Agatha Christie (1890–1976) was the Grande Dame of English crime fiction, specializing in the detective novel. Agatha Christie books include her two most famous detective creations – the Belgian, Hercule Poirot and the English spinster, Miss Marple. Both are amateur detectives who find themselves either caught up in a murder mystery or called in by someone who knows their reputation and brings them in to investigate.
There is a broad formula to Agatha Christie’s books: A murder occurs and there are several people who could have committed it. The point of the novel is to work towards the solution of who it was, keeping the reader guessing all the way through. The detective moves among the suspects and engages with them and listens to everyone’s stories. The reader doesn’t know who is lying and who is telling the truth. The detective then gathers them together and explains his/her conclusions, ending with the naming of the murderer. The great satisfaction for the reader is when it comes as a surprise, as it usually does.
If one enjoys one of Agatha Christie’s novels there is a lifetime of enjoyable reading ahead, as Agatha Christie was one of the most prolific of England’s novel writers.
In addition to the two prime detectives, there is also a police detective, the lesser known Superintendent Battle, who features in five novels. There are four novels about the adventures of a married couple, Tommy and Tuppence, who run a private detective agency while also operating as secret agents.
Agatha Christie also wrote twenty-one stand-alone novels. The Agatha Christie books didn’t feature her serial detectives, but adhered to the same formula of a murder with several suspects, inviting the reader to guess all the way through.
Agatha Christie’s short stories and novellas are very popular as television adaptations. Several feature Hercule Poirot, but there are many more that are general crime mystery stories.
Perhaps Agatha Christie’s most famous work is the play, The Mousetrap, a murder mystery play that opened in London’s West End in 1952 and ran continuously until March 16th 2020, when it had to pause its performances because the theaters closed as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. For all those decades it was one of London’s top tourist destinations.
Agatha Christie’s novels have been adapted again and again for stage, and both large and small screens, and Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple hve been played by the greatest actors of succeeding generations since the first films were made.
Here is a complete list of Agatha Christie books in order, categorised by the detective:
Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot Novels
Agatha Christie described Hercule Poirot as “a small man, muffled up to the ears of whom nothing was visible but a pink-tipped nose and the two points of an upward-curled moustache.” His main method is to get people to talk. He has several tactics to achieve that.
The most famous Hercule Poirot novels are The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Murder on the Orient Express.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
The Murder on the Links (1923)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
The Big Four (1927)
The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)
Peril at End House (1932)
Lord Edgware Dies (1933)
Murder on the Orient Express (1934)
Three Act Tragedy (1935)
Death in the Clouds (1935)
The A.B.C. Murders (1936)
Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
Cards on the Table (1936)
Dumb Witness (1937)
Death on the Nile (1937)
Appointment with Death (1938)
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (1938)
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940)
Sad Cypress (1940)
Evil Under the Sun (1941)
Five Little Pigs (1942)
The Hollow (1946)
Taken at the Flood (1948)
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead (1952)
After the Funeral (1953)
Hickory Dickory Dock (1955)
Dead Man’s Folly (1956)
Cat Among the Pigeons (1959)
The Clocks (1963)
Third Girl (1966)
Hallowe’en Party (1969)
Elephants Can Remember (1972)
Curtain (1975)
The Monogram Murders (2014)
Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple Novels
Miss Marple is the cunning, intelligent mystery solver who presents herself to the world as a nice little old lady. She makes sense of crimes by comparing them to the events of everyday life. The most famous of these novels is Murder at the Vicarage.
The Murder at the Vicarage (1930)
The Body in the Library (1942)
The Moving Finger (1942)
A Murder is Announced (1950)
They Do It with Mirrors (1952)
A Pocket Full of Rye (1953)
4:50 From Paddington (1957)
The Mirror Crack’d (1962)
A Caribbean Mystery (1964)
At Bertram’s Hotel (1965)
Nemesis (1971)
Sleeping Murder (1976)
Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence Novels
The Secret Adversary (1922)
N or M? (1941)
By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968)
Postern of Fate (1973)
Agatha Christie’s Superintendent Battle Novels
The Secret of Chimneys (1925)
The Seven Dials Mystery (1929)
Cards on the Table (1936)
Murder is Easy (1939)
Towards Zero (1944)
Agatha Christie’s Standalone Novels
Some of these novels feature ex-army Colonel and MI5 agent Johnnie Race. The most famous of the standalone novels is And Then There Were None.
The Man in the Brown Suit (1924)
Giant’s Bread (1930)
The Sittaford Mystery (1931)
Unfinished Portrait (1934)
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (1934)
And Then There Were None (1939)
Absent in the Spring (1944)
Death Comes as the End (1944)
Sparkling Cyanide (1945)
The Rose and the Yew Tree (1948)
Crooked House (1949)
They Came to Baghdad (1951)
A Daughter’s a Daughter (1952)
Destination Unknown (1954)
The Burden (1956)
Ordeal by Innocence (1958)
The Pale Horse (1961)
Endless Night (1967)
13 at Dinner (1969)
Passenger to Frankfurt (1970)
The Murder at Hazelmoor (1984)
Agatha Christie’s Short Story Collections
The Mysterious Mr. Quin (1930)
The Hound of Death (1933)
The Listerdale Mystery (1934)
Parker Pyne Investigates (1934)
The Regetta Mystery and Other Stories (1939)
The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories (1948)
Three Blind Mice and Other Stories (1950)
The Under Dog and Other Stories (1951)
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960)
Double Sin and Other Stories (1961)
Star Over Bethlehem and Other Stories (1965)
The Golden Ball and Other Stories (1974)
Problem at Pollensa Bay and Other Stories (1991)
The Harlequin Tea Set (1997)
While the Light Lasts and Other Stories (1997)
Hercule Poirot Short Stories & Novellas
The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor (1923)
The Affair at the Victory Ball (1923)
The Adventure of the Western Star (1923)
The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb (1923)
Afternoon at the Seaside (1962)
The Patient (1962)
Agatha Christie’s Non-Fiction Books
Come, Tell Me How You Live (1946)
Agatha Christie: An Autobiography (1977)
And that’s all Agatha Christie books in order, organised by their category. Did you have any idea Agatha Christie wrote quite so many books?
THANK YOU+++. ❤️🔥
First of all, Miss Marple is an amateur detective. Hercule Poirot is a professional detective, as a consultant for private matters. He works independently of any police organization but he is doing so as a living. If you like I will put references to some of the background by AC stating this in the books. (for example, The Big Four which I just finished).
Thanks for the list which I appreciate, but please explain how she died in 1976 but wrote a book dated 2014 in the Poirot list. Published 36 years after she died or is there some other story involved. Thank you.