Appointment with Death

Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sat the corpse of Mrs Boynton.

A tiny puncture mark on her wrist was the only sign of the fatal injection that had killed her.

With only 24 hours available to solve the mystery, Hercule Poirot recalled a chance remark he’d overheard back in Jerusalem:‘You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?’ Mrs Boynton was, indeed, the most detestable woman he’d ever met… Agatha Christie was born in Torquay in 1890 and became, quite simply, the best-selling novelist in history.

She wrote 80 crime mysteries and collections, and saw her work translated into more languages than Shakespeare.

Her enduring success, enhanced by many film and TV adaptations, is a tribute to the timeless appeal of her characters and the unequalled ingenuity of her plots. ‘Twice as brilliant as 'Death an the Nile', which was entirely brilliant.’THE OBSERVER