The History of the Mystery

Cozy Christie

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller Christie wrote her first book while working in a local hospital dispensary. It took her two years to finish The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and it was turned down by several publishers before it was out in 1920, a date which is used to indicate the beginning of the Golden Age of Mysteries. On the British side of the Atlantic, Christie is an icon, a prolific writer of mysteries set in pleasant environments, solved by intelligent detectives. The Golden Age celebrated the complicated plot with many twists and the intelligence of the detectives.

Christie's first detective, Belgian Hercule Poirot,who boasted of his busy brain cells, attracted readers so Christie continued to write. Her most famous novel,The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, was published in 1926. About this time, she suffered an amnesia attack, and disappeared from view, a sensational occurrence that has never been fully explained. When she reappeared, she introduced English detectives: Miss Jane Marple in one series, and Tuppence and Tommy Beresford in another. Her books, such as The Murder on the Orient Express, have had a long life span. Christie continued to write, producing novels, short stories and plays. Her settings are places where upper and middle class English people congregate, large country houses, country villages, a famous train. Her detectives are quite different, but all are intelligent, persistent in their quests to find the guilty party. and adept at getting information. Gentle humor pervades the stories. So pleasant and comfortable are the surroundings and the conversations that the word 'cozy' has been applied to this kind of mystery story. This does not mean that Christie wrote tame tales. She was a careful writer and researcher into how murders are carried out. For example, she was an expert on poisons.

What distinguishes her detectives from a Dupin or a Sherlock Holmes is the way the author has her sleuths reveal what they find out and what they are thinking as they proceed in their investigations. The reader is in the midst of the game. The plots are thought out, and the many suspects and events are managed well, so it is not easy to identify the perpetrator until the end when the detective makes the final revelation.

Christie�s attractive, varied settings are great background for movies and television series. The respectability of her characters and her detectives, Poirot, Jane Marple, and Tuppence and Tommy, make her mysteries acceptable to audiences around the world. Another English woman, Dorothy Sayers, introduced a detective from the upper class. Lord Peter Wimsey, collector of rare books, man of many talents, began his amateur detective work that went on through ten novels and two sets of short stories.