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A Murder Is Announced

Page 25

by Agatha Christie


  She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. With The Murder in the Vicarage, published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.

  Many of Christie’s novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film adaptations are Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie.

  Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain’s highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010.

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  THE AGATHA CHRISTIE COLLECTION

  The Man in the Brown Suit

  The Secret of Chimneys

  The Seven Dials Mystery

  The Mysterious Mr. Quin

  The Sittaford Mystery

  Parker Pyne Investigates

  Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

  Murder Is Easy

  The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories

  And Then There Were None

  Towards Zero

  Death Comes as the End

  Sparkling Cyanide

  The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories

  Crooked House

  Three Blind Mice and Other Stories

  They Came to Baghdad

  Destination Unknown

  Ordeal by Innocence

  Double Sin and Other Stories

  The Pale Horse

  Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories

  Endless Night

  Passenger to Frankfurt

  The Golden Ball and Other Stories

  The Mousetrap and Other Plays

  The Harlequin Tea Set

  The Hercule Poirot Mysteries

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles

  The Murder on the Links

  Poirot Investigates

  The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

  The Big Four

  The Mystery of the Blue Train

  Peril at End House

  Lord Edgware Dies

  Murder on the Orient Express

  Three Act Tragedy

  Death in the Clouds

  The A.B.C. Murders

  Murder in Mesopotamia

  Cards on the Table

  Murder in the Mews and Other Stories

  Dumb Witness

  Death on the Nile

  Appointment with Death

  Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

  Sad Cypress

  One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

  Evil Under the Sun

  Five Little Pigs

  The Hollow

  The Labors of Hercules

  Taken at the Flood

  The Underdog and Other Stories

  Mrs. McGinty’s Dead

  After the Funeral

  Hickory Dickory Dock

  Dead Man’s Folly

  Cat Among the Pigeons

  The Clocks

  Third Girl

  Hallowe’en Party

  Elephants Can Remember

  Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

  The Miss Marple Mysteries

  The Murder at the Vicarage

  The Body in the Library

  The Moving Finger

  A Murder Is Announced

  They Do It with Mirrors

  A Pocket Full of Rye

  4:50 from Paddington

  The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

  A Caribbean Mystery

  At Bertram’s Hotel

  Nemesis

  Sleeping Murder

  Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories

  The Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries

  The Secret Adversary

  Partners in Crime

  N or M?

  By the Pricking of My Thumbs

  Postern of Fate

  Credits

  Cover illustration and design by Sara Wood

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  AGATHA CHRISTIE® MARPLE® MISS MARPLE® A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED™. Copyright © 2011 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved. A Murder Is Announced was first published in 1950.

  A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED © 1950. Published by permission of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-06-207363-1

  EPub Edition © MAY 2011 ISBN: 978-0-06-175038-0

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