7 Agatha Christie Books to Read in the Fall
Spooky season is here and there is no better time to read a mystery! Fall is the best time of year to cozy up and read Agatha Christie and I have just the reading list for you. While I suppose you could consider any murder mystery perfect for this season, there are a few that invoke all the Fall vibes, either because they’re extra eery, or they make you want to cozy up with pumpkin spice tea and a favorite blanket while the weather turns colder outside.
Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple Books in Order
While Hercule Poirot may be Agatha Christie’s most notorious sleuth, Miss Marple is a close second. Miss Marple is an unlikely, but astute detective. She’s an elderly woman from the small fictional village of St. Mary Mead, and she solves murders as a hobby wherever she goes. Miss Marple, having bright eyes and world class knitting skills, has put her excellent judge of character to use in many a quaint village, and has cleverly gotten to the bottom of murders of all sorts.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Review, and Then Some
I read Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd over the weekend and even though the ending had been rudely spoiled for me just the week before by a stumbled-upon article online, I couldn’t put it down. Luckily, I didn’t have many other commitments for the weekend!
What follows is my SPOILER FREE review of Agatha Christie’s most famous novel, plus some extra tidbits and factoids, like where you can watch an adaptation of this book, why it was so controversial when it was published, and a few of the best quotes from the book.
Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot Novels in Order
Not only is Hercule Poirot Agatha Christie’s most famous detective, he was also her first. Christie’s first published novel and still one of the most popular among fans today, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featured the now famed Belgian Detective, and she continued to write stories for him throughout her entire career. The final book in the Poirot legacy, Curtain, was published just one year before her death (though she had written it some years earlier).
That very first Agatha Christie novel is now over 100 years old and is still being published, along with the other 38 Poirot novels and many more short stories!
Agatha’s Favorites: The Best of Agatha Christie, According to the Queen of Crime Herself
Having written somewhere around 75 novels (and those are just the published ones!), it would be very hard to choose the best of the best from all of Agatha Christie’s mysteries. Luckily, we don’t have to choose, because the queen herself did that for us!
Did Agatha Christie Write “Cozy Mysteries?”
I recently heard a podcaster plant Agatha Christie firmly in the “cozy mystery” genre and I took immediate offense. I thought to myself, “There is no way this person is a true fan! Who would reduce the ‘ Queen of Crime’ to a such a simplistic genre?!”
It turns out, the podcaster was indeed not a true fan and admitted to not having read much in the whodunnit genre in general, so I forgave her and moved on … well, almost. The fact that I’m writing an article arguing why she was wrong implies that I have not actually moved on and that I feel I must defend Agatha Christie’s novels as anything but “cozy”.
