As a huge Agatha Christie fan, I could not believe my good fortune when I was assigned the job of choosing and discussing the best Agatha Christie audiobooks of all time. I know a lot about books and mysteries in general, but here is an author whose body of work I know frontwards and backwards. When I was 8 years old, I read , and it started my lifelong love of all things Christie.
Agatha Christie is the bestselling fiction writer of all time, with more than 2 billion books sold. She's also the most translated author in history, and her stage play The Mousetrap holds the world record for longest run. (It ran at St Martin's Theatre in London from its opening in 1952 all the way through to March 16, 2020, when the Covid pandemic disrupted its historic run; the play reopened in May of 2021.)
On top of all her published works, Agatha Christie was a fascinating person. Before I talk about the best Agatha Christie listens, I’d like to share just a few interesting facts about her:
She taught herself to read at age 5, and was homeschooled until she was 15.
She wrote her first novel, , on a dare.
She learned about poisons while working in a hospital apothecary during World War I.
She wrote romance novels under the alias Mary Westmacott.
She was once involved in her own mystery, when she disappeared for more than a week and then suddenly resurfaced, claiming no memory of what happened.
She loved surfing and once appeared in a photo in British newspapers on a surfboard, leading some to erroneously credit her with inventing surfing.
She also loved archaeology. Her second husband was the famous British archaeologist Max Mallowan. (She once said, “An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.”)
I could go on and on, but it’s about time we talk about her audiobooks. Christie is, of course, most famous for her mysteries. While they are suspenseful and even chilling, they are considered rather tame by today’s standards. Some people refer to them as cozy mysteries, meaning there is very little foul language, violence, or sex.
Agatha Christie’s most famous character is , a Belgian detective in England, who appeared in more than 30 of her books, starting with The Mysterious Affair at Styles. He’s brilliant and fastidious...especially when it comes to his mustaches. Poirot is so exacting and exhausting that even Christie was tired of him after a while, calling him “a detestable, bombastic, tiresome, egocentric little creep.”
Then there’s , an elderly resident and amateur detective with shrewd intelligence, who is often called upon to help solve cases in the village of St. Mary Mead, whose first novel appearance is in . Jane Marple appears in more than 20 books, and like Poirot, has been portrayed in several adaptations.
