Christie Agatha: Otrovno pismo

Agatha Christi: The Poisonous Letter

Lymstock is a town with unsavory secrets aplenty - a town where not even a sudden flurry of anonymous letters has managed to significantly unsettle the spirits. But that will all change when one of the recipients of the anonymous letter, Mrs. Symmington, commits suicide.

And in her farewell letter, she wrote: "Still I can't." Miss Marple doubts the coroner's claim that it was a suicide. Soon no one trusts anyone anymore - and the secrets stop being just embarrassing and become murderous.


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Agatha Christie (Mary Clarissa Christie, 1890 - 1976) is the most famous author of crime novels in the world and the best-selling author along with Shakespeare. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English, and over a billion copies in 45 other world languages ​​(as of 2003). 

She wrote over eighty novels and plays, mostly detective stories. Many of them feature her most famous characters, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Most of her books and short stories have been adapted into films, some more than once (Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, At 4.50 from Paddington). She also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.

She was also called the "queen of crime fiction", and the "Agatha" award - Award for a crime novel - was awarded after her. 

Agatha Christie is the best-known and best-selling crime fiction writer ever. In English alone, her books have sold over a billion copies and even more in 45 foreign languages ​​(until 2003). For example, in France, her books have sold more than 40 million copies, surpassing Emil Zola with 22 million books sold.

This exceptional and prolific author wrote over 80 novels, short stories and plays during her lifetime. She received her education in the family home. In 1914, at the age of 24, she married Archibald Christie, a fighter pilot in World War I. While he was in action, Agatha worked as a hospital nurse. That's when her idea to write detective novels was born. Her first marriage ended in divorce in 1928. After a short life crisis, she finds happiness in her marriage to a younger English archaeologist (Sir) Max Mallowan. Her travels with him provided her with the basis for several of her novels set in the Middle East.

The extensive opus, which continues the prominent tradition of English crime fiction, begins with the novel "The Mysterious Event in Styles" (1920), in which she presents her most popular character, the genius Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who appears in thirty of her 66 novels and story collections. Among the other permanent characters, Miss Marple, Parker Pyne and especially Tommy and Tupence stand out, with whom her satirical tendencies come to the fore, and Harley Quin, with whom she associates elements of the fantastic. She also published two collections of poems, and after her death her autobiography (1977) was published.