Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queenof Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in Englishwith another billion in 100 foreign languages. She is the mostwidely published author of all time and in any language,outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the authorof 80 crime novels and short story collections, 19 plays, andsix novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.
Agatha Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles,was written towards the end of the First World War, in whichshe served as a VAD. In it she created Hercule Poirot, thelittle Belgian detective who was destined to become the mostpopular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. Itwas eventually published by The Bodley Head in 1920.
