Writing on her trusty Remington typewriter, which is on display at Torre Abbey, Agatha Christie became renowned among mystery story aficionados for her ingenious ploting and her ability to mislead the reader was her greatest strength. Apearances are always deceiving, and the solutions dazzling in her tricky plots.

As one biographer put it, "Her supreme skill was in the construction of plot, and she has never been excelled as a creator of deceptive puzzles, the kind in which through something said or something seen we are given a clue. If this clue is interpreted correctly it will tell us a murder's identity, but if we make one of half a dozen other more obvious interpretations it will mislead us."

In misdirecting the reader, Christie often used commonly held social opinions to encourage the reader to assume things about a character or situation. Here are some examples of this pattern:

• Christie was not above using the supposed victim as the real murderer, or the pursuer of an assumed criminal as murderer, or even the narrator as murderer. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the many clues Christie included pointing to the killer's identity would be obvious, says Margarette Connor were not the reader blinded by tradition.
  
  
• Christie also takes advantage of the reader's expected response to a love-triangle. For example, Christie deceives the reader by the injured spouse turning out to be the murderer.
  
  
• Taking advantage of the reader tendency to view the characters in her novels as being simple "cardboard" stereotypes, Christie uses such reader notions, to have a frail elderly lady as a murderess.
  
  
• "The theme of sexual passion and physical attractiveness is announced oud and clear in Christie's novels: men and women, young and old will murder or risk murder in order to secure the sexual partner they desire or to exact sexual revenge," says Gillian Gill. Sexual passion is the prime motivation for murder in fifty-four of Christie's classic detection novels. Gillian adds, "married or lover accomplices conspire to murder in fourteen novels, while unabetted murderesses operate in sixteen novels and unabetted murders in nineteen."
  
  
• Consistent with some of the prevailing psycho-sociological theories of her day, several of Christie's plots involve adopted children and their possible inheritance of murderous tendencies from parents convicted of murder.
  
  
• A scene in which someone misinterprets what is oveheard in an argument or conversation and misinterprets is another of Christie's devices
  
  
• Stories often end without police involvement or criminal proceedings.
  
  
• Chrisite favored poison as the instrument of murder, particularly those with delayed action and involving members of the medical profession.
  
  
• In terms of writing style, Christie initially used the side kick narrator (Watson/Holmes - Hastings/Poirot) and later the omnicient unobtrusive narrator.
  
  

Learn more about Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, Agatha Christie's two principal sleuths. Click on their image below

MISS MARPLE (click here)

HERCULE POIROT (click here)

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Other Agatha Christie Links Searchable database of Christie's mystery novels.
Christie's mystery works by year and protagonist
Agatha Christie's Miss Marple's village of St. Mary Mead?
Use of Literary Allusions in Agatha Christie Stories
Lengthy text on Christie's oeuvre
Rodney Yoder's summary of Christie stories
The Mousetrap, playing in London at the St Martin's

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