Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery

Agatha Christie was a great writer of murder mystery novels and is probably the best selling author of all time. Listen in today to learn her story.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles to w Chuck Bryan over there,
and this is Stuff you should Know. I'm I. Uh,

(00:21):
I don't know if we're going to be able to
get used to Jerry being round again. Is she fired?
I don't think so. She may have fired herself, though.
I have better things to do than hang out with
you cool cats and kittens. Well, and it's kind of like,
what's the point of just sitting there? And I can't
imagine more boring than listening to us on headphones. Wait

(00:43):
a minute, that's our show. Yes, there are people doing
that very thing right now, Chuck, and you have just
mocked their existence. So I've just met for Jerry's sake,
you know. Yeah, I know Jerry is not a fan. No,
she's not or a listener. So, um, I have a
question for you, Chucked. You ever read a book? No? No,

(01:07):
don't be ridiculous, Chuck. Have you ever met Agatha Christie? Uh? Yeah,
I matter when I was three? Oh? Really, do you
have much of a memory of that encounter? A little bit?
She was she was nice enough. She signed my Murder
on the Orient Express copy first edition. Oh wow, that's

(01:30):
got to be worth some money. It's pretty neat. Yeah.
Do you still have that? Nah? I did some sprint
cleaning here a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't
even recycle or put it in a little free library.
I just threw it in the trash. Did you? Didn't
you say once that your brother has like a copy
of Number one Superman or something nuts like that. I

(01:52):
thought he has something, some valuable comic book. No, huh, No,
we must be confusing you with my other co host, Chuck.
Now we we we weren't big comic book people. We
don't have anything valuable like that. I got you well, Um,
having met Agatha Christie when you were a kid, I
feel like you'll probably have a lot to bring to

(02:13):
this one. I I was. UM. I have never met her,
um still to this day, probably never will. And I
have read a couple of her things and seen a
couple of movies based on her stuff. But I would
never consider myself like a um, a rabbit Agatha Christie fan.
But I do appreciate her work a lot. You, UM,

(02:37):
pick this one. Why we have this series of books,
children's books about um awesome women in history, from Freda
to Coco Chanel to Amelia Earhart to Agatha Christie, And
so I was reading this one the other night and
I thought, hey, let's do you want to Agatha Christie.

(03:00):
Haven't read any of her work, seen a couple of
her movies the genre though as as films, I've never
read a mystery murder mysteries, although I'm going to now.
I started reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which I
think was her first published work UM last night, and
it's just great. She just sucks you right in like you.

(03:22):
She does what's um she creates and a lot of books,
not all of them, but she creates what's called the
cozy mystery with an S because it's British and I'd
never heard that term before until this article. But when
I came across it, I was like, yes, I love
that kind of thing. And that's exactly what I love
about murder she wrote, Like the murder she wrote to

(03:43):
where she goes to like Broadway or Paris or something
like that, I can take her leave. They're fine, but
it's the ones that are set in tiny, little Cabot
Cove that's just isolated from the rest of the world.
It's cozy and small, and it's like a village and
all that those are the murder She wrote that I
love the most, and I think that's what I like
about Agatha Christie mysteries too. Is there very typically cozy mysteries.

(04:04):
I've never seen that show. What had this conversation before? No,
that would be steered into my brain forever. Now we
have because you said that the first time. Uh yeah,
I've never seen it. But I'm a huge fan of
um murder mystery movies, especially cozy mysteries like Clue is

(04:28):
one of my favorite films, and this year's or last
year's Knives Out was one of my top like three
or four films of the year. I've not seen it yet.
It's still like seven dollars on Amazon Prime, so I
haven't rented. I'm waiting for the price point to drop.
I can know only a couple of bucks if you
need alright, alright, if it's still a lot for a rental,

(04:53):
I mean that's a lot. Do you think three ninety
nine is manageable? Four ninety nine and up. That's a
lot of that's a lot to move law for a
rental if you ask me. Wow, yeah, this is I'm
taking a stand on this alright. Well, film professionals out there,
please do not take offense to all your hard work.
So I have a question for you. Have one more question. Um,

(05:15):
have you seen that Agatha Christie film adaptation of Crooked
House that came out in two thousand and seventeen. I
think you'll like it. It was big budget, but it
also looks like British made for television big budget. Gillian
Anderson Dana Scully is in it because you know, the
Brits are nuts for her. Oh man, She's like their

(05:37):
favorite person in the world and has been for years.
And I don't know why. Nothing against Gillian Anderson, but
like she just never hit it as big over here
as she did there. Um, Terence Stamp, isn't it? Glenn Close,
She's great, And I was like, this is really good.
So I was reading little synopsies of it and all
that stuff, and it seems like, um, that's It's widely

(05:58):
regarded as one of her best, most ingenious and inventive works.
Cricket House, Cricket House. I believe that's on Amazon Prime
for free. Well, yes, do you actually do the math
of how much you pay for Amazon Prime to see
how much you're paying for that movie? I don't want
to do that. I just don't want to do that. Pennies,

(06:23):
Why did you do that to me? All right, so Charles, um,
let's let's get into this because I know that this
one could be a little long if we're not um
um deliberate, and I would say, maybe considerate of our time.
All right, Well that's an eight minute intro. So so far,
so good. Uh she is perhaps again, it's kind of

(06:48):
hard to tall able books tell with book sales because
they can be a little dodgy. But she is often
quoted as the scene as the best selling novelist of
all time. Uh, and I did little check to compare,
Like at the Stephen King sold a book or two. Sure,
they tag his book sales at about three hundred and
fifty million UM. Her sixty six novels and fourteen collected

(07:10):
works of short stories supposedly have sold to the tune
of two billion. I saw four billion in one place,
and I think after you hit the billion mark, you
can just start tossing around whatever number you want. It's like,
for example, we've we've had seventy billion downloads. Now I
just decided, oh great, that's a lot of downloads. But

(07:32):
think about it, Stephen King, how many books is that
cat written? How many has he sold all around the world?
And it amounts to three hundred and fifty million, and
he's one of the best selling authors of all time.
A lot of people say that Agatha Christie's numbers hit
two billion, Like you said, that's astounding. Yeah, that is.
That is a ton of books. It's I don't think

(07:52):
our stuff, you should know book will approach those numbers. No,
you never say never, though it's a lofty goal. Now
ever say never. I also saw that she's the most
widely translated author of all time to forty five languages.
I was like, it seems a little low. So then
somewhere else I saw a hundred and three. So let's
go with that. So let's talk about this. Uh, cozy

(08:15):
mystery or just mystery novels in general. Uh, they are
very much um formulaic, which Ed helped us put this together.
Ed points out that's why people like them because the
familiarity and it's sort of a comfort food thing, like
a good beach book. You know what you're gonna get right, Yeah? Yeah, Yeah,
there's and there's surprises and everything woven in. I mean,

(08:36):
the whole thing is meant to be a surprise. It's
a mystery. And part of the mystery and the allure
of the mysteries that Agatha Christie not only wrote, but
actually the whole genre she helped to develop, is that
you are ostensibly able to figure out who the culprit
is in the murder. It's almost always a murderer. Um,

(08:57):
And so there is like there is surprise is involved.
That's the point. But there's also a tremendous amount of
familiar familiarity. And that's that formula you were talking about,
and that's what really has sucked generations of people into
this whole genre her sixty six plus books. Yeah, so
you've got that murder. Uh, you usually don't see this

(09:18):
murder occur. She doesn't usually, and in general in murder mysteries,
you don't see the murder. That's kind of not the
point of how grizzly or gruesome the act is. It's
sort of all about finding that body. And I won't
had a bunch of knives out things to say, but
I don't say any of them now, thank you. But
then you've got your detective that arrives on the scene,

(09:40):
and I will say this knives out very much follows
this formula very smartly. So so you've got this master
detective who usually arrives upon the scene. Um, but they
may already be there, and they are generally very eccentric
and sort of Um, they all all they always have
these quirky sort of care juristics. Uh. In Christie's case,

(10:03):
we have the very formidable Hercule Poirot, and then Miss
Marple Jane Marple. Um. In Hercules case, he's Belgian and
has this big mustache and it's just sort of eccentric
in Belgian. Uh. Just you know, he's not French. There's
something about being Belgian that makes it slightly different. Sure.

(10:23):
And Miss Marple apparently it's just a very ordinary and
people underestimate her and that's how she uh sort of
wins the day. Yeah, because for Hercule Poirot um was
retired Belgium police detective, so he has some measure of
authorities still to question people and interrogate people as he wishes.

(10:43):
With Miss Marple, she's just kind of a quiet old
lady who sows and knits a lot. Um, and she
just has a very keen eye for detail and an
interest in solving, you know, the murders that seemed to
happen around her. Um like Angela Lansbury. Basically yes, but
rather than interrogate people directly, Um, Miss Marple's thing is

(11:06):
she just kind of quietly is there and people tend
to confide in her, and she kind of quietly helps
them along and um gives them She gives them the
rope to hang themselves with. That's how she interrogates people
or figures out who who the murderer is. Right, So
you've got your setting in the in the cozy mystery setting,

(11:27):
like you said, it's usually like an estate or a home,
maybe a hotel. Uh, maybe it might be a small
English village uh. Or an express obviously is on a train,
another sort of confined space. Um. By the way, have
you seen train to Boussan? I can I confuse that

(11:49):
with no Piercer. I think I've seen both, but I
can't remember which ones, which they're kind of very similar.
But Bussan is is zombies on a train Korean film. No,
Then I think I've just seen snow Piercer. You should
check out Train to Busan. Just if you think you've
seen it all with the zombie genre, then think again, dude.
That's saying something because that's that genre has gotten a little. Hey,

(12:16):
let me ask you this. Have you seen I know
you've seen it. You had to Ozark? Oh sure, I'm
just started it. Yeah, I'm a couple of episodes into
the latest season. Okay, yeah you mean, and I just
started at season one and I'm like, all I want
to do is sit around and watch Ozark. It's amazing. Yeah,
I love it. That's like hartwell you know, oh no,
I didn't know that smart. I've tried to get Bateman

(12:41):
and Laura Lenny on movie crushing. It's always thank you no.
Oh yeah, yeah. Hey, you're getting responses. That's that's a
big step forward. It's nice to be told no and
just not anored. Yeah right, all right, so you've got
your setting um With Agatha Christie. She did include her
travels in some of her later novels when they became

(13:02):
like super popular, but it was still not like a
globe trotting like James Bond kind of thing. No, that's
that's the point. So like in a espionage thriller something
that locals are all over the place, and you know,
the characters constantly moving um in these cozy thrillers, like
even if they're in an exotic locale, Um, they're still

(13:24):
set in a small part of that exotic locale. That's right.
You got your suspects. They are questioned by the detective.
They usually all have a motive, they usually all have
the means because everyone, you know, in a great novel
like this, everyone's got to be a suspect from the beginning.
And then you can kind of quickly whittle or slowly

(13:46):
whittle that list down, right. And here's the thing what
I was saying with the with the the kind of
mystery that Agatha Christie wrote and and really established, you
are part of the mystery, like you're either the um investigator,
the detective has an assistant that they explained things too,

(14:06):
very much like UM Sherlock, Holmes and Watson. Or if
the detective is working solo, say like Miss Marple. Miss
Marple's might write a list of suspects and their motives
and little clues down as part of the narration, and
you're you're let in every step of the way. So

(14:28):
you're part of this working towards solving the mystery, and
as it's very frequently put it kind of pits you
in a competition with the author to see if you
can figure out who who done it before the end
of the book. Yeah. I mean that goes back to
Encyclopedia Brown. The whole point is to try and figure
that stuff out, right, Man, I love those Those are
so great Encyclopedia Brown. I remember he busted one dumb

(14:50):
kid who did something bad. I can't remember. Um oh man,
good memory. It may have been bugs. Mean he was
he kind of a big dumb oh who'd like beat
up on chipmunks. I think, so, okay, he busted bugs
once because bugs had tears coming out of the the
outside corners of his eyes, a freak zoid, rather than

(15:11):
the inside corners. That's good. But see, the great thing
about those books is that a twelve year old doesn't
really necessarily always pick up on those clues. Oh I did,
I wasn't that great. I'd be curious to see if
they would stump me. Now No, no, I mean specifically
with the outside of the eye thing. But yeah, no,

(15:32):
I'm sure, there are plenty that I missed, but when
you were a boy, I knew while staring in the
mirror tears came from uh. And so then at the end,
to wrap up the little genre sort of summary, you've
got this great ending usually where everyone's gathered together and
the detective kind of walks everyone through the big reveal

(15:53):
of exactly how the killer did it. Uh, And in
her case, she did not um like when the killer
is revealed, they didn't turn around and shoot them in
the face like it's usually pretty non violent. They would
be wrestled to the ground or arrested, or maybe they
might run away and you hear later that they had
killed themselves or something like that. Sure, there was rarely

(16:16):
a grand finale where they would be pressed to death
in front of a crowd. So that, I mean, that's it,
like bing bang boom. That was when you started on
page one of an Agatha Christie novel, you knew exactly
how everything was going to play out. And then one
of the other things is because this thing was so formulaic,
there was also room for this for the author to

(16:38):
kind of play with you the reader, and in using
things like bluffs and red herrings I think are basically
the same thing. But the idea is that so the
author in this case, Agatha Christie would say something like, um,
you know, early on in the book, a a suspect
would come running out of the house looking shaken and pale,

(17:00):
and um, you the reader would be like, well, that's
just way too obvious. She's not gonna name she's not
going to point out who the murderer is at the
beginning of the book, so I can disregard that person
or this very obvious clue or something like that. That
was just kind of part of the interplay between author
and reader. But then it could go even deeper to
where she would say something like, well, I know that

(17:20):
you think that this is too obvious, so I'm gonna
actually make this the actual murderer, which she did in
some cases, which was like a double bluff. Apparently you
could just keep going on and on and on, but
it was this kind of um wrestling match or maybe
slap fight between Agatha Christie and you, her reader, which
made the whole thing all the more delightful. That's right,

(17:42):
and she uh, it takes great pains to point out
that she did not invent the genre. Uh. There were
people like Arthur Conan Doyle obviously and Poe before her
that sort of established some of these rules. But she
was very popular. She's very good at what she did.
She wrote about what she knew. And we'll talk about
her life coming up in a little bit. But these

(18:03):
manor houses in these estates and these English villages and
even the exotic locales, uh, and these train trips and
things were things that she actually experienced. And you know,
a lot of people are great at making stuff up,
and a lot of people are great about writing what
they know. And it seems like she was really great
at writing what she knew. Yeah, and um, for some reason,

(18:24):
either it was the time or maybe because of her
I'm not sure. It was kind of a chicken or
the egg thing, but she happened to write about stuff
that a lot of people wanted to read about these
small you know, English villages and you know, quaint mannerisms
of the uh upper middle and upper class English society, um.

(18:47):
Set in this period of time that and for some
reason it just captured everybody's attention. And apparently when she
started expanding, like I think after World War two to
some slightly more exotic locales like Egypt or Mesopotamia, you know.
Um uh, for like Death on the Nile was a

(19:07):
very famous one during this time, or the Orient express
um that really catapulted or into superstardom, international superstardom too. Yeah.
I don't have a super firm read on the history
of literature, but I get the idea that this is
sort of aligned with the beginnings of pop lit. Uh.
And like I called it the beach book. Um, I

(19:30):
don't know if there had been a ton of stuff
like this that was just sort of pure comfort food
and entertainment up to this point. Yeah, I'm not sure either.
Nothing that I'm familiar with I can say, but they
were very entertaining books. They were humorous, a very dark
sense of humor. UM. Great dialogue, all these um verbal
jous between the detectives and the suspects is really key

(19:53):
to that genre. Um. Something Knives Out did really really well.
It was one of my favorite scripts of the year,
maybe my favorite script, but just really really good, sharp writing.
And it's no um, sort of no accident that she
became so hugely popular now. And that's something like if
you're not really familiar with Agatha Christie and you just
kind of look her up in passing. Um. One of

(20:16):
the things you'll be confronted with is that a lot
of people, a lot of critics say she was a
hack and um, when what they're talking about is that
formula that she followed to almost like a a soullessly
rational degree, Like that was the formula, that's what she followed. Um.
But that really misses like the fact that she had

(20:38):
a really great eye for detail in the dialogue, like
you were saying, like she was a good writer and
she could just crank workout. I think during the decade
of the twenties she wrote a book a year. It
might have been become more prolific later on in the
thirties and forties too. Yeah, and she um, she was

(20:58):
a business person. You know, there's nothing wrong with saying, wow,
people love this stuff and they sell a lot and uh,
although it took a while for that to happen, as
we'll see, but there's there's nothing wrong with any of that.
I think people that call our hack can go fly height. Yeah,
go fly it with extreme prejudice. Should we take a break,

(21:18):
I think so, man, we'll come back and talk about
her life great okay, Chuck so um Agatha Christie was

(21:50):
born in eight in England, in Devonshire, in Torquay, which
I always want to say tanger Ay, Devon sure. Sure.
And it's in the southwest of England. So Torquay is
kind of like our our Devonshire is like our Arizona. Basically,
that's my impression. I think it is very much like Arizona, right,

(22:13):
the legendary Devonshire cactus right, So so which stalks the
more um? And she was one of three kids, and
I think her older brother and sister were both at
least a decade older than her. So she had like
a very um solitary childhood, which appears to have made
her fairly happy. She didn't go to school. She was

(22:34):
raised by governesses and educated by governess. Has spent a
lot of time reading um and just hung out around
her family's estate. Yeah, I mean they had some dough
they were they were not wealthy wealthy, but they were
definitely upper middle class. They got an inheritance from her
paternal grandfather such that her dad didn't need to work. Apparently,

(22:56):
she is on record as saying that like her dad
wasn't around much didn't really impact me once much. So
he can go fly a kite as well. It's a
lot of kite flying. And um, she was she loved
being out in the garden. She wasn't Um, I get
the impression she wasn't like reclusive or anything, but she
very much enjoyed time with her self alone, but also

(23:17):
had friends and stuff when she eventually did go to
school once her father passed and they couldn't afford that.
Governess right, but she was a very very shy person. Um.
The novelist Joanna Cascella um says that even as an adult,
she was so shy that sometimes she wouldn't go into
shops because she would have to interact with the shopkeeper. Um.

(23:41):
So it is a novelist. You know how many novelists
are the life of the party and super outgoing. You've
never met Philip Browth, apparently, I just I don't know,
you kind of picture like the Stephen King's just locked
in an attic somewhere and not like, well, let me
ride a little bit, then I'm gonna go, uh, you know,
go to a part right, go play some pick up

(24:01):
basketball and maybe volunteer at the local food bank. I
don't know, it's just it's sort of a solitary pastime.
So that sure, there are examples of uh, of extroverted authors,
but I think she kind of fits the mold that
you generally think of, especially for a lady mystery writer. Yeah,
and you know, I think not only fits the mold.
The more I learned about her, she made the mold.

(24:22):
Basically everything we take her for granted as far as
writing and mystery writing goes like she basically made it up.
It's it's pretty impressive stuff. Yeah. So she um, like
we said, she did some pretty uh to us dumb
dumbs in America seem like exotic traveling trips. But if
you lived in England at the time, it's no big

(24:43):
deal to go to Egypt and check out the Pyramids.
That was if you had a little dough that was
a pretty common vacation that you might take. So she
did stuff like that, and she was exposed to um
exotic locales and use those in her work. Uh. In
her very first novel, even Snow Upon the Desert, she
wrote when she was like twenty two or twenty three
years old, I think, and uh, you know, she had

(25:07):
a hard time getting published at first because she was
a young woman. Yeah, she was rejected out of hand. Um.
And apparently also she started writing um because her sister
told her that she probably wouldn't be able to write
a mystery novel, which I love, so she did. She
wrote the what was it? Snow on? What? Snow upon

(25:27):
the Desert? Snow upon the Desert? And she was very
young then, um. And in between the time she wrote
Snow upon the Desert and The Mysterious Affair at Styles,
which would be her first published book, I believe she
um wedged a lot of life in there in the
form of getting married to a guy named Archibald Archie Christie.

(25:48):
And one of the things about Agatha Christie is that
she was she never she wasn't a born writer, even
though she did right as a younger person, like you
were saying, like, she wasn't like a She just didn't
want to be a writer as a kid. And she
ended up writing really seriously after she and Archie Christie
got married, because Archie Christie wasn't particularly wealthy and couldn't

(26:12):
necessarily care for her himself, so she started writing to
to make money, which some people suspect is the reason
she got into mystery writing in the first place because
there was a very very popular genre. Even Yeah, well
it makes sense, so she had the skills to pay
the bills. It turns out that's right. Uh. They were
married nineteen fourteen. He was kind of promptly sent to

(26:33):
fight in the Great War in France and she worked
at a pharmacist at a war hospital during that period,
and this is where she learned a lot about potions
and poisons and pharmaceuticals and things that she would there's
a lot of poisoning that goes on in her books. Um,
and she later in her career, I think she actually

(26:54):
would consult with doctors and stuff like that because she
wanted everything to be really medically accurate. But early and
she learned a lot about this stuff from her work
in the pharmacy. We just kind of cool and ghoulish,
you know. She's like, how exactly would a person die
from this bottle that I'm holding? So yeah, and apparently, um,
most of the deaths in her books are poisoning, and

(27:18):
like you were saying, like you ray rarely see the
person die. They just come upon the body, and most
of the times the poison body. Sometimes there there was
violence visited upon them. But for the most part is
a body that was found poisoned to death. Yeah, and
that's a good vehicle for a mystery novel because you
know there's no murder weapon per se. There I guess

(27:41):
there's the poison bottle. But it can often be very
vague a poisoning death, like could it have been a
heart attack? Like you have to kind of suss out
at first whether or not it was even a murder.
It's not like an obvious thing where there's a a
bullet hole in their chest or something like that, right, right,
So poisoning is what she went with. Typically. It's another

(28:03):
example also, Chuck, I think of like her writing what
she knew too, at least writing what interested her. Um
And she wrote in I believe nineteen twenty no during
the during World War One, so while she was working
at the dispensary and Archie was all flying in France,
I believe, um, she wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles

(28:27):
and it was that's the one I started reading. And
I don't understand how it was rejected at first, but
it was. Um it's a really interesting book, just right
out of the gate um in that it pulls you
right into this little country English estate and all the
people on it, and you realize just after a couple
of pages that you're already invested in them, which is

(28:48):
pretty amazing. And this is like not her first book,
but it was her first uh serious work that wasn't
published immediately. It wasn't published until nineteen twenty um. And
I think even after was published, it wasn't an immediate
catapult to success for her, but it was a it
was a remarkable first book to be published. Yeah, and

(29:10):
this is the one that introduced the world to her
chief detective for a lot of those novels, Mr Poirot,
like we mentioned, And later on they asked her why
he was Belgian, and she said why not? Basically, I
don't think a whole lot of thought went into it. Um.
It turned out to be a really good choice because

(29:31):
he had this kind of interesting accent and everywhere he went,
I don't you know, they were never set in Belgium,
so everywhere he went he was this sort of sort
of strange foreigner that would come into town with this
accent that no one quite understood, and he just had
this sort of larger than life presence I think because
of that. So it turned out to be a really
smart choice. Yeah. He was also a well known dandy

(29:55):
who was very vain about his appearance. Um. And he
apparently said in one of the later books that he
plays up his foreignness and his dandy nous to um
uh disarm suspects when he's interrogating them, to make them
take him less seriously than they otherwise might. Man, I

(30:16):
want to talk about knives out so much you cannot.
I appreciate you not doing that. So she had a daughter,
we should mention, in nineteen nineteen named Rosalind, and that's
the only child she ever had. And it was in
nineteen twenty year later that they finally did publish The
Mysterious Affair at Styles after she agreed to change the ending.

(30:38):
They said, we don't like Poirot revealing all this evidence
in court, so she changed the ending. They said great.
That's when she went on to publish that novel every
year for about ten years, very very big books. But
they weren't um. They were popular, but she wasn't like
a superstar internationally at this point yet. No, not yet. UM. Again,

(31:01):
she really catapulted later on because she moved to some
of these more exotic locales. But one of the things
that cemented her legend as a mystery writer, in addition
to all of the work she did, in addition to
her prolific nous and her extreme talent at this formula
that she had worked out was UM what still today

(31:23):
is considered an unsolved mystery. In fact, it was featured
onisode of Unsolved Mysteries UM, which I just randomly happened
to see recently, and UM she disappeared. There's a whole
sub plot to Agatha Christie's life that was really surprising,
especially compared to how boring and normal and just kind

(31:45):
of plotting with these instead of tease her normal life.
Was the fact that she has this grand mystery plunk
down in the middle of it is is pretty impressive.
It's UM. So here's here's the backstory. She and Archie
we're not meant to be together. As it turns out,
he revealed that he was having an affair with a

(32:08):
lady named Nancy Neil who was a friend of the family,
and obviously that was the end of their marriage. So
at the end of nineteen UM they decided they were
going to take a trip together a weekend er um
Archie went to be with his friends instead, and then
she vanished and seemingly thin air. Uh. They found her

(32:30):
car near rock Quarry with her fur coat and her
driver's license there and no Agatha Christie. No in her
car wasn't just near the rock quarry according to some
reports like one of the wheels is hanging over the
edge of this cliff and still spinning right, um So,
but she was gone. They couldn't find her. And so

(32:52):
within a couple of days this massive search, depending on
who you ask and depending on when you ask them,
ten like ten thousand plus people were searching for probably
more likely a couple of thousand, which is still really
remarkable for this tiny little area in the southwest of England.
Um at the time in um So, the that really

(33:16):
kind of demonstrates she was already a well known writer.
She wasn't legendary yet, but this is this disappearance is
the mechanism, mechanism by which she becomes legendary, I think.
And this goes on for a good week I believe.
Right when did she disappeared? December? What I think December
three is when they were going to take that trip.
So she was gone almost two weeks and I'm by gone,

(33:39):
we mean just vanished. She left behind that car, she
left behind the driver's license in the fur Like you said,
she was gone. Her husband had come came to be
known to have asked for a divorce already, so people
were like, well did he bump her off? And she's
a mystery writer known for generating stuff like this, So
even at the time, some people were like, is this
a publicity because it's a pretty good one if it is,

(34:02):
sure it worked. Uh And there was a band at
this place called the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Yorkshire, which
kind of just sounds like a bit of a Kellogg
Brothers type of joint. Have you seen a cure for wellness? Uh? Well,
we we talked about that in that podcast. Dude, we

(34:22):
I can't remember have you seen it? I never saw it?
Have you yet? I still have not seen it. Hey,
you're not missing that much. But it is pretty interesting,
it's quit it's worth seeing at least once. I might
check it out. But any rate, they had a band here,
because what hydropathic hotel does not have a house band?
And they came forward and said, hey, that's Agatha Christie lady.

(34:45):
She's been staying here for a week. She's been in
the electric light bath cabinet and getting yogurt enemas and
having a grand old time. So they went to the cops,
and the cops went to the lead detective and said, no, no, no,
she has been murdered and we're trying to find out
the killer. Eventually, this detective said, well, let me tell

(35:08):
her husband. And husband Archie went out to check it
out on the fourteenth of December. There she was, she
was in seclusion, and uh, that was sort of the
end of this mystery. It wasn't so much a mystery. Um,
you know. She by all accounts, it seems like she
went there because she had thought about or maybe tried

(35:31):
to drive her car into that quarry and and kill
herself because she was upset about her marriage ending. Uh,
and then it didn't happen, and she just kind of
goes on a walk and ends up at this place.
May or may not have invented an amnesia story, or
it may have actually happened to some degree. She didn't
talk about a lot, so we don't really know exactly

(35:52):
what went down with the amnesia. She said that. So
two years later, she gave an interview with The Daily
Mail and apparently explained the amnesia by saying she'd hit
her head on the steering wheel. But in the same
interview she says that she'd let go of the steering wheel,
So she basically said, like, I attempted suicide and it
didn't work out. I hit my head on the steering wheel,

(36:13):
and I wandered off and I had amnesia. But the
the they think that it's it was just a family
cover story to save face, this amnesia story, and that
really she had attempted to take her own life and
um hadn't succeeded and now regretted it and was embarrassed
by all of this because the idea that there were
thousands of people looking for I think it probably never

(36:35):
crossed her mind when she wandered away from her car,
and that I remember she was a very shy person,
so this all this attention was very very hard on her.
So the family just came up with this cover story
that she had amnesia, so don't even bother asking, and
um Archie and she stayed together for another year or so,

(36:55):
and then their divorce finally became finalized. The Yeah, so
she didn't even mention this in her autobiography, which kind
of says all you need to know about how much
she liked to talk about this. Right, we should say
there was one other thing that did this too. It
wasn't just um Archie asking for a divorce. He asked
for a divorce a few months after her mother died.

(37:16):
And I get that Christie's mother was beloved to her.
She worshiped her mother. She thought she was wonderful. Her
mother was the parent that was there for her while
she was a kid and raised her. Um it was
just a very interesting person, it sounds like. So she died,
Archie asks for a divorce a few months later, and
then this whole mysterious disappearance happened. And then one last thing,

(37:38):
I read that at the Swan Hydro Hotel, she was
actually playing cards and chatting with other guests about this
mysterious disappearance that was in all of the newspapers, and
none of the other guests recognized her. It was those
band members that you mentioned. Interesting, I thought so too, man.
So that's everything I learned from Unsolved Mysteries. Should we

(37:59):
take a break finally, all right, let's Uh, let's take
our final break and we'll talk a little bit more
about her later life and further success. Alright, so it's

(38:32):
at this point she is freshly divorced. She kept that
name because, uh, you know, she that's the name that
made her famous, so it makes a lot of sense,
and she kept writing novels. Um. She traveled on the
Orient Express to Bagdad. She got into archaeology, just sort
of a hobbyist, and made friends with a couple who

(38:54):
were archaeologists. Went to visit them in ninety and on
that trip, I met a man named Max mallow One
who was also an adventurer and an archaeologist thirteen years younger.
And they fell in love and got married, which is
a very very sweet story. Yeah. Apparently he was giving
her a tour of some archaeological sites and he got

(39:14):
the car stuck, and she, apparently, he said later, she
made no fuss about it, didn't blame him or anything
like that, and he said, that's about the time when
I started to begin to realize that you're wonderful. And
so they got married. Um, And she said later on
that the good thing about being married to an archaeologist
is that the older you get the more interested they

(39:35):
become interesting. That was kind of cute. So this is
when Miss Marple comes along as as a detective and
nineteen thirty with the Murder at the Vicarage that was
our first one. That was the first Miss Marple book.
And then she's traveling around, She's doing these archaeological digs

(39:55):
and trips. She's going to Syria and Iraq. She fell
in of with Syria and the Syrian people, and she's
really cranking out some big books at this point in
the nineteen thirties. That's like, even even on archaeological digs, Chuck,
can you imagine how uncomfortable it would be to sit
and write for hours in an archaeological site. I can't.

(40:16):
It would be tough, I would think. And yet she
was still just as prolific as ever. Yeah. Books like
Murder and Mesopotamia and Death on the Nile and Murder
on the Orient Express were all written during this period
and this is what really catapulted her into international superstardom
as an author. Right. So, um, she and Max stayed

(40:37):
together for I think forty six years until her death. Actually, um, yeah,
I think, yeah, she outlived him. This is pretty sweet. Um,
but despite all of this kind of UM adventure and
in archaeological digs and like visits to the Middle East. UM,
most of her life from that point on was in Devonshire, UM,

(41:03):
in this tiny little area in the English countryside. UM,
in these quaint little towns UM, and she gardened and
was very involved in local community theater. That was her life.
She was also one of the biggest, most well known,
most best selling writers of of in the world while

(41:26):
she was alive. And yet that's what she did. She
hung out with the community theater group and garden that
it was just her life. Yeah, she got the Dame
Commander of the Order of the British Empire and UM.
The rights to her novels were held by a company
that she created for a long time, and then before
she died she sold part of that off and that's

(41:48):
been sort of bought and sold a bunch of the years,
which is kind of how that usually happens. But she
did retain enough of the um of the company to
to have it be worth a ton of money UM,
which she passed down to her daughter. Of course, as
her only child, she sort of took care of her
mother's works for many many years. And then passed that

(42:08):
on to her only child, um man named Matthew Pritchard,
who still holds these rights and still sort of manages
that today. That's right, So everything turned out well for
Matthew Pritchard. Sounds like heck, yeah, I wish. I wish
my grandma was actually a dunk because I love my grandma.
But would it have killed her to be an internationally

(42:29):
famous author. No, it wouldn't, Chuck, and I'm glad we're
finally talking about is it's been an elephant in the
room for a very long time? Uh so, she? You know,
a lot of these went on to be very famous films,
TV series. I think Murder on the Orient Express has
been a couple of big movies. Uh. In fact, one
a couple of years ago that I have not seen.

(42:51):
It's unwatchable. That was it really bad. I'm sorry if
you listen to this, Kenneth Brawner, I couldn't make it
through the first five minutes. It was like it Okay,
is that all you know? Yes? Okay, So that's my
report is on the first five minutes. Uh. She very
famously has a play called The mouse Trap, which is

(43:13):
debut at the West End in nineteen fifty two, and
it is the longest running play in the history of
the West End, which is remarkable. Yeah, and to make
that even sweeter, remember her sister who said that she
probably couldn't write a mystery novel. Well, her sister was
the first in the family to get a play produced
on the West End, but it certainly wasn't the longest

(43:34):
running play on the West End of all times. So
she got her back doubly so. And then she was
hit by a train and Agatha Christie laughed and laughed
and poisoned her corpse. So, uh, we need to talk
a little bit here at the end. Um, we always
like to give everyone's give everyone the accolades they deserve,
but also point out some of the things that weren't

(43:54):
so great. We don't want to whitewash anything. And she
used a lot of kind of racially insensitive language, uh,
some would call anti Semitic at times anti Catholic through
parts of her career. Um, such that the Anti Defamation
League complained to her agent at one point. And because

(44:16):
of that, American publishers were given the ability to change
that stuff out sort of at will, without without any
notice given to her. She just she didn't know this
was going on at all. Yeah. We just were like,
I don't think the Americans are gonna go for this.
The Brits can barely stand it. The Americans definitely aren't
going to take this. Well. Yeah, and I read a
lot about this, and there are different takes. UM. One

(44:39):
take is that the old you know, she was a
product of her time thing, which people uh you know
rightfully point out. Um. Another is that oftentimes she's doing this,
uh to show characters are sort of um, underdeveloped as
humans and sort of backward m So there's that as well.

(45:00):
It You also can't dance around the fact that she
did use some pretty bad words and um, you know
then they were bad even at the time like that.
It wasn't. Yes, you can say like, yeah, a lot
of people had different social attitudes towards race and racism
and um, and in that sense, she wasn't that much different.

(45:21):
But there were cases where she was standing well outside
of the norm, including in book titles and characters and
things like that. Um. And one book in particular, and
then there were none was revised many many times, not
just in the US, but in Great Britain as well.
Um and it's remarkable in that sense, but in another

(45:43):
sense it was also remarkable and that it's considered pretty
widely to have given birth to the slasher film genre.
Did you know that? I didn't until my bread bed
say it. I. Yeah. I looked this up a little
more and on its own, and and then there were
none the book ends. Sorry for the spoiler, everybody, but

(46:05):
it ends with I think all of the suspects killing
one another, um and everyone dies. In the stage adaptation
of the play that she helped write, Um, there the
final girl, a female character has left alive and has
out done the murderer who's come to get her, which is,
you know, for the formula for any slasher film whatsoever.

(46:28):
But there's a bunch of other elements in there too,
and they're like, you know, even on like horror fan wikis,
they point to that as like the genuine birth even
more than Psycho of the slasher film genre. Interesting. Yeah,
it is pretty interesting. You who would have ever thought
that um Agathur Christie, with her non violence and and
poison and occasional racism, would have been the one to

(46:50):
birth the slasher film racism? Yeah, and a lot of
the racist stuff. Just to put a final pin on
that was. Um, A lot of it was character descriptions,
which can be some of the ugliest kinds of stuff
like that. Um, because it wasn't just like talking about philosophies.
It was just like literally physically describing a character. Uh.

(47:11):
Sometimes she would use some pretty pretty derogatory language. Yeah.
So again, it's a bit like exploring Elizabeth Blackwell or
any historical characters. Always weird little bugs under the rocks
you turn over. You know, I'm glad we're doing our
great work in a in a in the time of wokeness. Rightly,
no one can ever go back. I mean, we've made

(47:32):
midsteps here and there, but they can't go back and
talk about when Josh and Chuck were big racists at
the beginning. Yeah, no, it's true. But just wait for
twenty years from now they'll be like, I can't believe
we talk about those guys were aged bastards. You know. Um,
there's one other thing I want to say too. So
when she lived through World War Two, Agatha Christie was

(47:53):
worried that she was going to die in the bombing
blitz of Great Britain, and she really wanted Hercule Poi
Row and Um Jane Marple's to have a final case.
So she wrote a book for each of them. Uh.
One is called Curtain that's Paul rose final book, and
the other is Sleeping Murder Um that is Marple's final

(48:14):
case and Um. And it just kind of explains what
happens to them. I believe Paul Row dies and Marple's
just retires. But when she survived World War Two, she
was like, well, I don't I'm not ready for these
guys to be retired yet. So she kept those books
and had them posthumously published, and they were in the seventies.
And when her her Kuel Poil Rose Last book came

(48:34):
out and he died, Um, the New York Times ran
a front page obituary for him. The only fictional character
to have that on her bestowed on them. That's crazy,
isn't it? Yeah? And also a very cool good idea
to write those books early on, just in case, because
you never know. Yeah, besides the bombing thing. I mean,

(48:55):
she could she could walk off a ledge or get
hit by a bus or die of natural causes early, like,
you never know, and then you've got this legacy cemented.
Pretty smart, have you? Ever seen one last thing? Have
you ever seen Murder by Death? I know I've asked
you before. I had that DVD sitting on my desk. Well,
that's amazing that you have that on your desk and

(49:17):
you wait, is it on your desk at work? I
was gonna say, watch it tonight, but don't watch it tonight. Um,
wait until everything clears, so you're gonna love it. No,
it's a spoof actually detective books of like Charlie Chan
and Agatha Christie and um, Sam Spade and all that
that she helped, you know, kind of create. But it's

(49:40):
actually like a complaint from fans of mystery, Um, mysteries.
It's just a wonderful book. Truman movie, Truman Campodi's in it,
David Niven, Um, Peter, Peter Falk, Yeah, um, a lot
of people. James Cromwell as a younger man, James Coke, Oh,

(50:00):
is Hercule, Paul Rowe. It's just great. You're gonna love it. Man.
So I guess we should say that she did die eventually,
uh five years or three years after I met her
in nine seventy six, at the age of eighty five
at her home in Oxfordshire, or Oxfordshire and uh it
was natural causes, not poison. No. Her last words were

(50:20):
good to meet you, Chuck. Ah, you got anything else?
I do not have anything else? Well, friends, that is
Agatha Christie. If you want to know more about the
Christie go start reading Agatha Christie books. And since I
said Agatha Christie like three or four times, it's time
for a listener mate. All right, I'm gonna call this

(50:42):
letter from a kid because we love reading these letters
from kids. Hey, guys, I've been listening to your podcast
for about eight months now, and I'd like to say
I am a huge fan. Uh. This is Emmett. He's
ten years old. Oh yeah, I love this email. My
dad is even more of a fan of you guys
than me, and he told me about your podcast. I
am a huge fan of the Atlanta Falcons and pretty

(51:04):
much everything Atlanta related, including your podcast, which is weird
because I live in Iowa. I love it. It is
a little weird, though I met You're right. I love
how self aware of this guy is. I think you know,
you know, when you grow up in a place like
Io with no professional sports, you uh, you know, you
do that thing where you just pick out a team
in a city. Yeah, you're like the Base City Rollers.

(51:26):
You throw a dart at a map and go with it.
That's right. I'm now I'm really worried there's a professional
team in Iowa. But there is not there not, there
are none, right, No need to double check that. I've
been listening to your podcast a ton during this coronavirus
outbreak to keep me from going crazy, and it's worked.
My birthday that is actually coming up, so I'll not

(51:47):
be able to see my friends or even have a party.
It would be totally awesome and make my year if
you said happy birthday to me. But I want to
bet you won't read this on the air. That's some
fine reverse psychology right there. Well played, and it I
love your grass podcast. And last year, me and my
best friend Oliver started a lawn care business and it

(52:07):
made enough money to buy Beats headphones to listen to
your podcast on as full circle right there. That's right,
he says. I made sure to wrap this letter up
and spank it all the bottom before I sent it.
So happy, happy, big I guess eleventh birthday, Emmett, best
to your dad, Hello Oliver and everyone there in Atlanta. Iowa. Yeah,

(52:28):
happy birthday, Emmett. That reverse psychology worked. Man. Uh. If
you want to get in touch with this like Emmett did,
and see if I wish you a happy birthday, I'll
bet we won't. But who can tell him these crazy times.
You can get in touch with us via email, Wrap
it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it
off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff

(52:57):
you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. H