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Just yesterday, The Telegraph reported that Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries are being 'rewritten for modern sensitivities.'Dame Agatha Christie became, and remains, the best-selling novelist of all time. She is best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, as well as the world's longest-running play – The Mousetrap. Agatha Christie's most famous novels include And Then There Were None (1939), Murder on the Orient Express (1933), The ABC Murders (1936), etc. But many of her beloved works are going to be altered now. Passages containing descriptions, insults, references to ethnicity, or physical descriptions...

Even the bestselling novelist in the world isn’t being spared woke rewrite treatments to spare the delicate sensitivities of modern readers, with Agatha Christie’s works getting the full treatment from her publisher. Christie is famous for creating such timeless sleuths as Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and the Daily Telegraph reports new editions based on both these investigators have had original passages amended or excised by publisher Harper Collins.

Costing more than $160 million, it is surely the most awkward film release in recent memory as several of the stars have either been canceled or the subjects of mockery and derision. “This film has become every publicist’s worst nightmare,” said an industry source. “It’s a project where everything which can go wrong has gone wrong — and there’s nothing to be done or said to make it better. SNIP First, there is Armie Hammer, who stars as playboy Simon Doyle in the adaptation of the 1937 Agatha Christie novel. He was accused of rape and cannibalistic desires back in...

In his famous article of January 20, 1945, the distinguished literary critic Edmund Wilson posed the challenging question, “Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd?” He was referring to the mystery novel of the same name by Agatha Christie. In a previous article in 1944 he had found her writing, “of a mawkishness and banality which seem to me to be impossible to read.” Wilson was surprised that prominent individuals such as Woodrow Wilson, W.B. Yeats, and T.S. Eliot were interested in the mystery novel genre. He would have been even more surprised that the genre constitutes the largest readership. The...

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Agatha Christie. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Agatha Christie wrote a lot of murder mysteries in the first part of the 20th Century, who stands as one of the premiere crime fiction writers of all time. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the letters in the top half (letter columns) of...

The publication of Agatha Christie's notebooks will do nothing to reveal what made her tick, says Laura Thompson. Only her novels can do that. More than 30 years after her death, in January 1976, Agatha Christie is news once again. HarperCollins – with whom she first signed a three-book deal back in 1924 – is about to publish Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, a hefty volume that details, exhaustively, the contents of the 73 extant notebooks in which she sketched out plots for her detective fiction. In fact, there is nothing very "secret" about Christie's notebooks, which were first analysed by...

Iran is all astir over the sensational case of the alleged serial killer inspired to hunt her elderly prey by the mystery novels of Agatha Christie. According to press accounts, Iranian police arrested the 32-year-old alleged killer in the city of Qazvin, about 60 miles northwest of the capital. She has been identified only by her first name, Mahin. The suspect allegedly confessed to luring into her clutches elderly women by offering them rides in her car after prayers. She allegedly lulled her passengers into a sense of security by telling them how much they reminded her of her own...

For decades, Agatha Christie's family filled its spare time by filling out something called an Album of Confessions. Such things were popular in the late 19th century. Every member of the Miller family, into which the mystery novelist was born, answered questions about his or her favourite colours, people, virtues, etc. It's a biographer's treasure trove, now. Laura Thompson, in her book Agatha Christie: An English Mystery, revels in the answers of Christie's grandmothers and mother, and writes, "What Godly creatures these women were! And how Victorian their tastes: their love of Mendelssohn, Landseer, Prince Albert and 'Miss Nightingale,' their...

Agatha Christie is the most popular novelist of all time, having sold 2 billion books. When WORLD reviewed the new television adaptation of her "Miss Marple" series—in which the detective is a little old lady in a tiny English village—we liked it ("Mystery!" April 2, 2005). But as they say in mystery writing, things are not always as they seem. The review episode provided to WORLD ("Murder in the Vicarage") was different from the one that prompted WORLD subscriber Chris Measley to take issue with our positive assessment. Mrs. Measley, an Agatha Christie fan from Jefferson City, Tenn., noticed that...