The best Agatha Christie books you should definitely read

This book is not a typical sleuth novel. The story is from each suspect’s point of view, all unreliable.

I loved that my perspective of Rosemary Barton shifted with each retelling of the night that she supposedly committed suicide by drinking a glass full of cyanide-laced champagne. Was Rosemary actually a doting sister? Perhaps she was a happy, lovely younger wife. Maybe she was a rival or a schemer.

I read the novel because of its irresistible title and intriguing questions. Although I’m familiar with most Poirot and Marple books, I wasn’t as familiar with the Colonel Race mysteries. By this, Ms. Christie’s thirty-sixth book, she’d honed her craft to such a degree that I still think about it often. 

This book has inspired an entire genre of content where a group of people find themselves in a situation similar to her secluded island...and they cannot leave. I just ticked off a handful of books and TV shows that use this model, and I enjoy them all.

In the novel, multiple points of view drive the narrative, and the perpetrators choose the victims based on their own dubious, possibly criminal, histories. I found the reduction of the soldiers on the dining room table as each person dies to be diabolically brilliant, ratcheting up an already unbearable tension.

I strive to achieve her novel’s seemingly effortless pacing…as the clue drops sprinkled meticulously throughout the book. This is one I re-read simply because I always learn something new.

Long labeled Christie’s best work, I agree that this book is a top-notch read.

Christie’s mysteries set in the English countryside are always so refreshingly charming…even when dealing with murder. And Christie meticulously planned this one—a tangle of knots that no one should be able to untangle. Yet, the killer is battling wits and lives against the inimitable Hercule Poirot, who always catches his culprit.

I love this mystery because, once I’d read it for the thrill ride of discovery, I went back and wrote all the clues. Christie’s subtlety is one of her greatest strengths and one I hope one day to achieve in my work. Often overlooked in novel writing, imagination is fundamental to Christie’s books, and I love how convoluted hers must have been to come up with these scenarios.

Even after eighty years, Agatha Christie’s books are refreshingly modern constructs (not so much some beliefs, sadly), and readers and writers can delight in her complexities.

This book is signature Christie: well-plotted and paced, full of exciting characters, all of whom had motive and potential to kill…and we meet her most beloved character, Poirot. What’s not to like?

I hadn’t read any Christie books in decades, and this was the one that rekindled my love affair with her craft.

Captain Hastings narrates these books (a la Watson’s retellings of Holmes’s brilliance) and points out Poirot’s eccentricity and fastidiousness from the initial introduction. Poirot seems so silly and stuffy…until those little gray cells kick in, and we get some keen insights.

Someone pointed out to me that Christie’s work is now considered historical. This book is also a classic mystery worth reading.

Ah, Miss Marple! She’s probably the most iconic amateur female sleuth and spawned an entire mystery genre (I love a good cozy!).

I chose this novel because the plotting is excellent, and I appreciate Agatha Christie’s subtleties. She respected her readers’ intelligence…and enjoyed playing with our observation skills. We get a slew of culprits, all with the motivation to murder the Fortescue patriarch.

So when Inspector Neele, whose perspective overtakes much of the book, needs help to understand why the bickering family is more interested in Mr. Fortescue’s fortune than his untimely death and pocketful of rye that seem to follow a nursery rhyme, of all things, well, only Miss Marple can solve this tangled web.