Agatha Christie Research Paper

Stories of deduction and intrigue have been around since biblical times. Humans, as a species, have a fascination with that which many find to be unthinkable, such as murder. However, it wasn't until Edgar Allen Poe that detective novels became a literary genre, and thus a staple of humanity's literary history. Poe built the platform from which stemmed every detective story written during the past two centuries. Nonetheless, while Poe has been credited with creating detective fiction, the genre would not have lasted had it not been for notable authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, who took Poe's foundation and modified it to suit the values of their respective times. Change is necessary for survival, and the changes brought

The world was no longer divided into a "good" and an "evil"-people no longer knew who to place their faith in. The nobility found in Doyle had been left behind in the trenches of the battlefields and in the ruins of bombed cities. After World War I, there was a tipping point in detective fiction. Doyle never wrote about Holmes after the war because a Victorian gentleman with a sense of honor would not exist after the war. Another writer, however, saw an opportunity. The world was changing, and Agatha Christie changed crime fiction to meet

People around the world were looking for entertainment; they wanted a distraction from the horrors they had seen. Christie delivered. In stark contrast to Holmes and Dupin, Poirot is a vain, humorous old man who is obsessed with his moustaches. He also relies on material clues more than his predecessors. Perhaps most importantly, Poirot relates all his findings to Hastings and, thus, the reader, establishing the concept of "fair play". Fair play allows the reader to try to solve the crime as the detective does. Christie was so popular because, while she gave the reader the same clues Poirot has, they often seemed insignificant until the very end, when everything came together. Another thing that fascinated readers and set Christie apart from Doyle and Poe was her settings. Instead of taking place in big cities, her stories usually took place in some remote countryside or even an island, such as in And Then There Were None. This allowed readers to infer the rest of the setting for themselves. Her characters, too, seem to be stereotypical people until one is denounced as a criminal. Her twist endings intrigued readers and kept them wanting more. As "The Queen of Mystery," Christie vaulted the mystery genre to new heights, ensuring its survival to this