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Yet, as W.H. Auden observed, the British murder mystery, with its accent on clever detection rather than violence, seems to provide an escape back into the Garden of Eden. There innocence and order are restored, and readers "may know love as love and not as the law." The Great Restorer is the godlike genius detective. Christie's own genius resided in a mind of intimidating clarity. She never allowed emotion or philosophical doubt to cloud her devious conceptions or hinder the icy logic of their untanglings. Born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller in Torquay, she was the daughter of a rich American and an English mother. Although gifted with a good singing voice, she abandoned a stage career because of her shyness. In 1914 she married a British airman, Colonel Archibald Christie, and plunged into the war effort. Between volunteer nursing and practicing pharmacy, she wrote her first detective story on a dare from her sister. The Mysterious Affair at Styles introduced the 5-ft. 4-in. dandy and retired Belgian police officer Hercule Poirot. His egoism, eccentricities and the fact that for a time he had a Watsonian colleague called Hastings suggest that Christie was strongly influenced by Sherlock Holmes.
Christie was a well-established writer when her controversial The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published in 1926. Purists complained because she did what no detective-story writer had done before. She revealed the killer as none other than the book's narrator. Publication of the novel coincided with another first in the author's otherwise scandal-free life. For two weeks in December 1926, Agatha Christie, 36, was officially a missing person. A frenzied nationwide search led to a Yorkshire hotel, where she was found registered as Tessa Neele, the name of the woman Colonel Christie married after his divorce from Agatha two years later. Doctors said the disappearance was caused by amnesia.
Even so, the episode was a uniquely devilish way of telling her husband that she knew about his mischief.
Stoic Brevity. Dame Agatha recalled that unhappy time with stoic brevity: "My husband found a young woman." In 1930, on a trip to the Middle East, she found Max Mallowan, 14 year her junior, who was excavating on the site of ancient Ur. "An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have," she noted before their 25th anniversary. "The older she gets, the more interested he is in her."
In their 45-year marriage, the Mallowans shared an interest in travel and properties. During one period, the couple owned eight houses.
World War II found Christie again practicing pharmacy and brushing up on the latest lethal drugs. Poison was a preferred method of dispatching a victim—frequently "in quiet family surroundings." She continued to publish one or two novels a year, often plotting them in a hot bath while eating apples. There was scarcely a time when her work was not before the public, not only on book jackets but in the credits of such stage and film works as Witness for the Prosecution and Ten Little Indians.