The Enid Blyton Society

Discover Agatha Christie as you've never seen her before in a new exhibition showcasing previously unseen photographs of the Queen of Crime

LJH:- A first brief question: why did you write your Guide?


JAMES ZEMBOY:- I wrote the book because no other writer seemed to have attempted to account for Christie's world-wide popularity. It had been a source of puzzlement to me ever since I was seventeen years old (I'm now 66) WHY I had always enjoyed reading Christie so much, while never enjoying any other crime writer. At age seventeen I read three Christie novels in rapid succession – the first crime novels I had ever read. I thought to myself, "Golly, I must be a mystery buff," and so I read a few other detective novels by other authors. I found that I had no interest in any of them at all. This went on for a couple of years and finally, in 1962, I wrote a letter to Christie, telling her that I had read most of her books and loved them, and that I had sampled a few other crime writers without enjoyment. I asked her to name a few of her own favourites. She wrote back to me with a short list of her favourite mystery writers and I read at least one or two books by each of those people, with the same result: no reading pleasure.

Eventually I realized that I was strictly an "Agatha Christie fan" and no fan at all of crime fiction in general, and it occurred to me that that must be the case with a lot of people, since Christie is so much more widely read than any other writer, and all around the world. And I realized, too, that "serious" fans of crime fiction generally don't think much of Christie, for very good reasons: unlikely events, ridiculous coincidences, Poirot and Marple often arriving at "the truth" through nothing but lucky guesses. Clearly it is not Christie's skill as a crime writer that has made her popular, and I always wondered about the real reason for her world-wide appeal. I eventually concluded that it was her amusing, recognizable characters that were most responsible for her popularity, and I decided that if I ever wrote a book about her works, I would focus on that aspect.

And so I wrote the book in order to explain Christie’s incredible world-wide popularity, and to show the uniqueness of each of her novels and the uniqueness of most of her characters.

Chrissie777 wrote:

Katharine wrote:I love all the Joan Hickson 'Miss Marple's, with perhaps the exception of 'The Mirror Cracked'.

I enjoyed the movie version of "Mirror" with Liz Taylor, Kim Novak and Rock Hudson from 1980.
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Angela Lansbury was my favorite Miss Marple, but I also like Margaret Rutherford...who wouldn't?

Moonraker wrote:As for Margaret Rutherford, whatever role she played she was always Margaret Rutherford. I thoroughly enjoy the Rutherford Christie films, but she was nothing like the Marple of Christie's pen.

Robert Houghton wrote:Being a bit of an ignoramus where Agatha Christie is concerned, I tend to watch the film/TV versions rather than read the books.

jubei wrote:I am a big fan of Agatha Christie. Many years back then I thought that Agatha Christie is the logcial continuation , after I "graduated" from Enid Blyton.