The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie: A Biographical Companion to the Works of Agatha Christie - Softcover

Osborne, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312301162 ISBN 13: 9780312301163

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2002

Synopsis

A companion volume to the life and works of the acclaimed mystery writer explores the world of the author and the major events of her life as seen through the mirror of her more than one hundred plays, short story collections, and novels, accompanied by rare period photographs and details on each work and film and television adaptations. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Agatha Christie's career spanned over 50 years and 80 books; given that she also wrote plays, poems and fragments of memoir, it is at times hard to see how she managed to pay so much attention to the fine details through which her detective stories both inform and misdirect. Charles Osborne's at times almost devotional biography does not obscure some of the problems--Christie persisted in a snide anti-Semitism until the end of her life and her politics were both naive and reactionary; and yet, he demonstrates time and time again, there is an emotional honesty in the best of her work that is rare in the purely puzzle-oriented detective story. Osborne devotes considerable ingenuity to telling us as much as possible about each and every one of her books and plays without giving endings away; he is knowledgeable and thoughtful about even the most obscure of her short stories. The main threads of the non-writing life are here too--the disastrous first marriage, the disappearance with almost certainly fake amnesia, the travels with the archaeologist who made her happy. This is a book which stresses the lively intelligence of its subject, and shares it. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

‘Charles Osborne deserves a medal – his own writing slips down a treat, and I was surprised to find (this book) a pleasure’
– Sunday Telegraph

‘A delightful bedside companion’
– The Tablet

About this edition

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0312301162
• ISBN 13: 9780312301163
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432