the fact that she has this grand mystery plunk down in the middle of it is is pretty impressive.

It's UM. So here's here's the backstory. She and Archie we're not meant to be together. As it turns out, he revealed that he was having an affair with a lady named Nancy Neil who was a friend of the family, and obviously that was the end of their marriage. So at the end of nineteen UM they decided they were going to take a trip together a weekend er um Archie went to be with his friends instead, and then

she vanished and seemingly thin air. Uh. They found her car near rock Quarry with her fur coat and her driver's license there and no Agatha Christie. No in her car wasn't just near the rock quarry according to some reports like one of the wheels is hanging over the edge of this cliff and still spinning right, um So,

but she was gone. They couldn't find her. And so within a couple of days this massive search, depending on who you ask and depending on when you ask them, ten like ten thousand plus people were searching for probably more likely a couple of thousand, which is still really remarkable for this tiny little area in the southwest of England. Um at the time in um So, the that really kind of demonstrates she was already a well known writer.

She wasn't legendary yet, but this is this disappearance is the mechanism, mechanism by which she becomes legendary, I think. And this goes on for a good week I believe. Right when did she disappeared? December? What I think December three is when they were going to take that trip. So she was gone almost two weeks and I'm by gone, we mean just vanished. She left behind that car, she left behind the driver's license in the fur Like you said,

she was gone. Her husband had come came to be known to have asked for a divorce already, so people were like, well did he bump her off? And she's a mystery writer known for generating stuff like this, So even at the time, some people were like, is this a publicity because it's a pretty good one if it is, sure it worked. Uh And there was a band at this place called the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Yorkshire, which kind of just sounds like a bit of a Kellogg

Brothers type of joint. Have you seen a cure for wellness? Uh? Well, we we talked about that in that podcast. Dude, we I can't remember have you seen it? I never saw it? Have you yet? I still have not seen it. Hey, you're not missing that much. But it is pretty interesting, it's quit it's worth seeing at least once. I might check it out. But any rate, they had a band here, because what hydropathic hotel does not have a house band? And they came forward and said, hey, that's Agatha Christie lady.

She's been staying here for a week. She's been in the electric light bath cabinet and getting yogurt enemas and having a grand old time. So they went to the cops, and the cops went to the lead detective and said, no, no, no, she has been murdered and we're trying to find out the killer. Eventually, this detective said, well, let me tell her husband. And husband Archie went out to check it out on the fourteenth of December. There she was, she was in seclusion, and uh, that was sort of the

end of this mystery. It wasn't so much a mystery. Um, you know. She by all accounts, it seems like she went there because she had thought about or maybe tried to drive her car into that quarry and and kill herself because she was upset about her marriage ending. Uh, and then it didn't happen, and she just kind of goes on a walk and ends up at this place. May or may not have invented an amnesia story, or

it may have actually happened to some degree. She didn't talk about a lot, so we don't really know exactly what went down with the amnesia. She said that. So two years later, she gave an interview with The Daily Mail and apparently explained the amnesia by saying she'd hit her head on the steering wheel. But in the same interview she says that she'd let go of the steering wheel, So she basically said, like, I attempted suicide and it didn't work out. I hit my head on the steering wheel,

and I wandered off and I had amnesia. But the the they think that it's it was just a family cover story to save face, this amnesia story, and that really she had attempted to take her own life and um hadn't succeeded and now regretted it and was embarrassed by all of this because the idea that there were thousands of people looking for I think it probably never crossed her mind when she wandered away from her car, and that I remember she was a very shy person,

so this all this attention was very very hard on her. So the family just came up with this cover story that she had amnesia, so don't even bother asking, and um Archie and she stayed together for another year or so, and then their divorce finally became finalized. The Yeah, so she didn't even mention this in her autobiography, which kind of says all you need to know about how much she liked to talk about this. Right, we should say there was one other thing that did this too. It

wasn't just um Archie asking for a divorce. He asked for a divorce a few months after her mother died. And I get that Christie's mother was beloved to her. She worshiped her mother. She thought she was wonderful. Her mother was the parent that was there for her while she was a kid and raised her. Um it was just a very interesting person, it sounds like. So she died, Archie asks for a divorce a few months later, and

then this whole mysterious disappearance happened. And then one last thing, I read that at the Swan Hydro Hotel, she was actually playing cards and chatting with other guests about this mysterious disappearance that was in all of the newspapers, and none of the other guests recognized her. It was those band members that you mentioned. Interesting, I thought so too, man.

So that's everything I learned from Unsolved Mysteries. Should we take a break finally, all right, let's Uh, let's take our final break and we'll talk a little bit more about her later life and further success. Alright, so it's at this point she is freshly divorced. She kept that name because, uh, you know, she that's the name that made her famous, so it makes a lot of sense, and she kept writing novels. Um. She traveled on the

Orient Express to Bagdad. She got into archaeology, just sort of a hobbyist, and made friends with a couple who were archaeologists. Went to visit them in ninety and on that trip, I met a man named Max mallow One who was also an adventurer and an archaeologist thirteen years younger. And they fell in love and got married, which is

a very very sweet story. Yeah. Apparently he was giving her a tour of some archaeological sites and he got the car stuck, and she, apparently, he said later, she made no fuss about it, didn't blame him or anything like that, and he said, that's about the time when I started to begin to realize that you're wonderful. And so they got married. Um, And she said later on that the good thing about being married to an archaeologist is that the older you get the more interested they

become interesting. That was kind of cute. So this is when Miss Marple comes along as as a detective and nineteen thirty with the Murder at the Vicarage that was our first one. That was the first Miss Marple book. And then she's traveling around, She's doing these archaeological digs and trips. She's going to Syria and Iraq. She fell in of with Syria and the Syrian people, and she's really cranking out some big books at this point in

the nineteen thirties. That's like, even even on archaeological digs, Chuck, can you imagine how uncomfortable it would be to sit and write for hours in an archaeological site. I can't. It would be tough, I would think. And yet she was still just as prolific as ever. Yeah. Books like Murder and Mesopotamia and Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express were all written during this period and this is what really catapulted her into international superstardom

as an author. Right. So, um, she and Max stayed together for I think forty six years until her death. Actually, um, yeah, I think, yeah, she outlived him. This is pretty sweet. Um, but despite all of this kind of UM adventure and in archaeological digs and like visits to the Middle East. UM, most of her life from that point on was in Devonshire, UM, in this tiny little area in the English countryside. UM, in these quaint little towns UM, and she gardened and

was very involved in local community theater. That was her life. She was also one of the biggest, most well known, most best selling writers of of in the world while she was alive. And yet that's what she did. She hung out with the community theater group and garden that it was just her life. Yeah, she got the Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and UM.

The rights to her novels were held by a company that she created for a long time, and then before she died she sold part of that off and that's been sort of bought and sold a bunch of the years, which is kind of how that usually happens. But she did retain enough of the um of the company to to have it be worth a ton of money UM, which she passed down to her daughter. Of course, as her only child, she sort of took care of her

mother's works for many many years. And then passed that on to her only child, um man named Matthew Pritchard, who still holds these rights and still sort of manages that today. That's right, So everything turned out well for Matthew Pritchard. Sounds like heck, yeah, I wish. I wish my grandma was actually a dunk because I love my grandma. But would it have killed her to be an internationally

famous author. No, it wouldn't, Chuck, and I'm glad we're finally talking about is it's been an elephant in the room for a very long time? Uh so, she? You know, a lot of these went on to be very famous films, TV series. I think Murder on the Orient Express has been a couple of big movies. Uh. In fact, one a couple of years ago that I have not seen. It's unwatchable. That was it really bad. I'm sorry if you listen to this, Kenneth Brawner, I couldn't make it

through the first five minutes. It was like it Okay, is that all you know? Yes? Okay, So that's my report is on the first five minutes. Uh. She very famously has a play called The mouse Trap, which is debut at the West End in nineteen fifty two, and it is the longest running play in the history of the West End, which is remarkable. Yeah, and to make that even sweeter, remember her sister who said that she

probably couldn't write a mystery novel. Well, her sister was the first in the family to get a play produced on the West End, but it certainly wasn't the longest running play on the West End of all times. So she got her back doubly so. And then she was hit by a train and Agatha Christie laughed and laughed and poisoned her corpse. So, uh, we need to talk

a little bit here at the end. Um, we always like to give everyone's give everyone the accolades they deserve, but also point out some of the things that weren't so great. We don't want to whitewash anything. And she used a lot of kind of racially insensitive language, uh, some would call anti Semitic at times anti Catholic through parts of her career. Um, such that the Anti Defamation

League complained to her agent at one point. And because of that, American publishers were given the ability to change that stuff out sort of at will, without without any notice given to her. She just she didn't know this was going on at all. Yeah. We just were like, I don't think the Americans are gonna go for this. The Brits can barely stand it. The Americans definitely aren't going to take this. Well. Yeah, and I read a

lot about this, and there are different takes. UM. One take is that the old you know, she was a product of her time thing, which people uh you know rightfully point out. Um. Another is that oftentimes she's doing this, uh to show characters are sort of um, underdeveloped as humans and sort of backward m So there's that as well. It You also can't dance around the fact that she did use some pretty bad words and um, you know then they were bad even at the time like that.

It wasn't. Yes, you can say like, yeah, a lot of people had different social attitudes towards race and racism and um, and in that sense, she wasn't that much different. But there were cases where she was standing well outside of the norm, including in book titles and characters and things like that. Um. And one book in particular, and then there were none was revised many many times, not just in the US, but in Great Britain as well.

Um and it's remarkable in that sense, but in another sense it was also remarkable and that it's considered pretty widely to have given birth to the slasher film genre. Did you know that? I didn't until my bread bed say it. I. Yeah. I looked this up a little more and on its own, and and then there were none the book ends. Sorry for the spoiler, everybody, but it ends with I think all of the suspects killing

one another, um and everyone dies. In the stage adaptation of the play that she helped write, Um, there the final girl, a female character has left alive and has out done the murderer who's come to get her, which is, you know, for the formula for any slasher film whatsoever. But there's a bunch of other elements in there too, and they're like, you know, even on like horror fan wikis, they point to that as like the genuine birth even more than Psycho of the slasher film genre. Interesting. Yeah,

it is pretty interesting. You who would have ever thought that um Agathur Christie, with her non violence and and poison and occasional racism, would have been the one to birth the slasher film racism? Yeah, and a lot of the racist stuff. Just to put a final pin on that was. Um, A lot of it was character descriptions, which can be some of the ugliest kinds of stuff like that. Um, because it wasn't just like talking about philosophies.

It was just like literally physically describing a character. Uh. Sometimes she would use some pretty pretty derogatory language. Yeah. So again, it's a bit like exploring Elizabeth Blackwell or any historical characters. Always weird little bugs under the rocks you turn over. You know, I'm glad we're doing our great work in a in a in the time of wokeness. Rightly,

no one can ever go back. I mean, we've made midsteps here and there, but they can't go back and talk about when Josh and Chuck were big racists at the beginning. Yeah, no, it's true. But just wait for twenty years from now they'll be like, I can't believe we talk about those guys were aged bastards. You know. Um,

there's one other thing I want to say too. So when she lived through World War Two, Agatha Christie was worried that she was going to die in the bombing blitz of Great Britain, and she really wanted Hercule Poi Row and Um Jane Marple's to have a final case. So she wrote a book for each of them. Uh. One is called Curtain that's Paul rose final book, and the other is Sleeping Murder Um that is Marple's final case and Um. And it just kind of explains what

happens to them. I believe Paul Row dies and Marple's just retires. But when she survived World War Two, she was like, well, I don't I'm not ready for these guys to be retired yet. So she kept those books and had them posthumously published, and they were in the seventies. And when her her Kuel Poil Rose Last book came out and he died, Um, the New York Times ran a front page obituary for him. The only fictional character to have that on her bestowed on them. That's crazy,

isn't it? Yeah? And also a very cool good idea to write those books early on, just in case, because you never know. Yeah, besides the bombing thing. I mean, she could she could walk off a ledge or get hit by a bus or die of natural causes early, like, you never know, and then you've got this legacy cemented. Pretty smart, have you? Ever seen one last thing? Have you ever seen Murder by Death? I know I've asked

you before. I had that DVD sitting on my desk. Well, that's amazing that you have that on your desk and you wait, is it on your desk at work? I was gonna say, watch it tonight, but don't watch it tonight. Um, wait until everything clears, so you're gonna love it. No, it's a spoof actually detective books of like Charlie Chan and Agatha Christie and um, Sam Spade and all that that she helped, you know, kind of create. But it's actually like a complaint from fans of mystery, Um, mysteries.

It's just a wonderful book. Truman movie, Truman Campodi's in it, David Niven, Um, Peter, Peter Falk, Yeah, um, a lot of people. James Cromwell as a younger man, James Coke, Oh, is Hercule, Paul Rowe. It's just great. You're gonna love it. Man. So I guess we should say that she did die eventually, uh five years or three years after I met her in nine seventy six, at the age of eighty five at her home in Oxfordshire, or Oxfordshire and uh it was natural causes, not poison. No. Her last words were

good to meet you, Chuck. Ah, you got anything else? I do not have anything else? Well, friends, that is Agatha Christie. If you want to know more about the Christie go start reading Agatha Christie books. And since I said Agatha Christie like three or four times, it's time for a listener mate. All right, I'm gonna call this letter from a kid because we love reading these letters from kids. Hey, guys, I've been listening to your podcast for about eight months now, and I'd like to say

I am a huge fan. Uh. This is Emmett. He's ten years old. Oh yeah, I love this email. My dad is even more of a fan of you guys than me, and he told me about your podcast. I am a huge fan of the Atlanta Falcons and pretty much everything Atlanta related, including your podcast, which is weird because I live in Iowa. I love it. It is a little weird, though I met You're right. I love

how self aware of this guy is. I think you know, you know, when you grow up in a place like Io with no professional sports, you uh, you know, you do that thing where you just pick out a team in a city. Yeah, you're like the Base City Rollers. You throw a dart at a map and go with it. That's right. I'm now I'm really worried there's a professional team in Iowa. But there is not there not, there

are none, right, No need to double check that. I've been listening to your podcast a ton during this coronavirus outbreak to keep me from going crazy, and it's worked. My birthday that is actually coming up, so I'll not be able to see my friends or even have a party. It would be totally awesome and make my year if you said happy birthday to me. But I want to bet you won't read this on the air. That's some fine reverse psychology right there. Well played, and it I

love your grass podcast. And last year, me and my best friend Oliver started a lawn care business and it made enough money to buy Beats headphones to listen to your podcast on as full circle right there. That's right, he says. I made sure to wrap this letter up and spank it all the bottom before I sent it. So happy, happy, big I guess eleventh birthday, Emmett, best to your dad, Hello Oliver and everyone there in Atlanta. Iowa. Yeah,

happy birthday, Emmett. That reverse psychology worked. Man. Uh. If you want to get in touch with this like Emmett did, and see if I wish you a happy birthday, I'll bet we won't. But who can tell him these crazy times. You can get in touch with us via email, Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radios

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