Stuff You Should Know - Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

Agatha Christie was a great writer of murder mystery novels and is probably the best selling author of all time. Listen in today to learn her story. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Debbie Chuck Bryant over there.

And this is Stuff You Should Know. Oh, I don't know if we're gonna be able to get used to Jerry being around again. Is she fired? I don't think so. She may have fired herself though. I don't think so. I have better things to do than hang out with you.

Cool cats and kittens. Well, and it's kind of like, what's the point of just sitting there and I can't imagine that we're boring than listening to us on headphones. Oh, wait a minute, that's our show. Yes, there are people doing that very thing right now, Chuck, and you have just mocked their existence. Oh, I've just meant for Jerry's sake, you know.

Yeah, I know. Jerry's not a fan. No, she's not. Or a listener. So I have a question for you, Chuck. You ever read a book? No, no, don't be ridiculous. Chuck, have you ever met Agatha Christie?

Yeah, I met her when I was three. Oh, really? Do you have much of a memory of that encounter? A little bit. She was nice enough. She signed my Murder on the Orient Express copy for its edition. Wow, that's got to be worth some money.

It's pretty neat. Yeah, do you still have that? No, I did some spring cleaning here a couple of weeks ago. I didn't even recycle or put it in a little free library. I just threw it in the trash. Didn't you say once that your brother has like a copy of number one Superman or something nuts like that? No.

I thought he has something, some valuable comic book. No, no. I must be confusing you with my other co-host, Chuck. No, we weren't big comic book people. We don't have anything valuable like that. I got you. Well, having met Agatha Christie when you were a kid, I feel like you'll probably have a lot to bring to this one.

I have never met her still to this day. Probably never will. And I have read a couple of her things and seen a couple of movies based on her stuff, but I would never consider myself like a rabbit Agatha Christie fan, but I do appreciate her work a lot. You picked this one.

Why? We have this series of books, children's books, about awesome women in history from Frida to Coco Chanel to Amelia Earhart to Agatha Christie. And so I was reading this one the other night and thought, hey, let's do one on Agatha Christie. I haven't read any of her work, seen a couple of her movies. Love the genre, though, as films.

I've never read mystery, murder mysteries, although I'm going to now. I started reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which I think was her first published work last night. And it's just great. She just sucks you right in. She does what's, she creates a lot of books, not all of them, but she creates what's called a cozy mystery with an S

because it's British. And I'd never heard that term before until this article. But when I came across it, I was like, yes, I love that kind of thing. And that's exactly what I love about murder she wrote. Like the murder she wrote to where she goes to like Broadway or Paris or something like that, I can take her leave. They're fine.

But it's the ones that are set in a tiny little cabbage cove that's just isolated from the rest of the world. And it's cozy and small. And it's like a village and all that. Those are the murder she wrote that I love the most. And I think that's what I like about Agatha Christie Mysteries too is they're very typically cozy mysteries. I've never seen that show.

What? We've had this conversation before. No, that would be seared into my brain forever. Now we have, because you said that the first time. Yeah, I've never seen it, but I'm a huge fan of murder mystery movies, especially cozy mysteries like Clue is one of my favorite films. And this year's or last year's Knives Out

was one of my top three or four films of the year. I've not seen it yet. It's still like $7 on Amazon Prime, so I haven't rented it yet. I'm waiting for the price point to drop. I can loan you a couple of bucks if you need. All right, sure. $3.99. $3.99?

All right. $3.99. It's still a lot for a rental. I mean, that's a lot. You think? $3.99 is manageable, $4.99 and up. That's a lot of mood law for a rental, if you ask me. Wow.

Yeah, I'm taking a stand on this. All right, well, film professionals out there, please do not take offense to all your hard work. So I have a question for you. I have one more question. Have you seen the Agatha Christie film adaptation of Crooked House that came out in 2017? No.

I think you'll like it. It was big budget, but it also looks like British made for television big budget. That's great. Jillian Anderson, Dana Scully is in it. Okay, love her. Because you know, the Brits are nuts for her. Are they?

Oh man, she's like their favorite person in the world and has been for years. Don't know why? Nothing against Jillian Anderson, but like she just never hit it as big over here as she did there. Terrence Stamp is in it. Love him.

Glenn Close. She's great. And I was like, this is really good. So I was reading little synopses of it and all that stuff. And it seemed like it's widely regarded as one of her best, most ingenious and inventive works. Crooked House?

Crooked House, I believe that's on Amazon Prime for free. Well, yes. Do you actually do the math of how much you pay for Amazon Prime to see how much you're paying for that movie? I don't want to do that. I just don't want to do that. Probably pennies.

Why did you do that to me? All right, so Charles, let's get into this because I know that this one could be a little long if we're not deliberate and I would say maybe consider it of our time. All right, well, that's an eight minute intro. So far, so good. She is perhaps, again, it's kind of hard to tell

with book sales because they can be a little dodgy, but she is often quoted or seen as the best-selling novelist of all time. And I did a little check to compare. Like, I thought, well, Stephen King sold a book or two. Sure. They tag his book sales at about $350 million. Her 66 novels and 14 collected works of short stories

supposedly have sold to the tune of $2 billion. I saw $4 billion in one place. And I think after you hit the billion mark, you can just start tossing around whatever number you want. I think so. That's a lot of books. For example, we've had 70 billion downloads now. I just decided.

Oh, great. That's a lot of downloads. But think about it. Stephen King, how many books has that cat written? How many has he sold all around the world? And it amounts to $350 million. And he's one of the best-selling authors of all time. A lot of people say that Agatha Christie's numbers

hit $2 billion, like you said. That's astounding. Yeah, that is a ton of books. I don't think our stuff you should know book will approach those numbers. No, you never say never, though. It's a lofty goal. Never say never.

I also saw that she's the most widely translated author of all time, too. I buy that. I saw 45 languages. I was like, this seems a little low. So then somewhere else, I saw 103. So let's go with that. So let's talk about this cozy mystery or just mystery

novels in general. They are very much formulaic, which Ed helped us put this together. Ed points out that's why people like them, because the familiarity and it's sort of a comfort food thing, like a good beach book. You know what you're going to get. Right.

And there's surprises and everything woven in. I mean, the whole thing is meant to be a surprise. It's a mystery. And part of the mystery, the allure of the mysteries that Agatha Christie not only wrote, but actually the whole genre she helped to develop, is that you are ostensibly able to figure out who the culprit is in the murder.

It's almost always a murder. And so there is surprise involved. That's the point. But there's also a tremendous amount of familiarity. And that's that formula you were talking about. And that's what really has sucked generations of people into this whole genre and her 66 plus books. Yeah, so you've got that murder.

You usually don't see this murder occur. She doesn't usually. And in general, in murder mysteries, you don't see the murder. That's kind of not the point of how grisly or gruesome the act is. It's sort of all about finding that body. And I had a bunch of knives out, things to say,

but I won't say any of them now. Thank you. But then you've got your detective that arrives on the scene. And I will say this, knives out very much follows this formula very smartly. So you've got this master detective who usually arrives upon the scene.

But they may already be there. And they are generally very eccentric and sort of they always have these quirky sort of characteristics. In Christie's case, we have the very formidable Hercule Poirot and then Miss Marple, Jane Marple. In Hercule's case, he's Belgian and has this big mustache. And it's just sort of eccentric. And Belgian just, he's not French.

There's something about being Belgian that makes it slightly different. Sure. And Miss Marple, apparently, is just a very ordinary and people underestimate her. And that's how she sort of wins the day. Yeah, because Hercule Poirot was a retired Belgian police detective.

So he has some measure of authority still to question people and interrogate people as he wishes. With Miss Marple, she's just kind of a quiet old lady who sews and knits a lot. And she just has a very keen eye for detail and an interest in solving the murders that seem to happen around her.

Like Angela Lansbury. Basically, yes. But rather than interrogate people directly, Miss Marple's thing is she just kind of quietly is there. And people tend to confide in her. And she kind of quietly helps them along and gives them, she gives them the rope to hang themselves with. That's how she interrogates people

or figures out who the murderer is. Right. So you've got your setting in the cozy mystery setting. Like you said, it's usually like an estate or a home, maybe a hotel. Maybe it might be a small English village or an express, obviously, is on a train, another sort of confined space. By the way, have you seen Train to Busan?

I confuse that with Snowpiercer. I think I've seen both, but I can't remember which one's which. They're kind of very similar, but Busan is zombies on a train, Korean film. No, then I think I've just seen Snowpiercer. You should check out Train to Busan. I will. If you think you've seen it all with the zombie genre,

then think again. Dude, that's saying something, because that genre has gotten a little stale. Hey, let me ask you this. Have you seen, I know you've seen it. You had to have Ozark? Oh, sure, I'm just started it. Yeah, I'm a couple of episodes into the latest season.

OK, yeah. You and me and I just started at season one, and I'm like, all I want to do is sit around and watch Ozark. It's amazing. Yeah, I love it. That's like Hartwell, you know. Oh, no, I didn't know that. Yeah.

Smart. I've tried to get Bateman and Laura Linney on movie crush, and it's always, thank you, no. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hey, you're getting responses. That's a big step forward. It's nice to be told, no, and just not ignored.

Yeah, right. All right, so you've got your setting. With Agatha Christie, she did include her travels in some of her later novels when they became like super popular, but it was still not like a globetrotting like James Bond kind of thing. No, that's the point. So like in a espionage thriller, something

the locales are all over the place, and the character is constantly moving. In these cozy thrillers, like even if they're in an exotic locale, they're still set in a small part of that exotic locale. That's right. You got your suspects. They are questioned by the detective.

They usually all have a motive. They usually all have the means because everyone, in a great novel like this, everyone's got to be a suspect from the beginning, and then you can kind of quickly whittle or slowly whittle that list down. Right. And here's the thing.

What I was saying with the kind of mystery that Agatha Christie wrote and really established, you are part of the mystery, like you're either the investigator or the detective has an assistant that they explain things to very much like Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Sure. Or if the detective is working solo, say like Ms. Marple,

Ms. Marple's might write a list of suspects and their motives and little clues down as part of the narration, and you're led in every step of the way. So you're part of this working towards solving the mystery. And as it's very frequently put, it kind of pits you in a competition with the author to see if you can figure out who'd done it

before the end of the book. Yeah. I mean, that goes back to Encyclopedia Brown. The whole point is to try and figure that stuff out. Right. Man, I love those. Those are so great. Encyclopedia Brown.

I remember he busted one dumb kid who did something bad. I can't remember. Was it Bugs Meany? Oh, man. Good memory. It may have been Bugs Meany. Was he kind of a big dumb oaf who'd like beat up on chipmunks?

I think so. OK. He busted bugs once because Bugs had tears coming out of the outside corners of his eyes, like a freakazoid, rather than the inside corners. That's good. But see, the great thing about those books is that a 12-year-old doesn't really necessarily always

pick up on those clues. Oh, I did. I wasn't that great. I'd be curious to see if they would stump me now. No, no. I mean, specifically with the outside of the eye thing. But yeah, no, I'm sure there are plenty that I missed. But you cried a lot when you were a boy.

I knew. While staring in the mirror. The tears came from. And so then at the end, to wrap up the little genre summary, you've got this great ending, usually, where everyone's gathered together and the detective walks everyone through the big reveal of exactly how the killer did it.

And in her case, she did not. Like when the killer is revealed, they didn't turn around and shoot them in the face. It's usually pretty nonviolent. They would be wrestled to the ground or arrested, or maybe they might run away. And you hear later that they had killed themselves or something like that.

Sure. There was rarely a grand finale where they would be pressed to death in front of a crowd. Nah, who needs it? So that, I mean, that's it, like Bing Bang Boom. That was when you started on page one of an Agatha Christie novel. You knew exactly how everything was gonna play out.

And then one of the other things is because this thing was so formulaic, there was also room for the author to kind of play with you the reader in using things like bluffs and red herrings. Oh, sure. Think of basically the same thing. But the idea is that so the author,

in this case, Agatha Christie would say something like, early on in the book, a suspect would come running out of the house looking shaken and pale. And you, the reader would be like, well, that's just way too obvious. She's not gonna name, she's not gonna point out who the murderer is

at the beginning of the book. So I can disregard that person or this very obvious clue or something like that. That was just kind of part of the interplay between author and reader. But then it could go even deeper to where she would say something like, well, I know that you think that this is too obvious.

So I'm gonna actually make this the actual murderer, which she did in some cases, which was like a double bluff. Apparently you could just keep going on and on and on. But it was this kind of wrestling match or maybe slap fight between Agatha Christie and you, her reader, which made the whole thing all the more delightful.

That's right. And she, Ed takes great pains to point out that she did not invent the genre. There were people like Arthur Conan Doyle, obviously, and Poe before her that sort of established some of these rules, but she was very popular. She's very good at what she did.

She wrote about what she knew and we'll talk about her life coming up in a little bit. But these manor houses and these estates and these English villages and even the exotic locales and these train trips and things were things that she actually experienced. And a lot of people are great at making stuff up and a lot of people are great about writing what they know.

And it seems like she was really great at writing what she knew. Yeah. And for some reason, either it was the time or maybe because of her, I'm not sure. It was kind of a chicken or the egg thing, but she happened to write about stuff that a lot of people wanted to read about.

These small English villages and quaint mannerisms of the upper middle and upper class English society set in this period of time. And for some reason, it just captured everybody's attention. And apparently when she started expanding, I think after World War II to some slightly more exotic locales like Egypt

or Mesopotamia for like Death on the Nile was a very famous one during this time. Or the Orient Express. That really catapulted her into superstardom, international superstardom too. Yeah, I don't have a super firm read on the history of literature, but I get the idea that this is sort of aligned

with the beginnings of Pop Lit and like I call it the beach book. I don't know if there had been a ton of stuff like this that was just sort of pure comfort food and entertainment up to this point. Yeah, I'm not sure either. Nothing that I'm familiar with, I can say. But there were very entertaining books.

They were humorous, a very dark sense of humor, great dialogue, all these verbal jowls between the detectives and the suspects is really key to that genre. Something Knives Out did really, really well. It was one of my favorite scripts of the year. Maybe my favorite script. Wow.

But just really, really good sharp writing and it's no sort of no accident that she became so hugely popular. No, and that's something like, if you're not really familiar with Agatha Christie and you just kind of look her up and passing, one of the things you'll be confronted with is that a lot of people, a lot of critics say she was a hack.

And what they're talking about is that formula that she followed to almost like a soulessly rational degree. Like that was the formula, that's what she followed. But that really misses like the fact that she had a really great eye for detail and the dialogue like you were saying, like she was a good writer

and she could just crank work out. I think during the decade of the 20s, she wrote a book a year. It might've even become more prolific later on in the 30s and 40s too. Yeah, and she was a business person, you know? Like there's nothing wrong with saying, wow, people love this stuff and they sell a lot.

And although it took a while for that to happen, as we'll see, but there's nothing wrong with any of that. I think people that call her a hack can go fly kite. Yeah, go fly it with extreme prejudice. Should we take a break? I think so, man. We'll come back and talk about her life. Great.

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Okay, Chuck. So, um, Agatha Christie was born in 1890 in England, in Devonshire, in Torquay, which I always wanted to say Tangarei, Devonshire. Sure. And it's in the Southwest of England. So, Torquay is kind of like our, um, or Devonshire is like our Arizona, basically.

That's my impression. I think it is very much like Arizona. Right. The legendary Devonshire cactus. Right. So, which stalks the Moors. That's right. Um, and she was one of three kids,

and I think her older brother and sister were both at least a decade older than her. So, she had like a very, um, solitary childhood, which appears to have made her fairly happy. She didn't go to school. She was raised by governesses and educated by governesses. Spent a lot of time reading, um, and just hung out around her family's estate.

Yeah. I mean, they had some dough. They were, uh, they were not wealthy, wealthy, but they were definitely upper middle class. They got an inheritance from her paternal grandfather, such that her dad didn't need to work. Apparently, she is on record as saying that like her dad wasn't around much.

Didn't really impact me once much. So, he can go fly a kite as well. Right. It's a lot of kite flying. And, um, she was, she loved being out in the garden. She wasn't, um, I get the impression she wasn't like reclusive or anything, but she very much enjoyed time with her self alone, but also had friends and stuff when she eventually did go to school

once her father passed and they couldn't afford that governess. Right. But she was a very, very shy person. Um, the novelist Joan Accella, um, says that even as an adult, she was so shy that sometimes she wouldn't go into shops because she would have to interact with the shopkeeper. Um, so it is a novelist. You know, how many novelists are the life of the party

and super outgoing? You have never met Philip Roth, apparently. I just, I don't know. You kind of picture like the Stephen King's just locked in an attic somewhere and not like, well, let me ride a little bit. Then I'm going to go, uh, you know, go to a party. Right. Go play some pickup basketball and maybe volunteer at the local food bank after.

I don't know. It's sort of a solitary pastime. So that sure there are examples of, uh, of extroverted authors, but I think she kind of fits the mold that you generally think of, especially for a lady mystery writer. Yeah. And you know, I think not only fits the mold, the more I learned about her, she made the mold.

True. Like basically everything we take her for granted as far as writing and mystery writing goes, like she basically made it up. It's, it's pretty impressive stuff. Yeah. So she, um, like we said, she did some pretty, uh, to us dumb, dumb's in America seem like exotic, uh, traveling trips. But if you lived in England at the time, it's no big deal to go to Egypt

and check out the pyramids. That was, if you had a little dough, that was a pretty common vacation that you might take. So she did stuff like that and she was exposed to, um, exotic locales and use those in her work, uh, in a very first novel even snow upon the desert. She wrote when she was like 22 or 23 years old, I think. And, uh, you know, she had a hard time getting published at first because she was a young woman.

Yeah. She was rejected out of hand. Um, and apparently also she started writing, um, because her sister told her that she probably wouldn't be able to write a mystery novel, which I love. So she did. She wrote the, um, what was it? Snow on what? Snow upon the desert.

Snow upon the desert. And she was very young then. Um, and in between the time she wrote snow upon the desert and the mysterious affair at styles, which would be her first published book, I believe, she, um, wedged a lot of life in there, uh, in the form of getting married to a guy named Archibald Archie Christie. And one of the things about Agatha Christie is that she was, she never, she wasn't a born writer.

Even though she did write as a younger person, like you were saying, like she wasn't like a, she just didn't want to be a writer as a kid. And she ended up writing really seriously after she and Archie Christie got married because Archie Christie wasn't, uh, particularly wealthy and couldn't necessarily care for her himself. So she started writing to, to make money, which some people suspect is the reason she got into mystery writing in the first place, because there was a very, very popular genre even.

Yeah. Well, it makes sense. So she had the skills to pay the bills. It turns out that's right. Uh, they were married in 1914. Uh, he was kind of promptly sent to fight in the great war in France. And she worked at a pharmacist, uh, at a war hospital during that period. And this is where she learned a lot about potions and poisons and pharmaceuticals

and things that she would, there's a lot of poisoning that goes on in her books. Yeah. Um, and she later in her career, I think she actually would consult with doctors and stuff like that. Cause she wanted everything to be really medically accurate, but early on she learned a lot about this stuff from her work in the pharmacy. Which is kind of cool and ghoulish. You know, she's like, how exactly would a person die from this bottle

that I'm holding? So yeah. And apparently, um, most of the deaths in her books are poisonings. And, and like you were saying, like you rarely, rarely see the person die. They just come upon the body and most of the time it's a poison body. Sometimes there, there was violence visited upon them. But for the most part is a body that was found poisoned to death. Yeah.

And that's a good vehicle for a mystery novel because, you know, there's no murder weapon per se there. I guess there's the poison bottle, but it can often be very vague, uh, poisoning death. Like could it have been a heart attack? Like you have to kind of suss out at first whether or not it was even a murder. It's not like an obvious thing where there's a bullet hole in their chest or something like that.

Right. Right. Yeah. So poisoning is what she went with typically. It's another example. Also Chuck, I think of like her writing what she knew to at least writing what interested her. Um, and she wrote in, I believe 1920.

No, during the, during World War one. So while she was working at the dispensary and Archie was off flying in France, I believe, um, she wrote the mysterious affair styles. And it was, that's the one I started reading. And I don't understand how it was rejected at first, but it was, um, it's a really interesting book just right out of the gate, um, in that it, it pulls you right into this little country, English estate and all of the people on it.

And you realize just after a couple of pages that you're already invested in them, which is pretty amazing. This is like not her first book, but it was her first, uh, serious work that wasn't published immediately. It wasn't published until 1920. Um, and I think even after it was published, it wasn't an immediate catapult to success for her, but it was a, it was a remarkable first book to be published.

Yeah. And this is the one that introduced the world to her chief detective for a lot of those novels, uh, Mr. Poirot, like we mentioned, and later on, they asked her why he was Belgian and she said, why not? Basically, uh, I don't think a whole lot of thought went into it. Um, it turned out to be a really good choice because he had this kind of interesting accent and everywhere he went, I don't, you know, they were never set in Belgium.

So everywhere he went, he was this, uh, sort of, uh, sort of strange foreigner that would come into town, uh, with this accent that no one quite understood. And he just had this sort of larger than life presence, I think, because of that. So it turned out to be a really smart choice. Yeah, he was also a well-known dandy who was very vain about his appearance. Um, and he apparently said in one of the later books that he plays up his foreignness and his dandiness to, um, uh, disarm suspects when he's interrogating

them to make them take him less seriously than they otherwise might. Oh man, I want to talk about knives out so much. You cannot. I appreciate you not doing that. So she had a daughter we should mention in 1919, uh, named Rosalind, and that's the only child she ever had. And it was in 1920 or a year later, uh, that they finally did publish the mysterious affair at Styles, uh, after she agreed to change the ending.

They said, we don't like Poirot, uh, revealing all this evidence in court. So she changed the ending. They said, great. Uh, that's when she went on to publish that novel every year for about 10 years. Right. Uh, very, very big books, but they weren't, um, they were popular, but she wasn't like a superstar internationally at this point yet. No, not yet.

Um, again, she really catapulted later on because she moved to some of these more exotic locales, but one of the things that cemented her legend as a mystery writer, in addition to all of the work she did in addition to her prolificness and her extreme talent at this formula that she had worked out was, um, what still today is considered an unsolved mystery. In fact, it was featured on a 1994 episode of unsolved mysteries, um, which I just randomly happened to see recently and, um, she disappeared. There's a whole subplot to Agatha Christie's life that was really surprising,

especially compared to how boring and normal and just kind of plodding with these instead of teas, her normal life was the fact that she has this grand mystery plunked down in the middle of it is, is pretty impressive. Yeah. It's, um, so here's, here's the backstory. Uh, she and Archie were not meant to be together as it turns out. He revealed that he was having an affair, uh, with a lady named Nancy Neil, who was a friend of the family and obviously that was the end of their

marriage. So at the end of 1926, um, they decided they were going to take a trip together a weekender. Um, Archie went to be with his friends instead and then she vanished into seemingly thin air. Uh, they found her car near a rock quarry with her fur coat and her driver's license there and no Agatha Christie. No, and her car wasn't just near the rock quarry, according to some reports,

like one of the wheels is hanging over the edge of this cliff and still spinning. Right. Um, so, but she was gone. They, they couldn't find her. And so within a couple of days, this massive search, depending on who you ask and depending on when you ask them, 10, like 10,000 plus people were searching for probably more likely a couple thousand, which is still really remarkable for this tiny little area in the southwest of England, um,

at the time in 1926. Um, so the, that really kind of demonstrates, she was already a, a well-known writer. She wasn't legendary yet, but this, as this disappearance is the mechanism, mechanism by which she becomes legendary, I think. And this goes on for a good week, I believe, right? When did she disappear? December, what?

I think December 3rd is when they were going to take that trip. So she was gone almost two weeks and by gone, we mean just vanished. She left behind that car. She left behind the driver's license and the fur, like you said, she was gone. Her husband had come, came to be known to have asked for a divorce already. So people were like, well, did he bump her off? And she's a mystery writer known for generating stuff like this. So even at the time, some people were like, is this a publicity stunt?

Because it's a pretty good one if it is. Sure. It worked. And there was a band at this place called the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Yorkshire, which kind of just sounds like a bit of a Kellogg Brothers type of joint. Have you seen a cure for wellness? Well, we talked about that in that podcast. Did we?

I can't remember. Have you seen it? I'd never saw it. Have you yet? I still have not seen it. And you're not missing that much, but it is pretty interesting. It's worth seeing at least once. I might check it out.

Okay. But at any rate, they had a band here because what hydropathic hotel does not have a house band. And they came forward and said, hey, that's Agatha Christie lady. She's been staying here for a week. She's been in the electric light bath cabinet and getting yogurt enemas and having a grand old time. So they went to the cops and the cops went to the lead detective and said, no, no, no, she's been murdered and we're trying to find out the killer. I'm sure of it.

Eventually this detective said, well, let me tell her husband and husband Archie went out to check it out on the 14th of December. There she was. She was in seclusion and that was sort of the end of this mystery. It wasn't so much a mystery. Um, you know, she by all accounts, it seems like she went there because she had thought about or maybe tried to drive her car into that quarry and and kill herself because she was upset about her marriage ending. Yeah. And then it didn't happen and she just kind of goes on a walk and ends up at this place. May or may not have invented an amnesia story or it may have actually happened to some degree.

She didn't talk about a lot. So we don't really know exactly what went down with the amnesia. She said that so two years later, she gave an interview with the Daily Mail and apparently explained the amnesia by saying she'd hit her head on the steering wheel. But in the same interview, she says that she'd let go of the steering wheel. So she basically said like I attempted suicide and it didn't work out. I hit my head on the steering wheel and I wandered off and I had amnesia. But that they think that it was just a family cover story to save face, the same amnesia story and that really she had attempted to take her own life and hadn't succeeded and now regretted it and was embarrassed by all of this because the idea that there were thousands of people looking for. I think it probably never crossed her mind when she wandered away from her car.

No. And that I remember she was a very shy person, so this all this attention was very, very hard on her. So the family just came up with this cover story that she had amnesia. So didn't even bother asking and Archie and she stayed together for another year or so. And then their divorce finally became finalized in 1928. Yeah. So she didn't even mention this in her autobiography, which kind of says all you need to know about how much she liked to talk about this. Right.

And we should say there was one other thing that did this too. It wasn't just Archie asking for a divorce. He asked for a divorce a few months after her mother died and Agatha Christie's mother was beloved to her. She worshipped her mother. She thought she was wonderful. Her mother was the parent that was there for her while she was a kid and raised her. It was just a very interesting person it sounds like. So she died.

Archie asks for a divorce a few months later and then this whole mysterious disappearance happened. That's right. And then one last thing. I read that at the Swan Hydro Hotel, she was actually playing cards and chatting with other guests about this mysterious disappearance that was in all of the newspapers and none of the other guests recognized her. It was those band members that you mentioned. Interesting. I thought so too, man. So that's everything I learned from Unsolved Mysteries.

Should we take a break? Finally. All right, let's take our final break and we'll talk a little bit more about her later life and further success. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

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She kept that name because, uh, you know, she, that's the name that made her famous. So it makes a lot of sense. And she kept writing novels. Um, she traveled on the Orient Express to Baghdad. She got into, uh, archaeology, just sort of a hobbyist and made friends with a couple who were archaeologists, went to visit them in 1930. And on that trip, met a man named Max Malawan, who was, uh, also an adventurer and an archaeologist 13 years younger. And they fell in love and got married, which is a very, very sweet story. Yeah, apparently he was giving her a tour of some archaeological sites and he got the car stuck.

And she apparently, he said later, she made no fuss about it, didn't blame him or anything like that. And, uh, he said, that's about the time when I started to begin to realize that you are wonderful. And so they got married. Um, and she said later on that the good thing about being married to an archaeologist is that the older you get, the more interested they become. Interesting. I thought it was kind of cute. So this is when Miss Marple comes along as, uh, as a detective in 1930 with The Murder at the Vicarage. That was her first one?

That was the first Miss Marple book. Okay. And then she's traveling around. She's doing these archaeological digs and trips. She's going to Syria and Iraq. Uh, she fell in love with Syria and the Syrian people. And she's really cranking out some big books at this point in the 1930s. Like even, even on archaeological digs, Chuck, can you imagine how uncomfortable it would be to sit and write for hours at an archaeological site?

I can't. It would be tough, I would think. And yet she was still just as prolific as ever. Yeah. Books like Murder and Mesopotamia and Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express were all written, uh, during this period. And this is what really catapulted her into international superstardom as an author. Right. So, um, she and Max stayed together for, I think, 46 years until her death, actually.

Um, yeah, I think, yeah, she outlived him. So this is pretty sweet. Um, but despite all of this kind of, um, adventure and, and archaeological digs and like visits to the, the Middle East, um, most of her life from that point on was in Devonshire. Um, in this tiny little area in the English countryside, um, in these, the quaint little towns, um, and she gardened and was very involved in local community theater. That was her life. She was also one of the biggest, most well-known, most best-selling writers of, of, in the world while she was alive. And yet that's what she did. She hung out with the community theater group and garden that it was just her life.

Yeah. She got the Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1971. And, um, the rights to her novels were held by a company that she created for a long time. And then before she died, she sold part of that off. And that's been sort of bought and sold a bunch over the years, which is kind of how that usually happens. Right. But she did retain enough of the, um, of the company to, to have it be worth a ton of money. Um, which she passed down to her daughter, of course, as her only child.

She sort of took care of her mother's works for many, many years and then passed that on to her only child. Um, and a Matthew Pritchard who still holds these rights and still sort of manages that today. That's right. So everything turned out well for Matthew Pritchard. It sounds like. Heck yeah. I wish, I wish my grandma was actually I don't because I love my grandma, but. Sure.

Would it have killed her to be an internationally famous author? No, it wouldn't Chuck. And I'm glad we're finally talking about us. It's been an elephant in the room for a very long time. Uh, so she, you know, a lot of these went on to be very famous films, a TV series. I think Murder on the Orient Express has been a couple of big movies. In fact, one a couple of years ago that I have not seen. It's unwatchable.

That was really bad. I'm sorry if you listened to this Kenneth Branagh. I couldn't make it through the first five minutes. Oh wow. It was, I didn't like it. Okay. Is that all you watched? It was five minutes.

And I love Kenneth Branagh. Yes. Okay. So that's my report is on the first five minutes. She very famously has a play called The Mousetrap, which is a debut of the West End in 1952. And it is the longest running play in the history of the West End, which is remarkable. Yeah. And to make that even sweeter, remember her sister who said that she probably couldn't

write a mystery novel? Well, her sister was the first in the family to get a play produced on the West End, but it certainly wasn't the longest running play on the West End of all time. So she got her back doubly so. And then she was hit by a train and Agatha Christie laughed and laughed. And poisoned her corpse. So we need to talk a little bit here at the end. We always like to give everyone the accolades they deserve, but also point out some of the

things that weren't so great. We don't want to whitewash anything. And she used a lot of kind of a racially insensitive language. Some would call anti-Semitic at times, anti-Catholic through parts of her career such that the anti-defamationally complained to her agent at one point. And because of that, American publishers were given the ability to change that stuff out, sort of at will. Without any notice given to her, she just, she didn't know this was going on at all.

Yeah. We just were like, I don't think the Americans are going to go for this. The Brits can barely stand it. The Americans definitely aren't going to take this well. Yeah. And I read a lot about this and there are different takes. And one take is that the old, you know, she was a product of her time thing, which people, you know, rightfully point out.

Another is that oftentimes she's doing this to show characters are sort of underdeveloped as humans and sort of backward. So there's that as well. But you also can't dance around the fact that she did use some pretty bad words. And you know, we just got that stuff out. And they were bad even at the time. Yeah. Like the, it wasn't, yes, you can say like, yeah, a lot of people had different social

attitudes toward race and racism and, and in that sense, she wasn't that much different. But there were cases where she was standing well outside of the norm, including in book titles and characters and things like that. And one book in particular, and then there were none was revised many, many times, not just in the U.S., but in Great Britain as well. And it's remarkable in that sense. But in another sense, it is also remarkable in that it, it's considered pretty widely to have given birth to the slasher film genre.

Did you know that? I didn't until my bread bed say it. I, yeah, I looked this up a little more. And on its own, and then there were none, the book ends, sorry for the spoiler everybody, but it ends with, I think all of the suspects killing one another. And everyone dies in the stage adaptation of the play that she helped write. The final girl, a female character is left alive and has outdone the murderer who's come to get her, which is, you know, for the formula for any slasher film whatsoever.

But there's a bunch of other elements in there too. And they're like, you know, even on like horror fan wikis, they, they point to that as like the genuine birth, even more than psycho of the slasher film genre. Oh, interesting. Yeah. It is pretty interesting. Who would have ever thought that Agatha Christie with her nonviolence and poison and occasional racism would have been the one to birth the slasher film.

Occasional racism. Yeah. And a lot of the, the racist stuff just to put a, a final pin on that was a lot of it was character descriptions, which can be some of the ugliest kinds of stuff like that. Yeah. But it wasn't just like talking about philosophies. It was just like literally physically describing a character. Sometimes she would use some pretty, pretty derogatory language.

Yeah. So again, it's a bit like exploring Elizabeth Blackwell, earning historical characters, always weird little bugs under the rocks you turn over, you know? I'm glad we're doing our great work in a, in a, in the time of wokeness. Right. Exactly. No one can ever go back. I mean, we've made missteps here and there, but they can't go back and talk about when

Josh and Chuck were big racists at the beginning. Yeah. No, it's true. But just wait for 20 years from now, they'll be like, I can't believe they talk about those guys were ages bastards, you know? Probably so. There's one other thing I want to say too. So when she lived through World War II, Agatha Christie was worried that she was going to

die in the bombing blitz of Great Britain. And she really wanted Hercule Poirot and Jane Marples to have a final case. So she wrote a book for each of them. One is called Curtain. That's Poirot's final book. And the other is Sleeping Murder. That is Marples final case. And it just kind of explains what happens to them.

I believe Poirot dies and Marples just retires. But when she survived World War II, she was like, well, I don't, I'm not ready for these guys to be retired yet. So she kept those books and had them posthumously published and they were in the 70s. And when Hercule Poirot's last book came out and he died, the New York Times ran a front page obituary for him, the only fictional character to have that honor bestowed on them. That's crazy. Isn't it?

Yeah. And also a very cool, good idea to write those books early on just in case because you never know. Yeah. Besides the bombing thing. I mean, she could walk off a ledge or get hit by a bus or dive natural causes early. Like you never know. And then you've got this legacy cemented.

Right. Pretty smart. Have you ever seen one last thing? Have you ever seen Murder by Death? I know I've asked you before. I have that DVD sitting on my desk. Well, that's amazing that you have that on your desk and you, wait, is it on your desk at work?

It is. It's the wrong place. I was going to say watch it tonight, but don't watch it tonight. Wait until everything clears. Was that one of the books? You're going to love it. Spoof actually have detective books of like Charlie Chan and Agatha Christie and Sam Spade and all that that she helped, you know, kind of create, but it's actually like a complaint

from fans of mystery mysteries. It's just a wonderful book, Truman or movie Truman Capote's in it. David Niven. Peter Falk, right? Peter Falk, yeah. A lot of people. James Cromwell as a younger man. Oh yeah.

James Coco as Hercule Poirot. It's just great. You're going to love it, man. So I guess we should say that she did die eventually, five years or three years after I met her in 1976 at the age of 85 at her home in Oxfordshire or Oxfordshire. And it was natural causes, not poison. No. Her last words were, good to meet you, Chuck.

You got anything else? I do not have anything else. Well, friends, that is Agatha Christie. If you want to know more about Agatha Christie, go start reading Agatha Christie books. And since I said Agatha Christie, like three or four times, it's time for a listener mate. All right, I'm going to call this letter from a kid because we love reading these letters from kids. Hey, guys, I've been listening to your podcast for about eight months now and I'd like to

say I am a huge fan. This is Emmett, he's 10 years old. Oh yeah. I love this email. That is even more of a fan of you guys than me and he told me about your podcast. I am a huge fan of the Atlanta Falcons and pretty much everything Atlanta related, including your podcast, which is weird because I live in Iowa. I love it.

It is a little weird though, Emmett, you're right. I love how self aware this guy is. I think when you go up in a place like Iowa with no professional sports, you do that thing where you just pick out a team in a city. Yeah. You throw a base city roll as you throw a dart at a map and go with it. That's right. Now I'm really worried there's a professional team in Iowa, but there is not.

There is not. There are none, right? No need to double check that. I've been listening to your podcast a ton during this coronavirus outbreak to keep me from going crazy and it's worked. My birthday is actually coming up, so I'll not be able to see my friends or even have a party. It would be totally awesome and make my year if you said happy birthday to me, but I want

to bet you won't read this on the air. That's some fine reverse psychology right there. Well played, Emmett. I love your grass podcast and last year, me and my best friend Oliver started a lawn care business and I made enough money to buy Beats headphones to listen to your podcast on. That is full circle right there. That's right.

He says, I made sure to wrap this letter up and spank it on the bottom before I sent it. Happy, happy, big, I guess, 11th birthday Emmett. Thanks to your dad, hello Oliver, and everyone there in Atlanta, Iowa. Yeah, happy birthday Emmett. That reverse psychology worked, man. If you want to get in touch with us like Emmett did and see if we'll wish you a happy birthday, I'll bet we won't, but who can tell in these crazy times. You can get in touch with us via email.

Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. From the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and

dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.