English-speaking crime writers

Arthur Conan DoyleAgatha Christie

A strange picture on the wall in this London underground...

And Sherlock Holmes outside the station!!!

Sherlock Holmes and his colleague, Doctor Watson.

Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1859. He became a doctor and began to work in England. His famous hero was created in 1887, in his first book: "A Study in Scarlet".

More stories came and were published in a newspaper from 1891:more and more readers thought Sherlock Holmes was a real person! Sherlock uses methods to investigate very similar to a teacher of Conan Doyle at University in Edinburgh: look in details at people (or bodies) and you will find clues to solve the mystery!

The end of Sherlock Holmes...

But Conan Doyle didn't want to be a "crime story" writer: he wanted to be a "serious" writer: in 1893, he "killed" his hero (with his enemy, Doctor Moriarty) in a story. Readers , shocked, wrote to Conan Doyle to stop this situation: they wanted the famous detective to come back!!!

So Conan Doyle was obliged to resuscitate his hero for more stories. He wrote four books and 56 stories with Sherlock Holmes. The most famous is probably :"The Hound of the Baskervilles". Today his success is here, with a museum in London, at the address where Sherlock Holmes lived (or was he an invented person?).

The world's Queen of mystery

"Hello, I am Agatha Christie and I am with all my books. I wrote my first book in 1920. It was an immediate best-seller. Its title was: "The mysterious affair at Styles". People like crime stories, because it can be part of people's life I suppose. I was born in 1890, in England. My mother gave me my education at home. When I was 16, I went to Paris to study."

World War I and poisons

"I went to work in a hospital in World War I for the Red Cross. I was a nurse for two years. There was a lot of work to do! We used medicines or "drugs" for the patients. But drugs can become poisons and they can kill you... This time was very interesting for me and I used poisons later in my books to kill people!"

Archeology in Irak

"You can see me and my husband Max Mallowan (we got married in 1930) on this picture. Max and I travelled a lot in Irak, because Max's job was to look at clues (= small details) in the ground and to reconstruct the local history. Max was an archeologist. His job and my job are very similar: you investigate and look for clues to solve a mystery and to discover the truth!"

Hercule Poirot

One film was made in 1978 from Agatha Christie's book, with famous actor Peter Ustinov who played the world-famous Belgian detective Hercules Poirot.

"When I was in Irak with Max, I became very interested in writing a book with a mystery in a hot country. I decided to invent a story about people on a boat on the river Nile, in Egypt, with a murder. Its title was: "Death on the Nile".

Miss Marple

One heroine by Agatha Christie is Miss Marple. In her small English village, she watches all and remarks every detail: Miss Marple solves the mysteries because she is very interested in listening to and observing people. Is Miss Marple Agatha Christie's grand-mother?

The Mousetrap

Did you know Agatha Christie's play "the Mousetrap" began in 1952 in London and you can see it today? It is a world record!!!