Agatha Christie’s Marple

About the Author

Mark Aldridge is a senior lecturer and film historian at Solent University, Southampton. He previously wrote the definitive book about Agatha Christie's book adaptations on film and television, Agatha Christie on Screen, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. Agatha Christie was born in Torquay in 1890 and became, quite simply, the best-selling novelist in history. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, written towards the end of the First World War, introduced us to Hercule Poirot, who was to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. She is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another billion in over 100 foreign countries. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 19 plays, and six novels under the name of Mary Westmacott. Lucy Foley studied English Literature at Durham and UCL universities and worked for several years as a fiction editor in the publishing industry, before leaving to write full-time. Lucy's debut thriller, The Hunting Party, was an instant Sunday Times and Irish Times bestseller, and was inspired by a particularly remote spot in Scotland that fired her imagination. Lucy is also the author of three historical novels, which have been translated into sixteen languages. Her journalism has appeared in ES Magazine, Sunday Times Style, Grazia and more.